Listen to the title track of Kendl Winter‘s new solo album Stumbler’s Business, her first in five years and first for Team Love Records, described as a stark folk affair, a natural extension of the work her and Palmer T. Lee have created over the past half-decade as The Lowest Pair.
In Kendl’s words: “Stumbler’s Business, the business of falling and catching yourself, or not, scraping your knees climbing out of the piles, trying again, knowing that stumbling is part of growing, forgetting, learning again and again. Growing, groaning, happening in all directions, change is, well yeah, stumbler’s business is building sand castles anyway despite the inevitable sea, loving anyway because well, it’s all we can do to be here and now and now and with each other in the only ways we knew/know/don’t know how to be, and then again, learning how to be now and again and again. all of us fighting/finding our own rhythms in the rides, or trying to learn how to live with ourselves beside each other, and you know, whatever, this is stumbler’s business. just because, because maybe that’s what life is, what living is and that’s what all this is, and music sometimes is the only way to make it make sense for a while, so there’s that there here and thank you for picking this stumbler’s business stuff up and swirling it around your fuzzy earlobes for the during of, I hope, a gentle moment.”
Most of the songs on Stumbler’s Business were written in the rare still spaces between places on tour, and they pulse with a tidal push-pull. Exploring tensions, seeking understanding, finding love, getting lost. The album was recorded in Joey Seward’s studio just outside of Olympia with the help of some friends.
Winter grew up in Arkansas, but fell in love with Olympia, Washington even before she moved there after high school. When she is not on the road touring her music or hitting some trail, she is buoyed in the Puget Sound aboard her houseboat, the Dandelion. Her musical adventures have wandered from finger picking to electric guitars to old-time roots and bluegrass banjo, and back again; with her earliest pursuits in punk and string bands, and solo work released on Olympia’s own label K. She is currently one half of the banjo/ guitar duo known as The Lowest Pair (Team Love), with Palmer T. Lee. Comparisons have been made to Karen Dalton, Gillian Welch, and Iris DeMent, but Kendl’s voice is all her own.
Pre-Order Stumbler’s Business via Bandcamp: https://kendlwinter.bandcamp.com/album/stumblers-business