Americana, bluegrass; Organic Records — STREAM / BUY single

As we navigate through a year already fraught with both ongoing and new, unanticipated crises, the need for dialogue and common ground has never been clearer. That’s the message of the new Organic Records single from Zoe & Cloyd, which sets its titular question—“Where Do You Stand?”—to a hard-driving, traditional-leaning bluegrass groove.

“‘Where Do You Stand’ is a commentary on the state of our national discourse,” says John Cloyd Miller of the powerful new original, written together with his wife and musical partner, Natalya Zoe Weinstein. “Often, it’s the farthest ends of the political spectrum that make the news and it seems like inflammatory rhetoric is the only thing that gets heard these days. I’d like for us to remember that we’re all connected and are more alike than we are different, no matter who tries to convince us otherwise. For us to move forward, we have to find common ground on which to build a path toward a sustainable future.”

The single is the first new release from the duo and their band—banjoist Bennett Sullivan and bass player Kevin Kehrberg—since last fall’s full-length debut for Organic, I Am Your Neighbor. Produced by Jon Weisberger, the song kicks off with hard-edged fiddle that gives way to Miller’s equally biting lyric indictment of “voices in the chamber halls calling each other wrong” before Weinstein joins to harmonize with him on a memorable chorus built around the title’s urgent question. Fiddle and banjo engage in their own riveting dialogues as the lyrics wonder, “are we too dug in to face the truth, we’re getting nowhere fast.”

With “Where Do You Stand,” Zoe & Cloyd reaffirm their role as leading voices in a new generation of artists expressing the evolution of Southern Appalachian music and culture.