Project Description
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Interview with
JODI and JORDAN
from
COULDN’T BE HAPPIERS
(20th July, 2025)
Interview with Dave Bruce
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How did the band come together back in 2013? Where did it all begin?
Jordan: We first met in 2013 at an old-time music circle in Winston-Salem, NC. At the time, we were both married to other people.
Jodi: Jordan wore a Sasquatch t-shirt and sang a song he wrote about an obsessed Bigfoot hunter. I thought he was ridiculous, but oddly charming and certainly memorable. We became friends.
Jordan: Years passed, and we saw each other periodically at the circle. In 2016, I moved to Texas. Life shifted, and our first marriages dissolved. Then, one day, out of the blue, I texted Jodi a song that reminded me of one she used to sing at that old-time music circle. That text message started a new relationship.
Jodi: Not long after, we met in New Orleans for a weekend getaway. On that short trip, I told Jordan we were coming back to get married there the next year. And we did.
Jordan: For years, we had set music aside and traded it for stability, careers, and all the things we thought we were supposed to do. But now, we have each other and a shared dream. That’s how Couldn’t Be Happiers was born: not just a band, but a commitment to living life creatively and fully.
Briefly describe your journey to date.
Jodi: We were thrilled just to be making music again. We started hitting open mics in 2017, and before long, Muddy Creek Café in Bethania, NC, invited us to play a full show on a Sunday afternoon for a couple of hours. After that, we were hooked. Since then, we’ve taken our songs everywhere—from Black Mountain, NC to Kiel, Germany, from Tucson, Arizona to Cape May, New Jersey. We recorded two full albums and a handful of EPs with our latest album Couple(t)s having dropped on Friday, June 13!
How would you describe your sound? Why do you think fans resonate with your music?
Jordan: Joyful rabble rousing! Harmonious dissent! Violent Femmes dancing with Johnny and June. We are unapologetically ourselves in all contexts: online, onstage, IRL. We don’t hesitate to speak out against the corporate decimation of the climate and anti-democratic movements, but we also write about our dogs and retell old North Carolina folk tales for a modern audience. There’s an accessibility to us and our music that speaks to some folks.
Which artist’s music and/or performance, past or present, inspires you today?
Jordan: Bright Eyes, Shovels and Rope, Langhorn Slim, Jackson Browne, just to name a few.
Jodi: Well, and Jordan insists on telling y’all about how many hundreds of times he listened to Albany’s own The Waifs’ “Since I’ve Been Around” and the entire Up All Night album. I’m also a fan of the Lumineers, Mumford and Sons, and Bandits on the Run.
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Your latest Album ‘Couple(t)s’ has just been released! What’s it all about? Describe its origin and evolution.
Jordan: It’s our first concept album. We wanted to group each side of the album into three thematic pairs. So Side A and Side B each have two North Carolina folk stories, two love songs, and two protest songs. The couplet inspired us on a couple of levels. First, it’s a powerful poetic device–cogent and decisive. And second, our journey through life as a couple has been the best chapter for each of us. We have been powered by creativity and mutual admiration for one another.
What are the signature tracks on the album, and which are your favorites to play live?
Jodi: “Come Back Tomorrow” is a lot of fun. It’s not our usual song. It’s got a New Orleans second-line groove and a pop sensibility. The chorus of “Plastic Bag” has one of the most creative harmonies we’ve written. As a duo, we are always trying to weave together unconventional harmonies that don’t leave the listener wanting a third part. And “Lydia’s Bridge” is a haunting ghost story that is really exciting to play live because of the momentary but pregnant hush of the audience right after it ends, but before the applause.
What tours and events are coming up? What are you looking forward to, and what can the fans expect?
Jordan: We are headed to the Wake Forest Listening Room, one of our favorite listening rooms in North Carolina, on June 20th, the day before we have our big album release party on the 21st at the Camel City Playhouse in Winston. We were also selected to perform in the Grassy Hill Emerging Artist showcase at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival in Goshen, CT, at the end of July. We will be playing many of our newest songs, but we will also throw in some older ones that we’ve learned are fan favorites.
If you could perform with any music artist, Alive or Dead, who would you choose? And why?
Jordan: I would want to play with Robert Earl Keen.
