As she tells it, it might have taken Carley Arrowood a little while to figure out what she wanted to do when it came to recording her music—but since she did, there’s been no stopping the young fiddler, singer, and songwriter. Now, the release of her first album for Mountain Home Music Company puts an exclamation point on an upward trajectory that not even a pandemic could stall.

“There was a time when this project was only going to be an EP; some of my favorite fiddle tunes and one or two songs I had written,” Arrowood recalls in her liner notes. “Something that just encompassed me as an aspiring solo artist….[A]s time progressed I was blessed to sign on with Mountain Home. I’ll never forget my first meeting with Mickey Gamble. When I told him I wanted to ‘see what happens with my EP, he looked at me with raised eyebrows and a genuine heart, and said something like this: ‘You’ve got to be all in; there ain’t no ”see what happens” here.’ From then on, it was all or nothing.”

That spirit of commitment animates every minute of Goin’ Home Comin’ On, from the first bold fiddle notes of the album opener and title track to the high octane reading of an early Alison Krauss classic that closes the project. And though she’s supported by award-winning banjo player Kristin Scott Benson and her husband, acclaimed mandolinist Wayne Benson while taking on a setlist that includes songs from award-winning writers like Jenn Schott, Jenee Fleenor, and bassist-producer Jon Weisberger, it’s a measure of that commitment—and her abilities—that Arrowood’s supple fiddle playing, songwriting skills and, especially, her confident, expressive singing, are never overshadowed.

Indeed, it’s Arrowood’s musical personality first and foremost that knits together the project, begun while she was still contemplating a solo career and recorded in three sessions over as many years. And while she’s grown as an artist during the process, the maturity of her artistry was already clear in the album’s first single, the contemporary-flavored, self-penned “Dear Juliana.” By the time she released the project’s title track in August 2020, the way had been paved for a long-lived single that reached audiences across bluegrass radio through most of 2021, and since then, more singles—as well as a featured turn on one of the label’s all-star Bluegrass at the Crossroads collaborations, “Lift Your Voice, Bow Your Head”—have heightened anticipation for her full-length debut.

An instrumentalist since she was a child, Arrowood claims a place among the leading players of her generation in both traditional and contemporary styles with the durable Kenny Baker favorite, “Ducks on the Millpond,” and her own “Double Sunset”; offers heartfelt testimonials to the power of her faith in her “Jesus Drive the Train” and “You are Mine,” and demonstrates her interpretive depth on both her own songs like “Letting Go Now” and “Dancing in the Rain” and more country-leaning material like the popular single, “My Kind of Nightlife” and “God Made the Country.” The result is a wide-ranging collection that presents a well-rounded and compelling portrait of a musician coming into her own.

“Almost every track is a brand new song,” Arrowood concludes. “Each with a different aspect that moves my heart in a way that feels like coming home. My hope is that they do the same for you.”Goin’ Home Comin’ On