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Tradewinds (Robust Records, 2020) is the debut album from Grand Shores, a multi-instrumental fusion of American and West African musical traditions featuring Gabriel Pelli (The Old Ceremony, Squirrel Nut Zippers) and Will Ridenour (Diali Cissokho & Kaira Ba, Zegota). 

The album was recorded in Saint Anne’s Chapel, a single-room, 100 year-old chapel located in rural North Carolina. This historic site became a setting for experimenting with a variety of unconventional practices that together grants Tradewinds its originality. By hanging microphones from the rafters, placing them in the corners, and directing them at the stained glass windows, engineer Thom Canova infused the physical space of the chapel - from its wooden grain to its natural reverb - into the recording process itself. Listen closely and you might hear a passing truck, full of hay bales, slowing down at the crossroads. The final mix blends these tracks together, and the result is a warmth in the recordings that stokes the fires of familiarity, inviting listeners to a private experience. 

Every album raises the hope of capturing something authentic. With Tradewinds, Grand Shores succeeds, not only because, for example, you can hear the North Carolina frogs and insects in the background of “Wild Kingdom” or the interplay of two gifted musicians playing one fiddle as in "28th of January", but largely because the album maintains its closeness to the listener.

It balances different kinds of intimacies, transitioning seamlessly from, for example, a track like “Jarabi,” that grabs you with its percussive intensity, to “Knew It Couldn’t Last,” a personal ballad about memory and loss. “With a chainsaw and a cigarette you built your house out of wood, on the mountain of crystals where those great pines once stood,” Pelli sings, evoking an image that owes its endearing quality to equal parts candor and precision. In such moments, “those great pines” merge with the woods encircling the chapel where the music was recorded. 

The album maps out a space that begins to feel familiar. One might say that it is this feeling of familiarity, a close-knit regionalism, that is the hallmark of any folk music tradition. But in a collection of songs with an international scope, its instrumentation and repertoire inching towards the global, it is the surprise of closeness that makes Tradewinds a remarkably compelling album.

In addition to several originals, the album features covers of Ali Farka Touré and Townes van Zandt, as well as multiple new arrangements of traditional songs from around the globe. Each track showcases the duo’s distinct pairing of American and West African string instruments, most notably guitar and kora. 

Throughout this eclectic journey, Grand Shores stays very much rooted to the space that they call home. But they demonstrate, in doing so, that the local enclaves of home contain much more room than we might think. Like the easterlies evoked by the album’s title, which forever blow from east to west, Grand Shores brings the world a little closer, one note at a time.

Chandler Holt’s musical odyssey began over 20 years ago from the confines of John Teer’s infamous ‘hoopty’.  The two long-time friends were riding along when Teer played a bootleg tape of the Bluegrass Album Band from a gig in Myrtle Beach in the early ‘80s.  Holt recounts, “Something about it absolutely floored me. J.D. Crowe’s banjo instantly took hold of me and for some crazy reason I thought I could learn how to do that.  The very next day I drove to the town of Wendell, NC and bought my first banjo.”

Fast forward to Chandler Holt now stepping into an unfamiliar role:  Producer, writer, and arranger of a twelve-song album on Robust Records titled Cover More Ground officially out on November 8, 2019.  The material on Cover More Ground touches on many of the same elements as does Chatham County Line, the NC-based band Holt performed with for two decades, yet there is a distinct shift that proves Holt is following his own voice.  Songs like ‘Give Your Heart’ and ‘Moving On’ define Holt’s ability to write from a place that isn’t bound by genre. ‘Been Around’, ‘Young Man Lives,’ and ‘Love You Tonight’ seem very personal and expose Holt’s willingness to invite listeners to understand his life from the first person.  Couple that with the fact that banjo, guitar, and bass all find their way into Chandler’s hands, and you start to discover the dedication he has to his craft.

Cover More Ground features a stable of great players from both Holt’s new home in Colorado as well as his native North Carolina.  The bulk of the project was recorded at Vermillion Road Studios which is owned by renowned Colorado musical fixture and friend Eric Wiggs.  Wiggs is featured throughout the record on guitar, mandolin, and dobro. “This record could never have happened without the know-how and brilliant playing from Eric Wiggs.  He is an artist in every sense of the word. He knows how to get good sounds and is willing to try new things if he needs to find something better.”

Holt’s NC buddies John Teer and Greg Readling (from Chatham County Line) put their stamp on the project as well as Andrew Marlin (of Mandolin Orange).   Cover More Ground is an album that loosely chronicles Holt’s journey in leaving North Carolina for his family’s new home in Colorado.  Of this, Chandler says, “Colorado is a wellspring of talent both musically and culturally. There are so many inspiring musicians and songwriters all over the state, and they helped ignite something in me that needed to get out.  I’ve found a wonderful home here is so many ways. This record shares plenty of that with the listener.”

Cover More Ground is Chandler Holt’s first album on Robust Records.

We're thrilled that Chatham Rabbits agreed to license their song Come Home for use as the new theme song for My Home, NC! Going forward in the series' fifth season on UNC-TV, you can look forward to the charming sounds of Sarah and Austin ushering in and closing out each episode.

Watch the season's first episode here:

Rise Above is Hank, Pattie & The Current's fourth album on Robust Records.