Jodi: Definitely Taylor Swift. I tried to get tickets to her Eras tour and failed miserably, but it looked so amazing. Everything she does is top-notch.
What are your long-term aspirations as a music artist and how are you progressing towards them?
Jordan: We often discuss our goals with each other without ever coming to a conclusion. I just want to keep writing music. But Jodi loves the stage, and wants to build a loyal, even if modest, following to continue performing for.
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With that in mind, what piece of advice would you give to an artist starting out?
Jordan: Perform as often as you can. Even before you think you’re ready. Practicing alone isn’t enough.
What is the best thing about performing to a live audience? What’s been the career highlight so far?
Jordan: I just like when Jodi is happy, and she’s never as happy as when she is on stage singing.
Jodi: That is true. I do love it.
Jordan: As far as highlights go, I think being selected as an official showcase artist for the Southeastern Regional Folk Alliance Conference was pretty amazing. That is a conference where you perform solely for other artists and industry, and artists are selected by a jury of industry professionals.. To be chosen was an honor and definitely an early career marker. We’ve had several highlights since then, but that one was completely unexpected.
Let’s finish with some quickfire questions. Firstly:
What is the craziest thing you’ve ever done?
Jordan: I quit my lucrative job at a law firm, packed my guitar and dog into a truck and moved to North Carolina to be with a girl. Jodi was the girl. And I couldn’t be happier with that choice.
Jodi: The craziest thing I ever did was get coordinating tattoos with a guy on our first date. And then marrying him in New Orleans a year later. That was my first and only tattoo. And the guy was Jordan. So, I’d say it worked out.
What is the one topic you can talk about for hours?
Jordan: Consciousness. It weirds me out that I exist and know that I exist.
Jodi: Politics – for better or worse, I can scream, cry, and go on about it for as long as someone will listen. Even if that “someone” is just one of our 4 dogs.
What is the thing you like most about yourself?
Jordan: I like my willingness to admit fault when in the wrong
Jodi: I actually like my delusional belief that I can do or be anything when I grow up. Sometimes I am sorely disappointed when I discover I might be wrong about that, but it never stops me from going after what I want.
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And finally, your favourites –
Album –
Jordan: Paul Simon’s Graceland
Jodi: I wore out Mariah Carey’s Daydream growing up, and could probably still sing every word to this day.
Artist –
Jordan: James McMurtry
Jodi: Shovels & Rope
Movie –
Jordan: Almost Famous
Jodi: This is a trick question. No one can choose just one favorite movie. But if I had to, I’d say Barbie.
Place to visit –
Jordan: Athens, Greece
Jodi: Also Athens!
Venue to play –
Jordan: Anywhere that tells the audience to shush
Jodi: Anywhere where you don’t have to tell the audience to shush
Food –
Jordan: Crawfish Etouffee
Jodi: Fresh pasta
Drink –
Jordan: Diet Dr. Pepper
Jodi: Espresso with oat milk
Person in History –
Jordan: Lyndon Baines Johnson, signed the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act
Jodi: Every person in history is flawed, but I have always been fascinated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. His fireside chats brought a nation together in a way that I don’t know is possible today, and his legacy of providing social safety nets to hard-working Americans has endured for decades, despite many attempts to undo them. Let’s hope they continue to survive.
Tattoo – (If you don’t have one, what would you get?)
Jordan: The matching moon tattoo I got with Jodi in New Orleans
Jodi: My moon and stars tattoo I got with Jordan in New Orleans on our first trip together, which was also our first date.
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Photo – Ken Bennett
BIOGRAPHY
Fresh off official showcase performances at Southeastern Regional Folk Alliance Conference and Confluence Music Industry Conference and Festival, multiple songwriting awards, and appearances on NPR’s The Martha Bassett Show and at the North Carolina State Fair, Couldn’t Be Happiers’ sophomore album, COUPLE(T)S, will make an impact far beyond the borders of North Carolina. Although COUPLE(T)S finds the most shade beneath a folk-rock umbrella, the album pays homage to a wide array of traditions – a New Orleans, second-line groove drives “Come Back Tomorrow;” a haunting, industrial accompaniment scaffolds “Lydia’s Bridge;” and a handful of bluegrass licks premiere in “King of Austin.” The optimism that community, tradition, and love are equipped to handle the terrifying prospects of climate change, authoritarianism, and other perils of modernity, plus the stunningly assertive lead vocals and harmonies, provide all the gravity needed to keep these diverse sounds in symphonic orbit.
