A pandemic rolled into the already cloistering time of winter has left us staring across the chasm of late winter staring into the early green of spring.
But we are not alone. We carry on through these increasingly longer days with a recent rush of musical light from new creative releases. Here’s a look at just a few of the new projects recently released.
“Winter Robins”
The collaboration of long-time friends – the artful electronic music maker, Mark Williams (aka Bary Center) and vocalist Erica Berry – has bore ripe fruit in the deliciously hypnotic and soothing single and video, “I Don’t Want to Be Alone,” that dropped Feb. 12. With melodic hooks in, the Winter Robins capture the complex feels of the tricky navigation of that together alone quarantine isolation with the repetitive line “I don’t want to be alone, don’t want to fall in love.” Listeners will be happy to know there is more on the way. Winter Robins’ six-song EP will come out May 7.
Anyone wanting to hear more from Williams, needs to check out his expansive work for the past eight years under the moniker Bary Center. His last release, in July 2020, “Guide Me Through the Hills of Your Home,” was released on the Brighton, England-based label Third Kind Records, an experimental tape label.
“These have been very strange and tough times but there is light at the end of the tunnel,” Berry wrote about the release on FB.
Watch Winter Robins “I Don’t Want to Be Alone” video here https://fb.watch/3Ed-CaMyqk/
A New Drip of Tunes From Local Honeys
When it comes to pure song distillation, few things sound more powerful and pure than those old-time/bluegrass duet groups. And these days few in that vein have got me buzzing more than the Kentucky-based Local Honeys. Recently signed to La Honda Records (home to such kindred spirits as Colter Wall), Local Honeys have just poured out a couple two-sided singles of solid mountain grown gold. It’s their first new music since last year’s top shelf, heaven-and-hell-raising gospel release, “The Gospel.”
No rank strangers to Huntington where they’ve built a strong following from many a show at the V Club, Local Honeys (Linda Jean Stokely and Montana Hobbs) recorded these two songs up at The Loft Studios in downtown Huntington with Max Nolte engineering and featuring ace of bass, Chris Justice, Nolte on percussion and in one of his last performances of Hardy, Ky., banjoist Jimmy McCown (founder of Outdoor Plumbing Company) who passed away Oct. 7 at age 80.
McCown’s mama wrote the heart-tugging ballad, “Octavia Triangle” (a reference to the Octavia coal mine) and the Honeys also put a searing coal-dusted stamp onto “Dying to Make a Living,” a song they heard at the famous Seedtime on the Cumberland Festival and originally written in 2006 by Southwest Virginia residents, WV Hill and AJ Mullins of the band Foddershock.
Although deft writers in their own right (I count “Cigarette Trees” in my top five environmental songs of all time), Local Honeys have hit an equally rich seam with these two rare regional gems. As the Honeys said about the release “Thank you for giving a damn about Kentucky, working people, our heroes, our traditions and stories. Thanks for diggin’ the banjo and protest songs. Coal and love songs.”
That there friends is enough to make Hazel Dickens smile down from heaven and enough to make the rest of us salute and celebrate this powerful music happening here in the fields of home.
Music here: https://linktr.ee/LAHONDARECORDS
Behind The Scenes Video:
Garage Rockets Fly Across the Country
Building Rockets “Space Camp” EP: Coming out on Feb. 19, on all streaming platforms is the debut recording of Building Rockets. The name is new, the sponsorship from Elon Musk and Space X pending, but the folks building this steam-powered Americana space ship are all familiar yet fresh. And all electrified and certified.
Emily Jamison’s songs and voice lift off to terminal velocity with an all-star band that includes well-known drummer and ace singer/songwriter Jeremy “Wood” Roberts, (Flattracker and Horse Traders) as well the dynamic guitar duo of MacLean James (guitar and keys) and always rock-solid, tasty bassist J.D. Thomas, who also play together backing powerhouse vocalist Walter DeBarr.
Garage-kept for most of the past year, Building Rockets is coming out big (as you can) in 2021. They chalked up a fiery live set on the Creative Audio Visual Group’s Blue Lava Audio in January as a teaser to the six-song EP out Feb. 19. Guests include Steve Schumann, Stephanie Ross, and Chris Davis (of The Grascals). A stand-out track is “Ribbon and A Rose,” where James’ just spacey-enough electric guitar shimmers and swirls while Jamison traipses through the lyrical riverbank, “meet you over yonder with a ribbon and a rose.” After hearing the EP, I’m more than ready to hear some Space Camp live some warm day soon. In the meantime, pre-orders are available on iTunes. Hard copies and merch will be available soon. And Building Rockets has set an album release party date for March 27 at The Venue in Morehead, Ky., with Cypress.
Keep up with Building Rockets on Facebook and Instagram. Here’s YouTube clip of “The Way” from their Blue Lava Audio session.
