Mountain Home Music has a new single for Carley Arrowood, one she wrote with her husband, Daniel Thrailkill, guitarist/vocalist with The Trailblazers.
It’s a lovely contemporary bluegrass ballad called Chasin’ Indigo, which extols the importance of making time for the people that mean the most to you.
Carley says that the germ of the song came to them when everyone was working at home.
“A lot of times when you work from home it’s hard to find a stopping point, because you get so immersed in what you’re doing. My husband Daniel and I wrote Chasin’ Indigo as a way of remembering to look up, take our minds off our work and focus on each other the most.
One of our favorite things to do in the summertime is sit out at the end of our driveway and watch the sun go down across the pasture. Daniel’s favorite part is when the sky finally turns deep blue (the cover is of a sunset he captured in our front yard last summer!).
Chasin’ Indigo is such a special song to us, to remind each other that the simple moments together like that are ‘few and far between.'”
With Arrowood on fiddle and lead vocals, support comes from Thrailkill on guitar, Nick Dumas on mandolin, Tabitha Benedict on banjo, Jeff Partin on bass and reso-guitar, and Tony Creasman on drums.
It was a full on bluegrass wedding June 26 when Carley Arrowood married Daniel Thrailkill at the Back Creek Presbyterian Church in Mount Ulla, NC.
The happy couple are each pursuing a career as bluegrass performers, Arrowood as a singer and fiddler recording for Mountain Home Music Company, and Thrailkill as guitarist and vocalist with The Trailblazers. Both are on the up among young grassers, with bright futures in the music.
Back Creek Presbyterian is Daniel’s home church, where he dad has been pastor this past twenty years. The senior Thrailkill officiated at the wedding, assisted by Carley’s pastor. As young artists, there was plenty of music during the service from friends of the bride and groom. Nate Burie sang at the opening, and again in duet with Carley’s sister, Autumn. Chosen Road sang How Great Thou Art at the end, and played as the couple processed from the church.
Chosen Road then played a full set while wedding photos were taken. During the reception, Carley and her band performed, as did The Trailblazers, with a special guest set from The Foreign Landers.
Daniel tells us that the 190 people at the ceremony were the perfect component of family of friends to share the day with.
“We had a good group of people around us… really encouraging. A lot of the Scripture we had been studying before the wedding was about peace. My dad reminded us that what we were doing was about building something invisible – the commitment between the two of us.”
And Carley said that the setting was perfect.
“There was so much music in the ceremony, and I couldn’t have imagined it any other way. It seems that a lot of weddings are over so quickly, and I wanted ours to be something to remember. It was about an hour long service. I had been praying that I would be calm and be able to soak everything in. And I was!”
The couple shared their first dance to Love Never Fails, sung by their friends Zack and Savannah Alvis. For Carley’s Daddy/daughter dance, Daniel sang Cinderella from Steven Curtis Chapman.
Following the reception, Daniel and Carley left for a honeymoon near Marion, VA. They rented a cabin in the woods, and enjoyed some peace and quiet away from all the hectic wedding activity. There they got to take a bicycle ride along the Virginia Creeper Trail.
Carley said that while the honeymoon was mostly peaceful, they did have some visitors.
“These crows would come to our front yard every morning and crow. The last day we were there, they came and started pecking on the windows!”
The newlyweds will reside in Newton, NC, just south of Hickory, where they are currently renovating their new home.
This weekend they are headed back to Marion for a show at the Lincoln Theater, with both the Carley Arrowood Band and The Trailblazers on the bill.
Congratulations and best of luck to Carley and Daniel!
Paraphrasing a Bill Monroe tune, “We’ll make our vows to love each other, and we know we always will.”
Another happy union to report: bluegrass sweethearts, Carley Arrowood and Daniel Thrailkill, have announced their engagement.
After five years of friendship that included three years of courtship, Thrailkill, lead singer and guitarist with The Trailblazers, 2018 IBMA Momentum Band of the Year, dropped to one knee and popped the question to fiddler extraordinaire, Arrowood, on Friday afternoon, February 12.
“We’ve been really blessed to find a future home, and we’ve found a little time here and there between my school and both of our teaching schedules to work on updating it some together. We had been painting one of the bedrooms that morning, and we went out for a late lunch. We got back to the house, and Carley had almost started painting with her nice sweater and boots on, so I suggested she go change into her painting clothes. As she did that, I rushed into the other room, rustling through my backpack to find the ring. I went back in to the room we were painting and waited for her to come back, so I could surprise her on one knee! She was so surprised it took her a minute to say, ‘Yes!’ Needless to say, my plan worked well. I’m pretty pleased with the outcome,” shared Daniel, the 2018 IBMA Momentum Vocalist of the Year.
