WEDNESDAY JAN 30, 2019
Gaelynn Lea
Classically trained violinist and songwriter Gaelynn Lea has been bewitching scores of fans with her haunting original songs and experimental takes on traditional fiddle music. Her work most recently won NPR Music’s 2016 Tiny Desk Contest, a competition drawing submissions of original songs from more than 6,000 musicians across the country.
“Karen Dalton and Joanna Newsom melt together in the form of Gaelynn Lea & set about absolutely obliterating your heart.” –Dan Auerbach (The Black Keys)
“The way her voice resonates is so unusual and beautiful, like nothing I’ve ever heard before.” –Jess Wolfe (Lucius)
On March 3, 2016, Gaelynn Lea was named the winner of NPR Music’s second-ever Tiny Desk Contest. The video entry of her original song “Someday We’ll Linger in the Sun” rose to the top of over 6,100 submissions from around the nation, chosen as the unanimous favorite among the contest’s six judges. The very next week, Gaelynn performed a moving Tiny Desk Concert, at which the show’s host Bob Boilen said “there was hardly a dry eye.”
Gaelynn Lea’s musical reach has expanded significantly because of the Tiny Desk Contest. She began touring nationally in September 2016 with her husband Paul in their 2002 Ford Econline – and they’ve been on the road ever since! View her tour schedule here.
Gaelynn also does speaking engagements about disability, finding inner freedom, and the power of music. Gaelynn has a congenital disability called Osteogenesis Imperfecta, or Brittle Bones Disease. In recent years, she has used her music as a platform to advocate for people with disabilities and to promote positive social change.
Classically trained violinist and songwriter Gaelynn Lea has been bewitching scores of fans with her haunting original songs and experimental takes on traditional fiddle music. Her work most recently won NPR Music’s 2016 Tiny Desk Contest, a competition drawing submissions of original songs from more than 6,000 musicians across the country.
“Karen Dalton and Joanna Newsom melt together in the form of Gaelynn Lea & set about absolutely obliterating your heart.” –Dan Auerbach (The Black Keys)
“The way her voice resonates is so unusual and beautiful, like nothing I’ve ever heard before.” –Jess Wolfe (Lucius)
On March 3, 2016, Gaelynn Lea was named the winner of NPR Music’s second-ever Tiny Desk Contest. The video entry of her original song “Someday We’ll Linger in the Sun” rose to the top of over 6,100 submissions from around the nation, chosen as the unanimous favorite among the contest’s six judges. The very next week, Gaelynn performed a moving Tiny Desk Concert, at which the show’s host Bob Boilen said “there was hardly a dry eye.”
Gaelynn Lea’s musical reach has expanded significantly because of the Tiny Desk Contest. She began touring nationally in September 2016 with her husband Paul in their 2002 Ford Econline – and they’ve been on the road ever since! View her tour schedule here.
Gaelynn also does speaking engagements about disability, finding inner freedom, and the power of music. Gaelynn has a congenital disability called Osteogenesis Imperfecta, or Brittle Bones Disease. In recent years, she has used her music as a platform to advocate for people with disabilities and to promote positive social change.
Book Club
Book Club’s evocative sound is the perfect embodiment of the old Joni Mitchell line: “Every picture has its shadows / And it has some source of light.”
While Book Club’s lineup has changed and expanded over the years, founding frontman, guitarist, singer and songwriter Robbie Horlick’s vision has remained the driving force. His laidback voice, emotive and winsome, alternately evokes a shimmery pastoral beauty and deep shades of despondent darkness. The impressionistic lyrics don’t specifically describe events as much as arouse emotions. The music press took notice with Book Club’s last record, 2015’s One-Way Moon, which received high praise from outlets such as Paste, Exclaim!, No Depression and NYLON, the latter writing, “heart-wrenching lyrics with rich, gorgeous melodies … haunting and wintery … folk at its best.”
On Book Club’s ethereal yet riveting new third LP, Dust of Morning, the melodies and tempos never feel rushed. Rather songs such as “I Heard a Distant a Call,” “Honest in Disguise” and “When the Bells Rang Out” beckon the listener to float, drift and dream along with the set’s predominantly acoustic instrumentation.
Book Club never hits you head on. With the classically inflected strings and Horlick’s thoughtful musings, they gently invite you to examine the vagaries of life. Poetic lines like “every shadow hides a dawning”—from the aptly titled “Every Song, Another Question”—eschew easy answers, contemplating the quirks of existence while allowing space for listeners’ own interpretations to simmer and smolder in their minds.
Dust of Morning began to take shape after Horlick’s 2016 solo tour of Europe and the U.K. “I did three weeks there and I was writing the whole time,” he says. “But it was hard to zoom out and distill it all. After I got back, I decompressed and a lot of this stuff just spilled out. It’s not really a clear narrative; it’s things that occurred to me through the prism of that experience.”
The sound on the new Book Club record is spare and open, often with brushed drums, and hints of piano, cello and violin providing a somber bed upon which Horlick’s everyman voice and wistful lyrics lay together. The organic sound and recording approach made for a natural fluidity. “We did most everything live in the studio over a long weekend in the same room with everyone in line of sight,” Horlick says. “Two or three takes of each song—the strings were recorded with the guitar, bass and drums so there was no layering, just nice and easy.”
