Cross the Rolling Water

Fiddler and singer-songwriter Hannah Read met banjo player Michael Starkey at an Appalachian music session in Edinburgh in 2019. They struck up a tune and struck up an immediate melding of musical minds, and have since become a working duo, drawing from old-time traditions as well as penning self-composed tunes and songs. Cross the Rolling Water was recorded in December 2020 by Hudson Records’ Andy Bell, who worked with Read on the 2017 BBC Radio 2 Folk Album of the Year, Songs of Separation.

Read is currently based in Brooklyn, immersing herself in American fiddle styles and performing with the likes of Sarah Jarosz and Jefferson Hamer, while Edinburgh-based Starkey is an old-time clawhammer banjo obsessive. Coming together on their new album, Cross the Rolling Water, they deliver gripping accounts of fiddle and banjo tunes steeped in the bourbon and woodsmoke of the Appalachians, following music from the back of beyond, until they touch upon the folk traditions of the old world. All in all, it’s a foot-tappin’ delight, music and playing that draws you in the way lungs draw in air, the tunesmithery interspersed with fine balladry – Read’s vocal on Anaïs Mitchell’s ‘Shenandoah’ is a heartbreaker (and also reprised in an instrumental version). Get yourself a lungful and earful of bracing old-time mountain air.