A dozen albums into Susan Werner's career as one of contemporary folk music's most consistent and imaginative singer-songwriters, she decided to tackle the very notion of the assertion: "You can never go home again." Born and raised on an Iowa farm, Werner is from a family of artists and entertainers, musicians, and so forth. She's dropped a couple hands-full of albums, mostly exploring her influences and capabilities.

First, she aimed at just recording songs she'd written, then began veering toward concept albums - a collection of agnostic hymns, a collection of new songs that sounded like old standards, a collection of American classics.

Now, in 2013, she's released Hayseed - an album of songs inspired by the farm on which she was raised, and farming culture in general. The songs are raw and, for lack of any better word, organic (pun intended, and borrowed from her). Hayseed is sentimental at times, sure, but mostly it focuses on the things farmers do best: tell stories, live well, and work hard.

I recently had the chance to chat with Susan Werner about the making of the album and what inspired her to refocus on her deepest roots:

Kim Ruehl: Let's talk about Hayseed a little bit. What made you decide to do this record? It's sort of a theme record.
Susan Werner: I call it a concept record, yeah. One of the [things that happened] was my parents moved from the farm to town. The sale of the acreage, the buildings and the house, just went through last week.

We all knew it was coming for a few years, but ["Machinery Sale December 8, 2012"] - the final track - was the sale of my father's farm equipment. My parents moving from the farm to town was a surprisingly emotional event. It was cause to…[create] what really is an appreciation and a celebration of a way of life, how I was raised and how exceptional that is. And, also to become an advocate for … people living on the land itself, not away from it in cities, but out in the country. What the value of that is, for people who decide they want to be part of the countryside. I love the idea that people are raising their kids out on the land. The closer you keep people to the land, the safer the land will be. If people live there, they'll care about what goes into it. If people are living in Phoenix and owning land in Iowa, they'll care a lot less about what goes into that land.

I want to see and be a part of people out on the land itself. I grew up that way. I treasure that and always will. I like seeing new families beginning that way of life. I want to be an advocate for it.

It's a different thing than city people in Brooklyn picking up folk music and raising chickens on their rooftop.
Well, I love urban poultry. I have a drag queen brother who has chicks now. He thinks of himself as putting the "ag" in drag. I'm all for urban poultry. There is a hipster thing about it, there's no doubt about that. There's a moment for agriculture. Agriculture is suddenly sexy. But, for those of us that have our deeper roots in agriculture, so to speak, we know this is a moment to move the ball forward. This is a moment to push these values as far as we can, right now, before the United States picks up on some other trend and becomes fascinated with I don't know what - some other emerging trendy lifestyle.

You do well with concept albums. This is the third that I know of. There was the jazz standards record…
There was 2004's I Can't Be New, which were songs in the style of Cole Porter. Then 2007's Gospel Truth which one writer - it might have been you - described as Gospel music for agnostics. Then there was 2009's Classics, which was pop classics from the '60s and '70s arranged for string quartet, then this project is a concept album as well. I like concept records as a starting point for a conversation between the artist and the audience. It's so specific. If your concept is specific, an audience will refer to their own specific experience. It gives you a place to begin a conversation about something. In this case, it's something I love very, very much: the land between Lancaster, PA, and Sacramento, CA. Fly-over country is my home and always will be, and the people of fly-over country. Those people who live in the space and cities between Harrisburg and Sacramento, those people feel like my people.

I really like "Ode to Aldo Leopold". Can you talk about what inspired that tune?
I had a sort of epiphany while working on the Pledge Music campaign I did for this project. We gave 10 percent of all proceeds right off the top to three farm charities [names them]. I went back to the creek on my parents' farm. They still have the land. I picked these ears of corn, because one of the premiums was autographed ears of corn. So I took the truck back and said "Dad, where are the biggest ears?" and he said, "Back by the creek." If I had thought through this, I would have gotten smaller ears of corn because they cost less to ship, but you know me. I want to make an impression. I got overwhelmed with this feeling of deep affection for this place, this landscape, what this looks like and what it feels like and what this corner of the world has been to me. So I just leaned on the side of the truck and bawled my eyes out. I thought I can't be the only person who feels this - that a place can be as meaningful and generous to you as another human being. That inspired that song - which is a bolero, different from anything else on the record. It's almost like a choral piece. It inspired that piece of music and made me more determined than ever to be an advocate for sustainable agriculture, which treats the land as a non-renewable and precious resource.

Do you think your music by and large comes from where you come from?
This record certainly does. I learned how to play guitar when I was five and everybody in my family can play music. There was a social component to it in our house, because farms are dull. There are many hours with nothing to do, especially winter hours. We weren't messing around with electronics. We were playing instruments.

In my discussions with Crit Harmon, the producer, I said I wanted the record to sound as organic as possible. As unamplified and interactive… I think we managed to do that. It feels homegrown. I told my producer to find me guys who could do physical labor. I didn't want some skinny intellectual. That guy isn't gonna know how to stack a hay wagon. Find me some guys with dirt under their nails. So he brought in these guys…[who] could go out, if they needed to, make a fence. Drive a post into the ground and string up the barbed wire. There's a physical component to this. The album is about farming, which is a physical way of life, a connection with the land.

One thing to mention about this is that I think agriculture is having a moment again because agriculture and the connection to the land is a kind of tonic for the digital age. Everything we create - we make websites, we tweet, we post on Facebook - none of this is physical or tangible. Food is tangible. Land is tangible. What comes out of it is not an instantaneous reward. It's very healing for people. People look for a connection with the land because they're looking for a connection to something in themselves that's real and will stick around, that has a sense of permanence to it.

Totally. And I understand this was commissioned by the University of Nebraska?
Yeah, I was fortunate enough that the University of Nebraska wanted to sponsor this project there are two components to it: the Lied Center for the Arts in Lincoln and also the Institute for Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska. I give a lot of credit, especially to the IANR for wanting to be part of the conversation today, especially about how things are changing. How can songs be a starting point for these changes - enduring values and changing values? I've been thrilled they've been involved. They've been key in creating a profile for this project.

Is there anything else you want people to know about the project?
Yeah. The goal of the songs is to animate a group of people - farmers - who are mostly introverts. My dad and my cousins and uncles involved in agriculture, these people do not step up to the microphone. They are reluctant to be in the public eye. These are patient people with a lot of know-how but not a big mouth. It's my way of giving voice to them, making them more vivid and speaking for them.