North Carolina-based musician Libby Rodenbough has previously featured on Folk Radio as a member of Chapel Hill quartet Mipso. Below, we have the pleasure of sharing with you a live recording of her new single ‘Sleeping Hard‘, filmed at The Nightlight in Chapel Hill. The song features on her forthcoming album Between the Blades, out May 12 via Sleepy Cat Records (Sleepy Cat Records | Bandcamp).
Featured in the video, alongside Libby, are Alex Bingham of Hiss Golden Messenger on bass (also co-producer), Kate Rhudy on harmony vocals, Saman Khoujinian on electric guitar and synth, and Joe Westerlund on drums. The single version (included below) also features Matt Douglas of The Mountain Goats on clarinet.
The song is about choosing stillness in a world so heavy that your bed becomes your only refuge, a feeling that’s accentuated in a hypnotically churning rhythm section with Libby’s ethereal vocals adding that magic ingredient that will beckon you back again because the first time you listened you felt something…the weight slipping off the shoulders, shared angst and a glimmer of hope. She has a great way with words…one line stood out for me when she spoke about the album:
Holes start to appear here and there in the sweater that is your life—that’s inevitable—but I’m realizing you can really fix those in a great variety of ways. Sometimes it’s stitches and sometimes it’s patches and sometimes you come to like the empty place.
Those words are quite beautiful, as is her song ‘Sleeping Hard’. You can also hear it in our Mellow Folk Playlist (Spotify | Apple Music)
Audio – Saman Khoujinian
Video – Michelle Lotker
Single/Album Version:
About Libby Rodenbough
As a long-time member of the band Mipso and current touring member of Indigo De Souza’s band, Rodenbough is no stranger to pushing a familiar “Americana/Folk” sound into fresh territory. A blend of acoustic and synthetic drones, polyrhythmic dialogue between electric guitar and clarinet, string sections that are at once expansive, filling, and brash, and a world of toasty percussion all broaden Rodenbough’s sonic ocean without ever masking the anchor of her work – the songs.
Recorded at Bedtown Lakehouse in Virginia, Rodenbough enlisted a wide family of staple NC musicians to reinforce and elevate her inherent spirit of exploration. Co-produced with close friends Alex Bingham (Hiss Golden Messenger) and Saman Khoujinian, Between the Blades also features Jay Hammond (Trippers & Askers), Kate Rhudy, Matt Douglas (The Mountain Goats), Anna Jacobson, and Will Van Horn (Khruangbin). Less than a year before the recording session, Rodenbough’s mother passed away at the age of 65. Between the Blades isn’t exactly an album about grief—that’s a tall order—but at the time of that lake weekend, other members of the group were also reckoning with death and so, between takes, a lilting, capacious kind of grief seeps in.
New Album, Between the Blades, Out May 12th