Stream: Bonny Light Horseman, ‘Roving’

Kevin Bronson on January 9th, 2020

0

Bonny Light Horseman (Photo by Nolan Knight)

Bonny Light Horseman is the all-star trio of singer-songwriter (and Tony Award-winner) Anaïs Mitchell, Eric D. Johnson (of Fruit Bats fame) and producer/multi-instrumentalist Josh Kaufman (Craig Finn, Josh Ritter, The National). Their self-titled debut album will be out Jan. 24, and fans of both traditional and modern folk music are justifiably excited.

The trio had barely begun working together when they were invited to perform at the 2018 Eaux Claires Music & Arts Festival, the Wisconsin event co-founded by Justin Vernon of Bon Iver and Aaron Dessner of the National. Subsequently, the duo invited them to join the 37d03d’s artist retreat in Berlin, joining fellow resident artists Michael Lewis, JT Bates, Vernon, Dessner, Kate Stables (of This Is The Kit), Lisa Hannigan, The Staves and Christian Lee Hutson. All appear on the album, more than half of which was completed in Berlin before it was finished at Dreamland Studios in Woodstock, N.Y.

“The Roving” is the latest teaser track from the album, and, as Johnson says: “These 500-year-old lyrics are so deeply applicable. ‘The Roving’ could be the plot of an ’80s teen movie: ‘I had a wild summer with this awesome girl then she broke my heart!’ How incredible is it that as humans we still just want to love and have sex and feel sad and fight? It’s ancient music that feels, emotionally, right now. It’s thoroughly modern.”

||| Stream: “The Roving,” “Bonny Light Horseman” and “Jane Jane”