Arrowood, 2017 IBMA Momentum Instrumentalist of the Year, elaborated, “He’s been telling me and joking with me for months that the proposal was gonna get me good, and he wasn’t lying. I came back in that room with my blinders on, thinking, ‘We’re doing good. We have one wall left and it’s not that late.’ And when I walked in and saw him on one knee, I felt like I was suddenly in one of those really vivid dreams that feels real, but it’s really not! I finally said yes and he stood up, and I kept laughing between tears and asking, ‘Are you serious?!’ And Daniel said, ‘Well yeah! I’ve got the ring right here!'”
Their paths first crossed at a North Carolina music event.
Thrailkill recalled, “I remember meeting Carley at the 2014 Union Grove Fiddlers’ Convention on a rainy day in April. She doesn’t remember it as clearly as I do, but she was playing in a band with my now band mate, Alex Edwards. It was one of my first convention experiences. Seems so long ago!”
“I remember that day!” Arrowood stressed. “He introduced himself and we talked for a few minutes, but that was about it. After that, we’d see each other at random festivals, and even one time at the homeschool conference in Winston-Salem. We really started becoming better friends at IBMA 2016.”
Arrowood, who fiddled with Darin and Brooke Aldridge for five years, has a first solo project with Mountain Home Music Company coming soon.Thrailkill, appears on her recordings. Since they began dating, the couple has collaborated on numerous other musical projects, including her Goin’ Home Comin’ On Mountain Home music video, and their YouTube series, Pickin’ in the Kitchen.
Arrowood concluded, “We had so much fun telling our close family and friends, and we still haven’t decided on a date yet. I’ve been told that this time always goes by fast, so we really just want to bask in it and enjoy it. We’ve done some wedding planning though, and I’m so looking forward to the rest of it, and the future with Daniel! We’re so amazed at God’s goodness and grace in our lives. I can’t believe it.”
Monroe’s lyrics reflect Thrailkill’s sentiments toward Arrowood, his fiddling sweetheart. “For me there’ll never be another. I’ll love her ’til the day I die.”
The Trailblazers, an up-and-coming young progressive bluegrass ensemble from North Carolina, has released their second album, Space and Time. The quartet has drawn national attention in the bluegrass community in recent years after winning IBMA’s 2018 Momentum Band of the Year, SPGBMA’s 2018 Band Contest, and MerleFest’s 2017 Band Contest, plus numerous individual awards.
Daniel Thrailkill, lead singer and guitarist, received IBMA’s 2018 Momentum Vocal Award, and Alex Edwards, banjoist, was a 2020 nominee for IBMA’s Momentum Instrumentalist. Jonah Horton, mandolinist, has taken part in MerleFest’s Mandomania in recent years, sitting in with heavy hitters like Sam Bush and Andrew Marlin. Will Thrailkill, the band’s bassist and Daniel’s older brother, grounds the band with his solid and creative playing.
The CD is an eclectic array of 11 tracks that offer impressive instrumentation with an advanced level of musicianship that many seasoned artists never attain.
The album features five original compositions, with Daniel Thrailkill writing Space and Time, Flyin’, and Different Kind of Plain and Horton composing Dawson Springs and Déjà Vu.
“Each original has a different feel; it is easy to hear how we were influenced by a broad spectrum of artists throughout the songwriting and recording process,” says Horton.
Space and Time features covers from The Doobie Brothers (There’s A Light), George Benson (Please Don’t Walk Away), Glenn Campbell (True Grit), and bluegrass songwriter, Larry Keel (Pioneers).
Horton explained, “From those names alone, you can see how we have branched out into rock, jazz, and country, in addition to our bluegrass roots.”
The young mandolinist spoke to the band’s vision for their latest project.
“When compared to our first album (A Place to Call My Own), Space and Time couldn’t be much more different. We have matured musically, both as a band and individually. Our first CD focused on the more traditional side of bluegrass. Space and Time only has one song (Larry McNeely’s Sleepy Eyes) that would fit that description. This project is our attempt to explore a variety of musical genres through the lens of our acoustic instrumentation.”
Daniel agreed, “Space and Time is a great representation of how the Trailblazers’ sound has progressed over the past five years.”
Banjoist Edwards says, “I’m really excited for everyone to listen to the new project and hear how our band has grown. Space and Time is a mix of all our musical tastes. It has a really cool vibe and sound that flows from track to track.”
Recorded in six consecutive days, the band labored through eleven hour days in the studio.
“Preparation is everything. We tried to hammer out all the specifics before entering the studio. Jonah arranged our songs. We all had an equal hand in finding the right cover songs,” explained Daniel.
Horton elaborated, “Our goal was to create something that appealed to a large variety of musical audiences. There is at least one song on this album that everyone would enjoy.”
