Today marks the release of the new single from Americana duo Rainy Day Woman. The single, Little Bird and Tattle O’Day is released on Pear O’ Legs records. Originally from Exmouth, Devon, Hannah Pawson and Gabriel Wynne are now based in Bristol and have self-released two EPs, Gallows Green (2018) and Home (2020). Performing professionally since 2017, the duo have been building up a great reputation via Shows that have included: Birmingham Symphony Hall; the Big Comfy Bookshop (Coventry); Sofar Sounds (London, Birmingham, Bristol) and Folkroom Records events. In 2019 they were finalists in Purbeck Valley Folk Festival’s ‘Purbeck Rising’ and played their first Australian tour, including a night at Sydney’s Humph Hall.
On Little Bird, Hannah tells us:
I wrote Little Bird in January 2020. We were living by the sea in East Devon, having recently decided to pursue music full-time. Our days were spent practising, writing and relentlessly emailing anywhere that put on acoustic music, slowly filling up a gig diary for the spring and summer.
My songwriting usually starts with a tune – my phone contains hundreds of scraps of melody – with words slowly falling into place. Little Bird came together on a wet and windy cliff walk, from start to finish. I was thinking about the sea and the battered shoreline that spends its centuries breaking down in slow motion, and about the seaside communities, like the one in which I grew up, which in mid-winter can feel particularly embattled against the harsh wind and spray. I was also thinking about stories I’d read about journeys made in times of need and under the threat of violence and the resilience and love people show in the face of unimaginable trauma. Only months before, I was working as a social worker in Birmingham, and a few years before, I’d volunteered in Calais refugee camp. Little Bird on my washing line // Sing a song for that girl of mine. Written on a wet and woolly cliff walk in January 2020, I was imagining a woman who, having fled somewhere unsafe – and after a journey of flimsy boats, violence and unspeakable loss – is now adjusting to a new life in a strange place.
Writing in mid-2021, Little Bird seems to be about feeling like the tide has left you somewhere you don’t want to be. Of course, all those gigs we’d booked were cancelled. Our instruments sat increasingly unused, Gabriel started working in a supermarket and I grieved, in a world where there were much more pressing things to grieve about. Eventually, I returned to social work, only to leave after a few months, the reasons for my previously leaving stark.
In early Autumn, we got a reply from one of the hundreds of emails we’d sent out pre-COVID. Pear O’Legs records, a small independent label based between London and our new home Bristol, were interested in signing us, with a view towards recording a single in the near future.
Little Bird turned out to be a lonely, wandering song – of longing and displacement and migrating birds – and we wanted the recording to have space and swell. Arranging accompaniment on banjo and guitar proved unusually tricky – it took us over a year to reach a point where we were happy with it. Something about the melody – elusive, with no clear beginning or end – was a real stretch for our finite musical powers (we were gratified when we went into the studio that each session musician had transcribed the melody with a different time signature). Pear O’Legs helped us connect with some wonderful, generous, kind musicians – Ru Lemur, Kit Massey and Andy Hamill – who helped us bring the song to life. We recorded everything live in the studio. After a year of barely playing music with any other ears in the room, that day in a South London studio was thrilling and restorative.
Anyway, we’re so happy to be sharing this single with the world and to get back to playing music in rooms to people.
On Little Bird, Hannah and Gabriel are joined by Kit Massey on violin and Andy Hamill on bass. Despite the additional instruments, Rainy Day Woman stay true to their preference for sparse intimate arrangements with bass and violin accentuating Hannah’s dreamy vocals, which could sound equally at home on the Appalachian slopes as they do here in their South West stomping ground. She has a beautiful, expressive quality that conjures up the longing and displacement she touches on above, while guitar and banjo lend an authentic roots feel to the whole song. It really is a beautiful single, one that I’m more than happy to return to time and again. Little Bird is also Song of the Day.
A special mention to Ru Lemer, whose production, mixing, and mastering brings out the best in their sound and Zak Watson for the beautiful accompanying video below that also features Jade Sreenivasan.
If you enjoy the likes of Anna and Elizabeth, you will love this duo; they really are a name to watch out for. Let’s hope they have an album out soon.
Rainy Day Woman have an official launch show on the 23rd July at The Harrison: details here.
For more details, including upcoming shows, visit: https://www.pearolegs.com/artists/rainy-day-woman
Download the single via Bandcamp (download includes A-side ‘Little Bird’ and B-side ‘Tattle O’Day’): https://rainydaywoman.bandcamp.com/album/little-bird