Their last album together, There Is No Other, still regularly finds its way on to my turntable so news of another album from Rhiannon Giddens and Italian multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi is worth celebrating.
The new release, titled They’re Calling Me Home, will be released April 9 on Nonesuch Records. Giddens and Turrisi, who both live in Ireland when they aren’t on tour, have been there since March 2020 due to the pandemic. The two ex-pats found themselves drawn to the music of their native and adoptive countries of America, Italy, and Ireland during the lockdown. Exploring the emotions brought up by the moment, Giddens and Turrisi decamped to Hellfire, a small studio on a working farm outside of Dublin, to record these songs over six days. The result is They’re Calling Me Home, a twelve-track album that speaks of the longing for the comfort of home as well as the metaphorical “call home” of death, which has been a tragic reality for so many during the COVID-19 crisis.
Watch the video for lead single ‘Calling Me Home’ below, a song written by Alice Gerrard. The video by Robert Edridge-Waks is spectacularly atmospheric…
They’re Calling Me Home features several traditional songs that Giddens hasn’t played for years, including some of the first old-time pieces she ever learned: ‘I Shall Not Be Moved’, ‘Black As Crow (Dearest Dear)’ and ‘Waterbound’. The album also includes a new song Giddens wrote, ‘Avalon’, as well as an Italian lullaby, ‘Nenna Nenna’, that Turrisi used to sing to his infant daughter that took on new resonance during the lockdown.
Giddens says of Alice Gerrard, the folk music pioneer, who wrote ‘Calling Me Home’: “Some people just know how to tap into a tradition and an emotion so deep that it sounds like a song that has always been around – Alice Gerrard is one of those rarities; ‘Calling Me Home’ struck me forcefully and deeply the first time I heard it, and every time since. This song just wanted to be sung and so I listened.”
They’re Calling Me Home also includes two well-known songs about death: ‘Amazing Grace’ and ‘O Death’.
Also joining them on the album are Congolese guitarist Niwel Tsumbu (RiZA) and Irish traditional musician Emer Mayock on flute, whistle, and pipes. Engineer Ben Rawlins was key to the shape and sound of the record while Giddens and Turrisi produced and Kim Rosen mastered.
Pre-order They’re Calling Me Home : http://smarturl.it/theyrecallingmehome