Horton discussed the two special guests who appear on the project saying, “We are honored to have two originals feature special guests: fiddler extraordinaire Jeremy Garrett from the Grammy Award winning bluegrass band, The Infamous Stringdusters, on the only instrumental on the CD (Dawson Springs) and Scott Vestal, 2020 IBMA Banjo Player of the Year and recipient of The Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass, play his banjo synthesizer (Déjà Vu).”
When asked about being a special guest on (Déjà Vu’), Vestal mentions, “I added Fender Rhodes piano and B3 organ sounds with a little jamming at the end. What fun!” In addition to being a guest on the project, Vestal recorded, mixed, and mastered the project at his Digital Underground Studio in Greenbriar, TN.
Guest artist, Garrett, shared, “What a treat it was to play on a track with these young guys. I’m honored they would think of me, and I appreciated the challenging tune. It was a blast. I know these guys are going to go far!”
When asked about his experience in the studio, bassist Will Thrailkill said…
“The production of our second album was more enjoyable than the first. On the first project, we were a bit intimidated. Mr. Scott is a legend, and for some of us, it was the first time in a real studio. Now, being older and more experienced, it was easier to connect with Mr. Scott. We developed good rapport which made the studio experience more relaxed. This promoted an atmosphere of creative freedom and flexibility. I think it shows in the quality of the album.
I’m thankful for the gifts and resources God has given us. His hand orchestrated that music would be in my life. Without His divine influence, I would never have the ability or opportunities I’ve been given. For that, I give Him glory. I’m grateful for the people that God placed in my life: my parents who encouraged me to pursue music; Daniel, who patiently gave me my first bass lesson and stuck with me while I attempted to back him up; friends who tolerated me in local jam sessions while I was learning; and Alex and Jonah, my brothers in music, who influenced the stylistic tendencies I’ve acquired.”
Horton, an Appalachian State senior, played snare drum on four of the album’s tracks, as well as produced the project. “As producer of Space and Time, I made most of the musical decisions regarding arrangements and content. Leading up to the album, I spent time with each of the guys helping construct their individual parts. It gave me a platform to share the musical ideas that I was having with our listeners, and made me more invested in the project.”
Vestal praised the Trailblazers. “Space and Time is crazy good! I can’t wait for everyone to hear it. Very fresh and original. These guys are some of the most talented youngsters I’ve come across in a while.”
“I hope fans can hear our enjoyment, passion for this music, and meaningful concepts spread through the album,” said Daniel.
Horton concluded, “In my opinion, Space and Time is a truly unique album that I think can be enjoyed by music lovers of all ages, backgrounds, and genres.”
Bluegrass sweethearts, Carley Arrowood, fiddle extraordinaire and Mountain Home recording artist, and Daniel Thrailkill, guitarist and lead vocalist of the Trailblazers, are launching a new YouTube series this weekend. It will feature recipes and tunes that relate to the recipes they prepare.
Carley shared her vision for the project.
“Pickin’ in the Kitchen was an idea I had back in the summertime when our families’ gardens were in their prime. Daniel’s grandparents were getting loads of peaches, and my family was getting a lot of blueberries and blackberries from our backyard. I wanted to share some fun recipes I had been trying, as well as some good music with people, just as a way to stay connected in the time of quarantine. The idea was talked about quite a bit, but like a lot of things, it got pushed to the back burner in all the busyness of our lives (we’re both just beyond blessed to still be doing what we’re doing).
But, we are very happy to finally be giving people yummy things to try just in time for Thanksgiving! I love seeing people’s reactions and responses to the things we share, just knowing that it makes them smile, and I think that is the main goal of Pickin’ in the Kitchen: to bring a sense of togetherness in this crazy time apart.”
Daniel stressed, “Pickin’ in the Kitchen was Carley’s awesome idea! She was so excited when she told me about it, and I immediately knew it would be something special. Our families share a love for cooking, and we’ve come across so many people in the bluegrass world with a love for good food. Our goal is to make Pickin’ in the Kitchen a fun way to introduce ourselves and some friends that love to cook and pick!”
Carley added, “This new series is being launched for you to try our recipes for all your family meals! The videos of our tunes will be posted on YouTube and linked to my blog at carleyarrowoodmusic.com, and the recipes will be shared below the video links. We will share the blog links via Facebook. Each song we play will relate in some way to the recipes! We look forward to getting folks some good food and good music. We hope you’ll join us for Pickin’ in the Kitchen!”
Episode 1, the inaugural ‘Pickin’ in the Kitchen’ blog, went live today at 12:00 p.m., and will be shared on all social medias.
Carley is enthusiastic over their new project. “Daniel and I have been working on something super fun and we are SO excited to finally share it! Get ready for some Pickin’ in the Kitchen! Let us know if you try the recipes and how you like them! This is going to be so much fun!”
“Carley and I are mixing up something good. We’re stirring the pot. We’re sprinkling joy into your newsfeed. Y’all be watching for some great stuff,” concluded Daniel.
