Earlier this week, Mountain Fever Records released Brand New Day, the newest project from Sweet Potato Pie.
This North Carolina band combines sincere bluegrass entertainment with a serious message about supporting local farmers and healthy eating. Members include Katie Springer on fiddle, Chrystal Richardson on banjo, Sonya Stead on guitar and Sandy Whitley on bass.
If you’re not familiar with this outfit, check out the video intro the ladies put together last Fall.
On this, their sixth album, Sweet Potato Pie offers up a blend of their original songs with a number that were originally brought forward in country music.
Stead explained the reasoning behind the mixture.
“Quite honestly, we are all fans of the older country music. We started realizing that our kids had never heard of some of the music that we grew up listening to such as Tanya Tucker, Randy Travis and even Ernest Tubb, so we thought it was about time we introduce them to the great songs that we’ve loved for so long and maybe put our own ‘sweet-grass’ style to it.”
Thanks to Mark Hodges at Mountain Fever for sharing a couple of tracks for Bluegrass Today readers. Here’s a listen to the opening track, a Bill Monroe classic…
Sweet Blue Eyed Darling: [http://traffic.libsyn.com/thegrasscast/sbed.mp3]
…and a Sonya Stead original that is getting some attention from bluegrass radio.
Gonna Run: [http://traffic.libsyn.com/thegrasscast/gonna_run.mp3]
Radio programmers can download these and all the other tracks from Brand New Day at Airplay Direct.