Music is an architecture of emotion that everyone has a hand in building. Whether you're the listener or the player, we all take part in the construction of this art. Hank & Pattie create emotion drawn from the deep well of their friendship, spanning a decade now. The songs, sometimes autobiographical, sometimes metaphorical, always both, channel emotion to the listener as part of a shared space we all inhabit. Their friendship shines through in the songs, and while they are not related by blood, they share a bond as great as any siblings. Rise Above is the culmination of their work thus far in Hank, Pattie & The Current. It's an album centered around the cohesive theme of rising above the fray, cutting through division and noise. Rising above to meet challenges and exuding a quiet, powerful strength that others can lean on, deriving inspiration.

It means rising above present levels as a band and presenting an album that is consistent, concise and emblematic of their evolution as musicians and humans at large. It also means rising above the current nationalist climate, speaking out against injustice and uniting people around love and community. It is touching heartbreaking, jubilant and care-free. It reflects the deep, emotional bond this two share with each other, their bandmates and the audience.

Bluegrass ambassadors and music educators Hank Smith and Pattie Hopkins Kinlaw are the driving forces of the energetic soulgrass band, Hank, Pattie & The Current. They take traditional bluegrass and infuse it with their own flair, drawing from a melting pot of styles including Latin and Jazz. They approach music and improvisation with deep emotion, lightning fast thought & reaction, and offer intricate, dulcet melodies, vocal harmonies, and lockstep rhythm. For them, music is an endless playground of texture, tone, and space that allows for pure joy in playing. This adds up to an authentic and unique reflection of American music.

Folk and bluegrass duo Chatham Rabbits have signed to Chapel Hill’s Robust Records. Since 2009, Robust Records has served as an incubator for a roster of emerging artists and bands including Mipso; Hank, Pattie & The Current; Justin Hiltner & Jon Weisberger; Wood Robinson’s New Formal; and Caleb Caudle.

It’s an ideal match for the Bynum, North Carolina based husband and wife team, Sarah and Austin McCombie, whose debut album All I Want Is You stuns with solid storytelling and heart-worn harmonies.

Produced by Jerry Brown at the famed Rubber Room Studio in Chapel Hill and featuring musicians Libby Rodenbough (Mipso) and Andrew Marlin (Mandolin Orange), All I Want From You will be released by Robust on January 11, 2019.

Justin Hiltner and Jon Weisberger, two longtime friends and bluegrass songwriters, musicians, and community leaders, are pleased to announce the release of Watch It Burn, available everywhere on Aug. 17 on Robust Records. The album is a reflection of who Justin and Jon are as writers and individuals -- a collection of songs rooted solidly in the traditional precepts of the Bluegrass genre, while simultaneously playing on its innovative fringes. Watch It Burn blends personal themes with those of classic country and bluegrass in an affectionate, well-crafted, yet emotionally resonant way. Yesterday, American Songwriter Magazine exclusively premiered the title track, "Watch It Burn," Listen here .

Watch It Burn is a refreshing set of songs given the full-blown bluegrass band treatment by a clutch of outstanding young musicians: there’s a two-stepper that echoes countless country classics in its denial of heartbreak; an old-time flavored barn burner; a meditation on wistful-yet-defiant skepticism; a ‘grassy reflection onloneliness; a brother-style duet that sounds like it came straight from the 1950s, and more. It’s rare to find a collection so committed both to a contemporary insistenceon emotional truth and to the masterful use of vintage lyrical, musical, and thematic approaches.

Calling on their best of friends and the tight-knit bluegrass circle that originally brought them together, Hiltner and Weisberger assembled a roster of pickers to rival any of the best roots albums being released today: Molly Tuttle, current reigning International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) Guitar Player of the Year brings her signature ruthless virtuosity to the project. IBMA Momentum Award winners Casey Campbell and Tristan Scroggins split mandolin duty, providing a fascinating case study in divergent traditional approaches to the instrument. There’s also compatriot Brandon Godman, who conjured the record’s sole instrumental, “General Kuster,” sawing on the fiddle through nearly half of the album.

Grand Master Champion fiddler Kimber Ludiker of the GRAMMY-nominated roots-grass ensemble Della Mae also plays twin fiddle, a much too rare role on modern bluegrass records. Straight-ahead powerhouses Corrina Logston(fiddle) and Amanda Fields (guitar) reinforce the album’s constant homages to the genre’s heritage. And finally, a modern legend of bluegrass music, Tim O’Brien, lends a soulful, vibrant lead vocal to “If I Were a Praying Man,” a slightly angsty song of uncertainty and introspection.

Not many albums can be said to have an exact date of origin, but Watch It Burndoes -- and it’s a memorable: August 21, 2017. That was the date of a total eclipse of the sun, the centerline of which passed barely a mile north of Weisberger’s Cottontown, TN, home — a fact to which he’d been alerted months earlier by Hiltner — and the day when, in conversation with other viewing party guests, it dawned onthe two that they’d written nearly an album’s worth of songs. It was an auspicious start. 

Without deadlines or publishing quotas, the pair routinely got together to write songs over the years for a few very simple reasons: They loved bluegrass, they loved creating, and they loved gabbing while indulging in imported cheeses.

The resulting record, Watch It Burn, reflects on those preoccupations (except, perhaps for the imported cheeses), with a distinctive combination of material and musicians, it’s perhaps no surprise that Watch It Burn seems destined to become an emblem for a new generation of traditional-leaning bluegrass -- rooted in a deep knowledge of and love for the music’s past, yet organically reflective of the diversity that’s essential to bringing it into the future. While that might not have been exactly what Justin Hiltner and Jon Weisberger had in mind when they first sat down to write -- or even what they contemplated on that hot August day when the project was born and the sun disappeared -- it’s what they’ve achieved, and that’s something special indeed.