Fall Away Blues

Kalamazoo, Michigan-based duo Red Tail Ring describe their music as ‘old-time roots, new-time sounds.’ Their description aptly sums up the 12 tracks on their fourth studio album, Fall Away Blues, which finds collaborators Laurel Premo (vocals, fiddle and banjo) and Michael Beauchamp (vocals, guitar and banjo) blending tradition and modernity with characteristically understated finesse and feeling.

Decidedly more low-key than 2014's animated The Right Hands Round, this collection of original songs and traditional material carries itself with an authenticity rooted deep in America's fiddle-and banjo-accented instrumental tradition and the nostalgia of homestead fireside songs. The pull of the Deep South is heard to feisty effect on a cover of Mississippi bluesman Skip James's ‘I’d Rather be the Devil’ while the take on ‘Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies’ is full of southern warmth and sly wit. The wistful title-track sets the tone – elegant fiddle lines and sweetly discrete guitar cosseting lyrics that pack an emotional weight far beyond their simplicity. Songs of love and longing, of hope and regret find contrast in ‘Gibson Town’, a wrenching blues-edged testimony to a random mass shooting in the duo's hometown in early 2016. If you’re new to Red Tail Ring, Fall Away Blues offers a beguiling, limpidly poetic introduction.