Ismay - Desert Pavement (2024) Hi-Res

Folk/Americana music project driven by California-based singer/songwriter Avery Hellman. Their debut album Songs Of Sonoma Mountain was released in 2020 and named one of the 10 best Albums in the Bay Area. Growing up backstage at their grandfather’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, ISMAY was inspired early on by artists such as Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, and Hazel Dickens.

Desert Pavement is a collection of transcendent American roots songs, full of folky textures and alt-country stylings that invokes a variety of traditional and contemporary sounds. Desert Pavement follows ISMAY’s critically acclaimed 2020 debut Songs of Sonoma Mountain and continues their lyrical exploration of life spent on the land.

ISMAY is Avery Hellman, a Bay Area native who creates rich, atmospheric songs that are heavily influenced by the California ranch where they worked in their 20s. Hellman grew up attending Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, the music festival launched by their grandfather, Warren Hellman, and incorporated the melting pot of sounds that is California into their being. Desert Pavement evokes the landscapes of rural land and days of yore. "Shearer & the Darby Ram," the album's opening track, is a modern-day folk tale, blending acoustic guitars with an imaginative storyline about a larger-than-life ram whose wool changes a family's fortune. "Stranger in the Barn" is a narrative about a family who discovers a drifter sleeping in the sheep barn. Rather than run him off, the family embraces the newcomer like one of their own. "The Dove, The Shrew, & The Raccoon" blends genres, layering American folk with south-of-the-border rhythms, while "Streaming Family" — a song about modern technology's impact on our daily lives — pits traditional instrumentation against a contemporary message.

Desert Pavement was recorded in Asheville, NC at Echo Mountain Recording with producer Andrew Marlin of Watchhouse (formerly Mandolin Orange). Marlin also contributes on piano, acoustic guitar, mandolin and backing vocals. They captured the songs in a series of live takes in five days. Hellman says, "The whole band played together, all at once, and I tracked my vocals live. A big part of the live recording process is embracing the imperfections of a performance, and Desert Pavement sounds real and raw to me."