Americana,
Rhiannon Giddens
Rhiannon Giddens has made a singular, iconic career out of stretching her brand of folk music, with its miles-deep historical roots and contemporary sensibilities, into just about every field imaginable. A two-time GRAMMY Award-winning singer and instrumentalist, MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient, and composer of opera, ballet, and film, Giddens has centered her work around the mission of lifting up people whose contributions to American musical history have previously been overlooked or erased, and advocating for a more accurate understanding of the country’s musical origins through art.
As Pitchfork once said, “few artists are so fearless and so ravenous in their exploration”—a journey that has led to NPR naming her one of its 25 Most Influential Women Musicians of the 21st Century and to American Songwriter calling her “one of the most important musical minds currently walking the planet.”
For her highly anticipated third solo studio album, You’re The One, out August 18 on Nonesuch Records, she recruited producer Jack Splash (Kendrick Lamar, Solange, Alicia Keys, Valerie June, Tank and the Bangas) to help her bring this collection of songs that she’d written over the course of her career—her first album of all originals—to life at Criteria Recording Studios in Miami last November. Together with a band composed of Giddens’s closest musical collaborators from the past decade alongside Miami-based musicians from Splash’s own Rolodex, and topped off with a horn section making an impressive ten- to twelve-person ensemble, they drew from the folk music that Giddens knows so deeply and its pop descendants.
You’re the One features electric and upright bass, conga, Cajun and piano accordions, guitars, a Western string section, and Miami horns, among other instruments. “I hope that people just hear American music,” Giddens says. “Blues, jazz, Cajun, country, gospel, and rock—it’s all there. I like to be where it meets organically.” The album is in line with her previous work, as she explains, because it’s yet another kind of project she’s never done before. “I just wanted to expand my sound palette,” Giddens says. “I feel like I’ve done lots in the acoustic realm, and I certainly will again. But these songs really needed a larger field.”
The album teems with Giddens’ breadth of, knowledge of, curiosity about, and experience with American vernacular music. Though it might be filtered through a slightly more familiar blend of sounds, You’re The One never forsakes depth and groundedness for its listenability. “They’re fun songs, and I wanted them to have as much of a chance as they could to reach people who might dig them but don’t know anything about, you know, what I do,” Giddens says. “If they’re introduced to me through this record, they might go listen to other music I’ve made with a different set of ears.”
Join us for another Longworth-Anderson Series evening of great music, food, and drink! Complimentary pre-concert reception features live local music, light bites, and craft beer tastings from HighGrain Brewing Co.
As a touring artist, one of the biggest philosophical struggles I continue to face is the toll my work takes on our environment. We fly, ride on buses, in vans, and in cars, and you have to do the same to see us. Venues must provide food and other resources for us and our fans, and staff must get to the venues to make it all run – all of which take an environmental toll.
On this tour, we will do our best to minimize the footprint we leave behind and pay our carbon offsets, and we’re asking fans and venues to join us in making a positive impact.
Each ticket to every show on this tour will have $1 added to its price to be donated to effective sustainability programs supporting our environment and in turn, our local communities. In addition, we’re implementing the following efforts
- Any tips you leave at the merch table will be added to our donation.
- We’ve asked venues to forgo single-use plastic at our show, and do the same on our tour bus and in venues, as much as possible.
- We encourage you to rideshare and take available public transportation to our shows.
At the end of the tour, we will share how much has been contributed and exactly the environmental projects they went toward. We know that, globally, a lot of work has to be done on the industrial scale, and in political realms, and that this may seem like a drop in the bucket. But enough drops, and the bucket overflows…
Rhiannon Giddens
Rhiannon Giddens has made a singular, iconic career out of stretching her brand of folk music, with its miles-deep historical roots and contemporary sensibilities, into just about every field imaginable. A two-time GRAMMY Award-winning singer and instrumentalist, MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient, and composer of opera, ballet, and film, Giddens has centered her work around the mission of lifting up people whose contributions to American musical history have previously been overlooked or erased, and advocating for a more accurate understanding of the country’s musical origins through art.
As Pitchfork once said, “few artists are so fearless and so ravenous in their exploration”—a journey that has led to NPR naming her one of its 25 Most Influential Women Musicians of the 21st Century and to American Songwriter calling her “one of the most important musical minds currently walking the planet.”
For her highly anticipated third solo studio album, You’re The One, out August 18 on Nonesuch Records, she recruited producer Jack Splash (Kendrick Lamar, Solange, Alicia Keys, Valerie June, Tank and the Bangas) to help her bring this collection of songs that she’d written over the course of her career—her first album of all originals—to life at Criteria Recording Studios in Miami last November. Together with a band composed of Giddens’s closest musical collaborators from the past decade alongside Miami-based musicians from Splash’s own Rolodex, and topped off with a horn section making an impressive ten- to twelve-person ensemble, they drew from the folk music that Giddens knows so deeply and its pop descendants.
You’re the One features electric and upright bass, conga, Cajun and piano accordions, guitars, a Western string section, and Miami horns, among other instruments. “I hope that people just hear American music,” Giddens says. “Blues, jazz, Cajun, country, gospel, and rock—it’s all there. I like to be where it meets organically.” The album is in line with her previous work, as she explains, because it’s yet another kind of project she’s never done before. “I just wanted to expand my sound palette,” Giddens says. “I feel like I’ve done lots in the acoustic realm, and I certainly will again. But these songs really needed a larger field.”
The album teems with Giddens’ breadth of, knowledge of, curiosity about, and experience with American vernacular music. Though it might be filtered through a slightly more familiar blend of sounds, You’re The One never forsakes depth and groundedness for its listenability. “They’re fun songs, and I wanted them to have as much of a chance as they could to reach people who might dig them but don’t know anything about, you know, what I do,” Giddens says. “If they’re introduced to me through this record, they might go listen to other music I’ve made with a different set of ears.”
Join us for another Longworth-Anderson Series evening of great music, food, and drink! Complimentary pre-concert reception features live local music, light bites, and craft beer tastings from HighGrain Brewing Co.
As a touring artist, one of the biggest philosophical struggles I continue to face is the toll my work takes on our environment. We fly, ride on buses, in vans, and in cars, and you have to do the same to see us. Venues must provide food and other resources for us and our fans, and staff must get to the venues to make it all run – all of which take an environmental toll.
On this tour, we will do our best to minimize the footprint we leave behind and pay our carbon offsets, and we’re asking fans and venues to join us in making a positive impact.
Each ticket to every show on this tour will have $1 added to its price to be donated to effective sustainability programs supporting our environment and in turn, our local communities. In addition, we’re implementing the following efforts
- Any tips you leave at the merch table will be added to our donation.
- We’ve asked venues to forgo single-use plastic at our show, and do the same on our tour bus and in venues, as much as possible.
- We encourage you to rideshare and take available public transportation to our shows.
At the end of the tour, we will share how much has been contributed and exactly the environmental projects they went toward. We know that, globally, a lot of work has to be done on the industrial scale, and in political realms, and that this may seem like a drop in the bucket. But enough drops, and the bucket overflows…