The title COUPLE(T)S holds multiple meanings. Not only does it refer to Jodi Hildebran Lee (drums, vocals, harmonica) and Jordan Crosby Lee’s (guitar, vocals) relationship as a married couple, it is also a nod to the duo’s favorite poetic device. “The couplet is simple and powerful–much like folk music,”
Jodi says. “But it’s also an apt metaphor for our relationship. A couplet is a pair of rhyming lines with the same meter. Each line is made up of different words, but they always come together at the end. Likewise, Jordan and I are completely different people, but we work in concert for the same goal of creating unique, but relatable, folk-music.” The poetic couplet also inspired the album’s organization. COUPLE(T)S will be released in two parts, with each part consisting of six songs organized thematically into pairs. Side A includes two love songs for tracks one and two (“Come Back Tomorrow” and “When I Die”), two protest songs for tracks three and four (“Plastic Bag Odyssey” and “Tear It Down”), and two folk-story songs for tracks five and six (“Devil’s Tramping Ground” and “Pretty Polly”). Side B, like the second line of a couplet, follows the same meter as Side A: two love songs for tracks seven and eight (“King of Austin” and “Wherever You Go”); two protest songs for tracks nine and ten (“Weatherman” and “I Got You”); and two folk-story songs for tracks eleven and twelve (“Brown Mountain Lights” and “Lydia’s Bridge”).
“We decided to organize the album into couplets shortly after we started recording it,” Jordan says. “But the decision to include only songs that could be classified as love songs, protest music, or southern folklore was made over a decade ago. We just didn’t know it.”
Jodi and Jordan first met in Winston-Salem, NC, back in 2013 at a picker’s circle that would gather monthly to play old-time and bluegrass music. Jordan stopped attending after he graduated from law school and moved back to Texas for a job. But one day in 2017–in his office in San Antonio on a Saturday–he heard a song on a curated folk playlist that reminded him of one Jodi used to sing in the circle. He sent it to her and nervously waited for a reply. They had been friends, but they weren’t close. Would she think it was weird that he was thinking of her? Fast forward a year later, and the two were married in New Orleans. They started their married life back in Winston-Salem.
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Photo – Ken Bennett
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Music had long been on the backburner for each of them since they had both been focusing on their careers. But together, they had a second-chance at pursuing what they loved most. Both are still lawyers, but they started making music every moment they were not working.
“Those first few years together were such a whirlwind,” Jodi recalls. “We didn’t know who we were as people in this new life, much less as a band. It took time to figure it out. After nearly seven years as a duo, it feels like we finally hit our stride. We were artistically itching to write a cohesive album centered around themes that meant something to us – something to offer hope and joy in a chaotic world. But to tell our story, we had to identify those things that made us who we were as songwriters.”
The duo had written three songs they wanted to build the album around: “Plastic Bag Odyssey,” an award-winning quirky protest song told from the perspective of a grocery store bag that will not die and wreaks havoc wherever it goes; “Lydia’s Bridge,” a local North Carolina folk story about a vanishing hitchhiker; and “Wherever You Go,” which echoes Jordan’s late father’s advice about love.
“The album themes were right there in front of us,” Jodi says. “The ties that bind us are the same ties that should bind our album: folklore; protest; love.” The duo recorded the album with Doug Davis of Flytrap Music Production. Each track is layered and supported by robust instrumentation including sousaphone, melodica, accordion, and musical saw, while capturing the essence of the duo’s energetic and authentic live sound. No song depends on something the duo cannot provide in a live setting with only guitar and percussion. Jodi insists, “Doug just gets us – although he may push us into new territory sonically, he is very careful to make sure we still sound like ‘us’ no matter what.”
While recording the first three songs they were sure they wanted to include on the album, Jordan and Jodi continued to write.
