After seven gorgeous and lovely Rootsy Summer Sessions, we’ve reached the final installment of this series with two songs featuring Americana string duo Violet Bell. Shot overlooking the waters of the Kattegat, a bay on the North Sea, you may recognize the golden hour location from our earlier session with Emily Scott Robinson, who makes an appearance with Violet Bell after the North Carolina-rooted band appeared as guests in Robinson’s performances, as well.
Last summer, during Rootsy Summer Fest ’23, the videography team from I Know We Should captured this series of eight sessions in Falkenberg, Sweden featuring more than a dozen performers and nearly twenty individual tracks from Americana, country, and folk artists from across the genre spectrum and from both “sides” of the Atlantic.
Completing the series, Violet Bell – Lizzy Ross and Omar Ruiz-Lopez – first perform “Fisherman’s Daughter,” a fantastic story song from their critically acclaimed 2022 album, Shapeshifter. (Read our BGS feature interview on that project here.) That record, with a strong concept album through line, plays with metaphors and analogies around the legendary selkie, an aquatic, seal-like figure from Celtic mythology that, as the title suggests, can shapeshift. The songs on the project, “Fisherman’s Daughter” being a stand-out, explore topical, political, and cultural questions through the lens of this transatlantic folklore. The track shines and is certainly in its element delivered on the edge of the North Sea.
For their second number, Ruiz-Lopez and Ross are joined by Robinson on “House,” a jubilant song of community and togetherness that feels like a more than apropos way to conclude this visually stunning and aurally first-class series of sessions. Their joyful refrain is a perfect invitation to take part in the magic made by Rootsy Music and captured in our Rootsy Summer Sessions.
From Israel Nash and Jesper Lindell to Jim Lauderdale and Caleb Caudle, we will be returning to these Rootsy Summer Sessions for a long time – and we know you will be, too.
Video Credit: Brad Wagner, I Know We Should
Audio Credit: Juan Soria, I Know We Should