Even the album’s more lyrically desperate tracks, like “Can You Put Your Eyes On Mine?”—its protagonist pleading with a significant other to “put the phone away” so they can speak without distraction—are tempered by a sunny performance, often featuring the lovely harmony vocals of the band’s new pianist Lauren Love.
From the engagingly torchy country of “So Many Nights” (featuring Love on lead vocals) to the more insistent, rhythmic and string-driven “It Takes a Thief,” Dust of Morning explores a diverse and distinctive sonic palette within the indie-folk genre. Even though the subject matter seems intimate and personal, Horlick reminds us that the singer is not always the narrator. "These songs aren't all autobiographical. I mean, there are snippets, but sometimes I find the perspective of these narrators more interesting than my own."
Book Club has evolved impressively over the years, resulting in the artistic triumph of Dust of Morning, with all its gorgeously foreboding and inviting shadows and light. Horlick credits a deep sincerity: “I’m approaching the music with a cleaner lens. What I’m saying and how I’m saying it is coming out in a more finely tuned way these days. If there is honesty in the writing, the rest will flesh out honestly too.”
Since forming in Atlanta in 2011, Book Club has shared bills with a simpatico list of artists including Water Liars, Vetiver, Twain, Infamous Stringdusters, Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit, The Artisinals, Cate Le Bon, Cotton Jones, Drivin n'Cryin, Richard Buckner, Shook Twins, Roadkill Ghost Choir, The Rural Alberta Advantage, Maria Taylor and The Deep Dark Woods.
Book Club’s evocative sound is the perfect embodiment of the old Joni Mitchell line: “Every picture has its shadows / And it has some source of light.”
While Book Club’s lineup has changed and expanded over the years, founding frontman, guitarist, singer and songwriter Robbie Horlick’s vision has remained the driving force. His laidback voice, emotive and winsome, alternately evokes a shimmery pastoral beauty and deep shades of despondent darkness. The impressionistic lyrics don’t specifically describe events as much as arouse emotions. The music press took notice with Book Club’s last record, 2015’s One-Way Moon, which received high praise from outlets such as Paste, Exclaim!, No Depression and NYLON, the latter writing, “heart-wrenching lyrics with rich, gorgeous melodies … haunting and wintery … folk at its best.”
On Book Club’s ethereal yet riveting new third LP, Dust of Morning, the melodies and tempos never feel rushed. Rather songs such as “I Heard a Distant a Call,” “Honest in Disguise” and “When the Bells Rang Out” beckon the listener to float, drift and dream along with the set’s predominantly acoustic instrumentation.
Book Club never hits you head on. With the classically inflected strings and Horlick’s thoughtful musings, they gently invite you to examine the vagaries of life. Poetic lines like “every shadow hides a dawning”—from the aptly titled “Every Song, Another Question”—eschew easy answers, contemplating the quirks of existence while allowing space for listeners’ own interpretations to simmer and smolder in their minds.
Dust of Morning began to take shape after Horlick’s 2016 solo tour of Europe and the U.K. “I did three weeks there and I was writing the whole time,” he says. “But it was hard to zoom out and distill it all. After I got back, I decompressed and a lot of this stuff just spilled out. It’s not really a clear narrative; it’s things that occurred to me through the prism of that experience.”
The sound on the new Book Club record is spare and open, often with brushed drums, and hints of piano, cello and violin providing a somber bed upon which Horlick’s everyman voice and wistful lyrics lay together. The organic sound and recording approach made for a natural fluidity. “We did most everything live in the studio over a long weekend in the same room with everyone in line of sight,” Horlick says. “Two or three takes of each song—the strings were recorded with the guitar, bass and drums so there was no layering, just nice and easy.”
Even the album’s more lyrically desperate tracks, like “Can You Put Your Eyes On Mine?”—its protagonist pleading with a significant other to “put the phone away” so they can speak without distraction—are tempered by a sunny performance, often featuring the lovely harmony vocals of the band’s new pianist Lauren Love.
From the engagingly torchy country of “So Many Nights” (featuring Love on lead vocals) to the more insistent, rhythmic and string-driven “It Takes a Thief,” Dust of Morning explores a diverse and distinctive sonic palette within the indie-folk genre. Even though the subject matter seems intimate and personal, Horlick reminds us that the singer is not always the narrator. "These songs aren't all autobiographical. I mean, there are snippets, but sometimes I find the perspective of these narrators more interesting than my own."
Book Club has evolved impressively over the years, resulting in the artistic triumph of Dust of Morning, with all its gorgeously foreboding and inviting shadows and light. Horlick credits a deep sincerity: “I’m approaching the music with a cleaner lens. What I’m saying and how I’m saying it is coming out in a more finely tuned way these days. If there is honesty in the writing, the rest will flesh out honestly too.”
Since forming in Atlanta in 2011, Book Club has shared bills with a simpatico list of artists including Water Liars, Vetiver, Twain, Infamous Stringdusters, Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit, The Artisinals, Cate Le Bon, Cotton Jones, Drivin n'Cryin, Richard Buckner, Shook Twins, Roadkill Ghost Choir, The Rural Alberta Advantage, Maria Taylor and The Deep Dark Woods.