Michigan’s Laurel Premo is known for her experimental work recrafting the roots of music from Appalachia, Scandinavia, and the British Isles. She’s just announced a new album of sparkling guitar (and lap guitar) instrumentals, both original and taken from older sources. In the vein of John Fahey, he’s reworking these melodies into a new sound, electrifying the old traditions. Check out her first single, “Jericho", from the album, Golden Loam, releasing October 8, 2021.
Michigan-based multi-instrumentalist Laurel Premo’s latest solo album, Golden Loam, out October 8, 2021, presents original and traditional music voiced on finger-style electric guitar and lap steel. Perhaps by its most honest classification “roots guitar,” the sonic vocabulary of Golden Loam is informed by guitar’s antecedents in American traditions - fiddle and banjo, the rhythms, melody and intonation therein, as well as that music’s relationship to movement. Glowing, droning, tugging, scraping, revolving, Premo bears renewed electric dirt, the golden loam layered by centuries of folk.
Following The Iron Trios (2019), Premo’s sophomore release builds on the dark roots world she arranged, with seeking, untethered delivery and a masterful use of space, on a dynamic wave of warm, gritty sustain. Laurel’s vocals on two pieces ‘Hop High’ and ‘I Am A Pilgrim’ are traditional calls beaconing the guitar’s response, and fold in timberly like additional instrumental lines sustaining the drone. Golden Loam was self produced and recorded during the pandemic lockdown of summer/fall 2020. The majority of the record is solo performance, but two featured collaborators are woven in to this embodied rhythmic collection. Percussive dancer Nic Gareiss (Michigan) appears on tracks 5 & 9, and bones player Eric Breton (Quebec) on track 3.
Laurel Premo has been writing, arranging music and touring since 2009 with vocal and instrumental roots acts. She is internationally known from her duo Red Tail Ring.
