Tag: premiere

WATCH: The Pine Hill Haints, “Satchel Paige Blues” (Live at Standard Deluxe)

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Artist: The Pine Hill Haints
Hometown: Florence, Alabama
Single: “Satchel Paige Blues” (Live at Standard Deluxe)
Album: The Song Companion of a Lonestar Cowboy
Release Date: May 14, 2021
Label: Single Lock Records

Editor’s Note: The Pine Hill Haints have played every edition of the 280 Boogie, the yearly festival hosted by the music venue Standard Deluxe in Waverly, Alabama. This is the festival’s 20th year.

In Their Words: “Satchel Paige was in it to win it. The scouts were gonna come check him out, and it rained. He was dressed in his uniform holding a ball and glove. He was screaming that he wanted to play on the mound. I can totally identify with that. That’s why I wrote the song. It’s a mean blues number and I wrote it because the Haints totally identify with him.

“Growing up, I heard Auburn had the best punk rock scene in Alabama, so that’s where I went to college. My life changed down there when I was in school. Waverly still has a remnant of that scene, to me. It’s one of the first places I started to come to terms with who I was — my country side — and that has nothing to do with cowboy hats and instrumentation. It has something to do with muddy rivers and eagles, and that’s what country really is. That’s Waverly. We played there around a bonfire long before there was a 280 Boogie. People would dance all night. It was special. It still is. If playing at Standard Deluxe is what ‘making it’ is, that’s all I want. Anything beyond that is extra.” — Jamie Barrier

Photo credit: Abraham Rowe

LISTEN: Reid Zoé, “When I Go”

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Artist: Reid Zoé
Hometown: Toronto, Canada
Song: “When I Go”
Album: Shed My Skin
Release Date: May 14, 2021

In Their Words: “On the surface, ‘When I Go’ is a song about dying — but it’s really all of the questions that come with being a human on this earth. It’s the acceptance that we don’t know everything, and that that’s okay. We are part of everything. It’s about the joy that can come with the realization that ‘nothing really matters. It was written during a time of really potent growth, and I hope it’s as healing for the listener as it has been for me.” — Reid Zoé

Photo credit: Andy Ince

LISTEN: Full Cord, “Right in Step”

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Artist: Full Cord
Hometown: Grand Haven, Michigan
Song: “Right in Step”
Album: Hindsight
Release Date: May 15, 2021

In Their Words: “‘Right in Step’ is lovingly referred to as a perfectly lovely bluegrass song. This song is the debut collaborative song by fiddler Grant Flick and mandolinist Brian Oberlin. The lyric content is love of music & hopefulness, gratification, and that unified feeling that music can deliver. Written in the late summer of 2020, it offers a respite amongst the uncertainty of a pandemic and a place where a musician can always feel at home in the music. Grant came to rehearsal one afternoon with his tenor guitar and a lick that immediately caught the attention of Brian. The one fallback for musicians is to continue doing what we love and that is making great music that makes everyone feel good — by the following afternoon ‘Right in Step’ was a complete song that we are immensely proud of.” — Full Cord

Photo credit: Derek Ketchum, Local Spins

WATCH: Sam Robbins, “Raining Sideways”

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Artist: Sam Robbins
Hometown: Portsmouth, New Hampshire, currently Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Raining Sideways”
Album: Finally Feeling Young
Release Date: May 14, 2021

In Their Words: “‘Raining Sideways’ is one of the songs that means the most to me on the album, and it’s probably the most requested song I get live. It all just sort of came out at once, and it unlocked a new depth in my writing. I had never tried to write a song about my dad, or my relationships to the men in my life. ‘Raining Sideways’ is weird, doesn’t have a real chorus or hook, but that’s what I love about it. It’s just a stream of consciousness song that is one of the most real things I’ve ever written.” — Sam Robbins

Photo credit: Libby Danforth

WATCH: Last Year’s Man, “Still Be Here”

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Artist: Last Year’s Man
Hometown: Eugene, Oregon
Song: “Still Be Here”
Release Date: April 30, 2021

In Their Words: “I wrote this song after a conversation with Ben Allen. Ben is a really fantastic composer and musician who recently started a sync agency in Vancouver, Washington. We talked about me writing something for his company that walked the line between burdened and hopeful and this song is what came almost immediately. I think we’re all eager for life to get back to what it was in some way or another and this is a love song built out of the idea that it will.