“I think writing the protest songs was easiest for us,” Jodi says. “I am really proud of our work on ‘I Got You,’” Jordan says. “We wanted to write a song expressing our love and support of those who have been subject to attacks from the far right.” Jodi wrote “Tear it Down” as a candid response to what she says are, “billionaires crying over the prospect of being taxed fairly.” Jodi also did most of the writing on “Weatherman,” which was inspired by the story of June Bacon-Bercey, the first woman meteorologist to appear on TV. “In addition to being a woman on the weather wall during a live broadcast in the 70s, she was also a woman of color, making her accomplishment even more remarkable,” Jodi says. “And she only got a chance to prove herself because the ordinary weatherman was arrested for robbery.” With those, the duo had a full set of protest songs for the album.
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Photo – Ken Bennett
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“As a Texan who wished he’d been born in North Carolina, I was really excited to write a couple more folktales about my adopted state,” Jordan says. “Plus I’ve always been into stories of the paranormal and stuff. I don’t believe any of it, but a community’s monsters and ghosts are a part of that community’s culture. They also reveal deeper truths about existence.”
Jordan’s aunt, who grew up in Charlotte, NC, told him about a book she had when she was young called An Illustrated Guide to Ghosts and Mysterious Occurrences in the Old North State. That’s where Jordan discovered the story of the Brown Mountain Lights and the Devil’s Tramping Ground. “I read about a lot of old ghost stories, but we had to write about the Brown Mountain Lights because Jodi is from Burke County where the lights are known to be seen.” Jordan says. They read about many explanations for the mysterious floating orbs, and combined elements from different versions to tell a new story about a gold miner and his love searching for one another through the mountains with their “lanterns burning bright.”
The other story that jumped out at Jordan was the story of “The Devil’s Tramping Ground.” “Like the tale of Lydia’s Bridge, the Devil’s Tramping Ground is right here in the Piedmont of NC,” Jordan says. “It’s about this circle of grass where nothing grows. It’s on private property, and the owners allowed a botanist from NC State to come out and test the soil, but they still can’t figure out a good scientific explanation for why nothing grows there.” According to legend, the devil goes to this spot at night to dance in circles or to pace around contemplating his evil machinations, depending on which version of the tale one believes.
Jodi insisted on rounding out the quartet of folk songs with a song they had written early on, but had yet to publish. “We retold a two hundred-year-old murder ballad called ‘Pretty Polly,’” Jodi says. The original version of the tale is of a young woman, poor and pregnant, who gets murdered by her boyfriend. Couldn’t Be Happiers’ version gives the power back to Polly–she successfully defends herself and turns the tables on her attacker. “I always liked the song, but we never played it live and it sat on a pile of finished songs. But after the Dobbs decision in which women lost the constitutional right to choose, I felt like it was time to bring it out.”
Realizing that their quartet of love songs was seriously lacking for a band called Couldn’t Be Happiers, Jodi wrote “Come Back Tomorrow,” an upbeat, syncopated pop-folk tune about first love, to balance the heaviness of the folklore songs. Wanting to represent multiple kinds of love, they wrote “King of Austin” as a birthday gift for Jordan’s best friend who always believed in them. The last song the duo wrote was “When I Die,” a love song that reflects on how they want to leave the world. “That song was inspired by some of my own health anxieties. After losing my dad fairly suddenly to brain cancer, I realized I was constantly terrified something like a simple stress headache was really a symptom of something worse,” Jordan says. “And naturally I got to thinking about what my impact would be when I’m gone.” The song sweetly admits to human frailty and speaks to the narrator’s desire to leave the world a little better off than he found it.
Writing and recording all twelve songs took well over a year. If they were not working, playing live, or writing, the couple was recording whenever they could – after work, during lunch breaks, and Sunday afternoons. The duo sees COUPLE(T)S as a labor of love, where their individual strengths alone might not have been sufficient to achieve the desired results. “The entire process was chaos,” Jordan says. “Jodi continued to push us forward. If it were up to me alone it might not be done.” Jodi adds, “Jordan insists on each song being done right. And when I was too focused on being done for the sake of meeting deadlines, he reminded me that we want this album to speak to people, and missing a deadline to do that was OK.” But much like the poetic couplet itself, the couple ultimately came together at the end to achieve the same goal: a perfectly balanced album.
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Jordan and Jodi Lee, the Couldn’t Be Happiers, posing in a backyard in Winston-Salem on Sunday, June 27, 2021 / Photo – Ken Bennett
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