It’s fitting to enjoy the Lowest Pair’s new album, Always as Young as We’ll Ever Be, in the opening weeks of a new year. In particular, the song “Give It All Away” gently offers a theme of letting go amid an orchestration of acoustic guitar, banjo, and other subdued instrumentation. As the song swells, a soft percussion begins to underscore a sense of renewal.
“I feel the lightest when I give it all/ Give it all away,” sings Kendl Winter in the opening moments; she’s later joined by bandmate Palmer T. Lee when they harmonize on a simple yet poetic lyric: “Before the sun, there was the rain/ Before the rain, there was the sun.”
Indeed, it’s been quite a few seasons – six years in fact – since the Lowest Pair released an album of their own. The duo enlisted Tucker Martine to produce the new project, recorded in Portland, Oregon. There are some surprising musical textures for longtime fans of the duo, but at the heart of the Lowest Pair, there’s still the welcoming vibe that’s enchanted listeners since their 2014 debut album.
“We were really excited about the recording situation, being with Tucker Martine in his studio, and having such beautiful musicians paint our songs, to flesh them out more than just the two of us,” Winter says. “They really did lean into the medium of the studio and the sounds that were available to us. There are a lot of instruments and musicians…”
“… A lot of other people’s ideas coming into the mix. We were just feeling open to that,” Lee adds.
Although both Winter and Lee are reluctant to divulge too much about the meanings behind the songs, listeners will certainly relate to lyrics about making it through rough patches (“Diamonds”) and learning to find comfort in the unknown (“Uncertain Seas”). The album’s country-tinged closing track, “Thorn,” is an elegant ode to getting past the pain.
“You visit these things that hurt often. I mean, we all do,” says Winter, who wrote the song. “That’s what grief is, right? You’re kind of hoping you’ll figure it out, and then it’ll go away. …
“With Always as Young as We’ll Ever Be, the whole theme is now, and now, and now, and trying to be in the present with things. There’s a love and there’s a ‘go to hell’ in that song. There’s a wanting to hold things sacred but also let them go.”
The album is actually named for a song that didn’t make the final track listing; Martine loved the phrase so much that he insisted the band should keep it as the title. The words are wistful enough to also call to mind the 2009 bluegrass festival in Minnesota, where Palmer, Lee, and a few other musicians stayed up late jamming along the Mississippi River.
“That was really pretty special!” Winter recalls. “Both of us were playing banjos in different bluegrass bands at the same festival. I saw Palmer playing and singing and I loved his voice and I loved his melodic style. I still hadn’t seen a bunch of other banjo players exploring more, like, off-the-grid playing and more melodic approaches. And after he played, I think I said something about it, right?”
“Well, I think the first time, you were just like, ‘Hey, nice banjo playing.’ And I was like, ‘Thanks, random person,” Lee remembers with a laugh. “Then maybe a few hours later, you were just like, ‘I really dug your melodic style,’ And it’s like, ‘Oh… you’re a banjo player.’”
Growing up in Arkansas, Winter heard the banjo in bluegrass, but considered herself more of a punk rocker. Hearing Béla Fleck & the Flecktones changed her perception of what tones and sounds could come from the instrument. Lee, a Minnesota native, inherited two banjos – one from each side of his family – when his relatives heard about his burgeoning interest in music. He dismantled them both to create one instrument specifically suited to his personal taste.
Several years later, after that initial encounter at the riverbank, Winter decided to quit her band; Lee asked if she needed a singing partner. Remembering their easy musical bond, she invited him to Olympia, Washington, where she’d relocated in her early twenties. In turn, he asked her to make a duo record with some time he’d already booked. Thus, the Lowest Pair was born.
“I think, serendipitously, both of our bands were falling apart at the same time, and I was exploring ideas about how to move forward in my career,” Lee says. “It was like, maybe if I collaborate with somebody and make a record that way, that could be a way forward.”
Now living about a mile apart in Olympia, Winter and Lee will be touring the Pacific Northwest this spring. At the merch table they’ll have some lino-cut carvings and prints, new posters, stickers, and T-shirts, and of course, vinyl copies of Always as Young as We’ll Ever Be. (The album art is a watercolor painted by Winter’s mother, Jill Morgan.) Along with the new material, they’ll also be mixing in catalog cuts like “Too Late, Babe” and “Rosie.”
Asked about the enduring popularity of the former song, Lee chalks it up to placement on an editorial playlist when it was released as a single in 2020. “I have this vague memory at one point of someone after a show mentioning that we played a really good cover of that ‘Too Late, Babe’ song,” he says. “That was like, ‘Hell, yeah!’”
As for “Rosie,” Winter says, “Yeah, that one’s still in the set list. That one is a really early one. I was playing that even before we had started the Lowest Pair. And it’s really interesting what people latch onto, because it’s simple. I mean, I wrote it crying.
“I think with songs, you can kind of feel the ones that come from your heart. They did the thing. They gave you the goosebumps when you wrote it, and then they continue to have that effect, and it’s pretty cool.”
That emotional effect remains in place for Always as Young as We’ll Ever Be, too.
“I took a lot of space from it and hadn’t listened to it for a few months before we started talking about what we’re gonna do with it,” Lee says of the album. “And I remember being kind of surprised. You know, there’s an amount of pride and accomplishment. I was grateful to have contributed to it.”
Photo Credit: Sarah Cass