“For the video, I spent hours on archive.org not really knowing what I was searching for. It was dumb luck stumbling on these public domain videos from the 1930s and 40s. I started with a clip just to see and the music happened to line up with the dancing for a moment and it felt really beautiful. I pieced it together from there and was surprised by the wide range of emotion I felt from watching people dance in these old movies along with my song. It’s one of those happy accidents.” — Tyler Fortier, Last Year’s Man

Photo credit: Tyler Fortier

STREAM: Christopher Jones, ‘Bach: The Goldberg Variations’

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Artist: Christopher Jones
Hometown: Morgantown, West Virginia
Album: Bach: The Goldberg Variations
Release Date: May 7, 2021

Editor’s Note: Christopher Jones is director of the Appalachian Music Ensemble, a performing group at West Virginia Wesleyan College. He got his start, however, in the classical world. He holds a bachelor’s degree in cello performance, and a master’s and doctorate degree in music composition from West Virginia University. For his newest project, he has reworked Bach’s iconic Goldberg Variations for mandolin, banjo, and guitar.

In Their Words: “This project is something that I had thought about for a long time. Not necessarily that I wanted to record it myself, but that it was something that I really wanted to hear. When everything shut down last year and the world was upended, I made a split-screen video of the ninth variation, and then the second, and realized I might as well do a studio recording of the entire thing. I think I turned to this piece as something that had that satisfying and comforting sense of order and normalcy, even though the scope of the whole thing can feel chaotic. Each variation is an exercise in perspective, begging the question of ‘How many different ways can I look at the same problem?’ It was a lens to try and make sense of things.” — Christopher Jones

Photo credit: Lauren Smith

LISTEN: Amy Helm, “Sweet Mama”

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Artist: Amy Helm
Hometown: Woodstock, New York
Song: “Sweet Mama”
Album: What the Flood Leaves Behind
Release Date: June 18, 2021
Label: Renew Records/BMG

In Their Words: “‘Sweet Mama’ was written by the wonderful Steve Salett and features killer harp by the one and only Phil Cook. This track is a rock and roll cut made for you, with love, in Woodstock, New York!” — Amy Helm

Photo credit: Ebru Yildiz

WATCH: Rachel Baiman, “No Good Time for Dying”

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Artist: Rachel Baiman with Atwood Quartet and Kyshona
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “No Good Time for Dying”
Album: Cycles
Release Date: June 11, 2021
Label: Signature Sounds

In Their Words: “Of all the songs on the record, this one felt the most cinematic, production-wise. Perhaps because I see this as the real story (of my late grandmother) playing out in my head each time I sing it. That’s why it seemed so fitting to collaborate with Atwood Quartet for this special live version of the song. Ben Plotnick wrote the incredible string parts, which both mimic and enhance the original album production. Kyshona was an artist I thought of immediately for the vocal harmonies, because of the quality of her voice and general spirit as a human. I was really grateful that she was up for it! After a year in which we’ve all had to face so much tragic death, this song feels like a reckoning of sorts, and a moment to process and hope for better in the future. I also want to give a special thanks to my neighbor Mike Malkiewicz for letting us transform and use his beautiful backyard stage.” — Rachel Baiman

Photo credit: Gina Binkley

LISTEN: Angela Autumn, “Sowin’ Seeds”

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Artist: Angela Autumn
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee (originally from Zelienople, Pennsylvania)
Song: “Sowin’ Seeds”
Album: Frontiers Woman
Release Date: June 4, 2021

In Their Words: “‘Sowin’ Seeds’ is the oldest song on the record; I wrote it in 2017. It explores the could-be life of the musician; one of imagined ease, free from sacrifice. Once, after a show, a construction worker asked that I play this song again. It was in Pittsburgh, a town full of blue-collar workers. The chorus is a reference to the African American spiritual, ‘Working on a Building,’ which was recorded and later popularized by The Carter Family. The song features Nate Leath on fiddle, Keagan Justice on banjo, Mickey Justice on mandolin, and Kate Haldrup on drums.” — Angela Autumn

Photo credit: Dana Kalachnik

LISTEN: Shay Martin Lovette, “Parkway Bound”

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Artist: Shay Martin Lovette
Hometown: Boone, North Carolina
Song: “Parkway Bound”
Album: Scatter & Gather
Release Date: May 14, 2021

In Their Words: “This song is a tip of the hat to the Blue Ridge Parkway that runs from Great Smoky Mountains National Park on the western edge of North Carolina near Cherokee, to Shenandoah National Park at Rockfish Gap. I consider myself lucky to live near the Blue Ridge Parkway in Boone, North Carolina, and find myself in constant awe of the landscape that this region offers. In ‘Parkway Bound,’ I wanted to capture the natural beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the dead of winter. To me, the hiking trails and scenery in this area offer a means of escape from the confines of normal life and as I got further along in the writing process, I was drawn to the imagery of someone leaving their troubles behind and setting out for the Parkway as I have done so many times. The music could be said to be influenced more by great narrative writers like Norman Blake and Slaid Cleaves than your standard folkies, but there’s a little Townes Van Zandt and Gram Parsons in there.” — Shay Martin Lovette

Photo credit: Julianna Liegel