Laurel Premo's Fingerstyle Roots Guitar Glows and Unfolds
Michigan-based multi-instrumentalist Laurel Premo plays American roots music on fiddle and clawhammer banjo, but transfers those old tunes to electric guitar and lap steel guitar – reshaping and revoicing them. She grew up in the Upper Pennisula of Michigan, where a Scandinavian community of roots music also co-exists. Premo also recalls hearing the slide guitar of Debashish Battacharya, and draws deeply from American roots music – gospel, sacred harp tunes, and music by the Carter Family.
Running with the image of roots music in rich soil, her musical arrangements could be described as “electric dirt, the golden loam layered by centuries of folk” [Bandcamp liner notes]; her originals come from the same fertile ground. She joins us remotely to play songs from her latest, Golden Loam.
Set list: “Jake’s Got the Bellyache,” “I Am a Pilgrim,” “Father Made of River Mud”
“Jake’s Got the Bellyache”:
“I Am a Pilgrim”:
“Father Made of River Mud”:
