The duo to celebrate with album release party on Sunday at The Basement
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Kieran Kane and Rayna Gellert release The Ledges on Dead Reckoning Records today and is available now on iTunes and Amazon. The Nashville Scene bestows their “Critic’s Pick” favor to the Sunday, February 18 release party at The Basement located at 1604 8th Avenue South #330; show time is 8 p.m.
The Scene calls the duo a “blissful pairing” and describes the record as a “vast ecosystem of subtlety, with dark hollers, red prairie dawns and everything in between.” The East Nashvillian says The Ledges was the result of “…the slow and steady process of two experienced artists who realized the sum of their music was greater than its parts.”
No Depression‘s John Amen writes, “A close listen affirms what most fans already know, that Kane and Gellert, individually and as a duo, practice an understated and unpretentious virtuosity.” He concludes the review stating, “The Ledges, taken track by track and in its entirety, exudes a seductive magic.”
Kane and Gellert met in 2015 when both were performing at San Francisco’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. Fast forward to the summer of 2017 where the newly formed duo retreated to Kane’s lakeside cabin in upstate New York where they wrote and recorded The Ledges.
They brought with them fiddles, guitars, a banjo, an octave mandolin, five microphones and a vibe. Paring down to the essentials and recording live, the two emerged from the cabin with a collection of songs written and presented with an assured simplicity.
Individually, both musicians have racked up quite a resume. Gellert, steeped in traditional music from birth and inspired by her father Dan Gellert, emerged as a folk music force, touring as a member of the acclaimed string band Uncle Earl and recording with musical luminaries such as Robyn Hitchcock, Sara Watkins, Scott Miller and Loudon Wainwright III.
Kane deemed “the godfather of Americana music” laid the foundation for the contemporary Americana music movement. He hit Nashville and formed the award-winning O’Kanes, scoring numerous harmony-laden Top 10 country hits. In the mid 1990s, Kane became an unlikely label head when he launched the prolific Dead Reckoning Records. The label released a slew of exceptional projects by Kevin Welch, Tammy Rogers, Mike Henderson, The Fairfield Four, David Olney, Kane Welch Kaplin and others. The label was an alternative to the contemporary country music beat of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
As The Country Music Hall of Fame’s writer and editor Peter Cooper says about The Ledges: “[It’s] a resplendent, acoustic, avant-garde variant that could be called alt-Americana. It isn’t like anything else you’ll hear this year, yet it is reminiscent of so much that we treasure in American roots music. It is the embodiment of soulful musicality.”
TRACK LISTING:
1. Wouldn’t Be the First Time
2. Cold Air
3. I Don’t Know Why
4. Go Forth & Multiply
5. Miles
6. 15 Acres
7. You Don’t Know Me
8. Where’s My Baby
9. One More Time
10. I Wanna See Something New
11. Take Your Burden to The Lord