Laurel Premo - The Iron Trios (2019)

Laurel Premo presents a new instrumental project diving deep into traditional and new fiddle music and musically revealing a bloom of underlying harmonic drones, minimalist repetition, and rich polyrhythms. Responding to Premo's fiddling is the metrical yet wavelike sustain of electric and acoustic guitar and an extreme second fiddle -- double bass. Laurel Premo is fully leaning in to the archaic fiddle melodies and in-between intonations that connect folk sounds to the mystic and unknown. Featured collaborators on the record are double bassist Evan Premo, and guitarists Owen Marshall and Joshua Davis. Two driving fiddle duets between Laurel Premo & Aaron Jonah Lewis provide a breath in the midst of the gravity of the material. The roots of the record are traditional American fiddle repertoire sourced from Illinois, Kentucky, North Carolina, Maryland, North Dakota, as well as two original pieces. An instrumental rendition of a shape note hymn closes the collection with a thunderous reverence that further reveals Laurel Premo's nature to produce harmonically huge arrangements with deep-bodied pulse. Laurel Premo is a Michigan-based artist who has been writing, arranging and touring since 2009 with vocal and instrumental roots acts. She is internationally known for her duo Red Tail Ring.