Colorado old time artist Natalie Spears has released a live performance video for one of the tracks on her upcoming Hymn of Wild Things project, due next month.
Recently Natalie had been seen touring in a duo with fiddler Lizzy Plotkin, supporting their Just Over The Ridge album, which was popular on both bluegrass and old time radio.
Her album is a song cycle written about her father’s Alzheimers, and the wrenching loss of the man who inspired her love for music. His playing and singing a wide variety of songs, from classical to the folk music of his East Midlands youth in England, made creating music a drive for Spears. She didn’t pick up clawhammer banjo until moving to Colorado a few years ago, but the Appalachian style is now an important part of her artistry.
The video finds Natalie playing banjo and singing, performing a song she wrote called One-Eyed John, of which she says…
“One Eyed John is a banjo-driven coal mining tale. The song tells the story of a vagabond whose family lost everything in a mining explosion when he was just a boy.”
Additional performers include Eric Riggs on guitar and Bradley Morse on bass.
Have a look/listen…
Hymn of Wild Things, produced by Canadian banjo artist Jayme Stone, is set for a June 28 release on SleeLee Records. Pre-orders are enabled online.
