{"id":799866,"date":"2019-09-26T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-09-26T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/news\/rising-appalachia-begins-six-stop-colorado-tour-leg-at-belly-up-aspen\/"},"modified":"2019-09-26T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-09-26T22:00:00","slug":"rising-appalachia-begins-six-stop-colorado-tour-leg-at-belly-up-aspen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/rising-appalachia-begins-six-stop-colorado-tour-leg-at-belly-up-aspen\/","title":{"rendered":"Rising Appalachia begins six-stop Colorado tour leg at Belly Up Aspen"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

The folk band Rising Appalachia<\/a> is rooted in the southern musical tradition, as the name suggests, but anybody who has experienced their live show knows they\u2019re more than boot-stomping revivalists.<\/p>\n

Across eight albums and years of tours, the group \u2014 founded by sisters Leah and Chloe Smith \u2014 both excavates the world music origins of American folk and integrates fresh sounds from across contemporary genres. Their shows include mountain-music banjo and acoustic blues, yes, but also beat-boxing and tinges of Celtic fiddle tunes and slam poetry and African drumming \u2014 all of it overlaid with the Smith sisters\u2019 enchanting dual harmonies.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur work has always been in musicology, really,\u201d Leah Smith said in a recent phone interview. \u201cWe consider ourselves students of all the roots of Appalachian music.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the six-piece band\u2019s latest album, \u201cLeylines,\u201d released in May, Rising Appalachia recorded outside of the South for the first time. They decamped for 10 days in a live-in studio overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Marin County, California.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to see what would happen if we were out of the South, what the material would pull out and what perspective we might get,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n

With two new bandmembers coming aboard, they wanted a communal creative experience in an incubator-like environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not like a 9-to-5 where you just meet at the studio and then split off,\u201d Smith said. \u201cWe wanted to be living and breathing the work. \u2026 There are only a few of those in the country where you can rent the space, live in the space, live and breathe and eat in a space that is also a recording studio.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Atlanta-based band\u2019s ongoing \u201cLeylines\u201d tour includes six more Colorado stops, beginning Friday at Belly Up in Aspen. The band set up shop in the Roaring Fork Valley to rehearse before this six-week run of western shows, which runs through late October.<\/p>\n

Through their many stops in Aspen<\/a>, the bandmembers have made many local friends and, in recent years, began coming for extended stays.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have such an amazing community of fans and friends in Aspen and Carbondale,\u201d Smith said. \u201cIt really feels like a home base for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rising Appalachia\u2019s two new members help accentuate the world music roots in the band\u2019s eclectic sound. Bringing in the n\u2019goni and talking drum player Arouna Diarra, of Burkina Faso, and Irish fiddle player Duncan Wickel have helped the Smith sisters realize their vision for the band\u2019s sound.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt felt like a dream come true,\u201d Leah Smith said. \u201cIt\u2019s been a long-term goal of Rising Appalachia to tell a lot of the ancestry of this music.\u201d<\/p>\n

The result, in their newest material, is a fully realized Rising Appalachia evidenced in compositions like the anthemic single \u201cResilient,\u201d the folk call to action \u201cI Believe in Being Ready,\u201d the good-time party tune \u201cCuckoo\u201d and the heart-melting love song \u201cHarmonize.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cLeylines\u201d sessions also connected Rising Appalachia with Ani DiFranco, the neo-folk legend who cleared the way for them in pop music. She joins the Smiths on vocals for \u201cSpeak Out,\u201d bringing the sisters full circle on their creative journey.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a huge threshold to cross to hear her music as a young woman,\u201d Leah Smith recalled. \u201cI grew up in a fiddle- and banjo-playing family and I thought that was the music for old people \u2014 I listened to hip-hop. Ani Difranco was the first person to provide a bridge for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

atravers@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The folk band Rising Appalachia is rooted in the southern musical tradition, as the name suggests, but anybody who has experienced their live show knows they\u2019re more than boot-stomping revivalists. Across eight albums and years of tours, the group \u2014 founded by sisters Leah and Chloe Smith \u2014 both excavates the world music origins of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-799866","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-24 14:36:08","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=799866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799866\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}