Music Release

FEATURED RELEASE

BLUEGRASS AT THE CROSSROADS

“Lift Your Voice, Bow Your Head”

RECORD LABEL:
Mountain Home Music Company

RELEASE DATE:
1/22/2021

UPC:
783895198457

GENRE:
Bluegrass

LOCATION:
Asheville, North Carolina

DESCRIPTION:

For the next chapter in its groundbreaking set of collaborations under the Bluegrass at the Crossroads banner, Mountain Home Music Company is releasing a pair of singles that feature two different groups of musicians. One, a nod to legendary banjo player Earl Scruggs, comes from the same quintet that kicked off the series last year with “Start Walking Back,” while the other is a new gospel song co-written by the late Steve Gulley, recorded by a different, yet equally diverse group of musicians drawn again mostly from Mountain Home’s award-winning roster of artists.

For this single, “Lift Your Voice, Bow Your Head” was written by series producer Jon Weisberger and the late Steve Gulley, whose untimely death in August, 2020 is still mourned by the bluegrass community. The track features Mountain Home’s Carley Arrowood (fiddle) singing lead, with support from Wayne Benson (Russell Moore & IIIrd Tyme Out) on mandolin; the Infamous StringdustersTravis Book (bass, vocals); Joe Cicero (Fireside Collective) on guitar; Mt. Airy gospel singer Wendy Hickman (vocals) and another Steve Martin Prize recipient and 5-time IBMA Banjo Player of the Year, Sammy Shelor of Lonesome River Band.

“‘Lift Your Voice, Bow Your Head’ is one of the most meaningful gospel songs I’ve ever had the pleasure of singing,” enthuses Arrowood. “And knowing Steve Gulley had a hand in writing it makes it that much more special. Whenever life is hard, you just take the time to talk to Jesus about it. It’s that simple. 2020 was a hard year, but God loves us and doesn’t want one word to go unsaid to Him. Thank you Jon and Steve, I love this song so much.”

Says Weisberger, “It’s always exciting to hear great musicians turn the bare bones of a song demo into a performance that can touch people’s hearts, but that’s especially true with this song, which I wrote a couple of years ago with the late Steve Gulley. The band’s playing has all the heart and all the finesse you’d expect from this lineup, and I love the way that Carley, Travis and Wendy—three singers from different corners of our roots music world—were able to blend so smoothly while letting the individual character of their voices shine through.”

KEY SELLING POINTS

Over the years, Mountain Home Music Company and its sibling imprint, Organic Records, have become home to a family of artists who are collectively creating music that both harkens and continues to form part of the rural, American musical core: Bluegrass. Bluegrass at the Crossroads is a series of unique encounters between members of that family from every corner—geographical, generational, stylistic and more—of the music and the communities it has inspired, inviting them to collaborate not only through fresh takes on bluegrass classics, but especially with new songs that reflect and engage with the contemporary world.

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