Michigan-based multi-instrumentalist Laurel Premo’s latest solo album, Golden Loam, out October 8, 2021, presents original and traditional music voiced on finger-style electric guitar and lap steel. Perhaps by its most honest classification “roots guitar,” the sonic vocabulary of Golden Loam is informed by guitar’s antecedents in American traditions – fiddle and banjo, the rhythms, melody and intonation therein, as well as that music’s relationship to movement. Glowing, droning, tugging, scraping, revolving, Premo bears renewed electric dirt, the golden loam layered by centuries of folk.
Following The Iron Trios (2019), Premo’s sophomore release builds on the dark roots world she arranged, with seeking, untethered delivery and a masterful use of space, on a dynamic wave of warm, gritty sustain. Laurel’s vocals on two pieces ‘Hop High’ and ‘I Am A Pilgrim’ are traditional calls beaconing the guitar’s response, and fold in timberly like additional instrumental lines sustaining the drone. Golden Loam was self-produced and recorded during the pandemic lockdown of summer/fall 2020. Premo has been writing, arranging music and touring since 2009 with vocal and instrumental roots acts. She is internationally known from her duo Red Tail Ring.
In our conversation, Premo describes her process for developing instrumental work, working with fellow women and queer folks, and a heartfelt gift from one of her fans.
Explain the title of your album.
The music I perform, including the new music I write, is all influenced by traditional roots, and so my style is impacted and made more rich by so many musicians that came before me. When I was thinking of what to call the sound of this project – kind of a warm glinting housed in a darker environment with a fair amount of gravity, my mind went toward the literal interpretation of the idea of ‘roots,’ and how they shine as little streaks underground, and that the rich dirt that I’m playing with now is made fertile by not only by what I’m doing but also by the lives of all those musical ancestors. Loam is a name for a classification of soil, and Golden Loam just felt like this warm electric glinting in the dark which is what I’m pulling at with this solo record.
How did you select the traditional material you recorded for this record?
The old tunes that I made arrangements of for this record were all things that I had previously come to learn on fiddle or on open-back banjo. Calloway & Hop High are both traditional banjo tunes, and the rest of the non-original tracks are repertoire from American old time fiddling, and in one case, traditional Norwegian fiddle music. Taking the unbroken long tones from a fiddle bow and replacing that with the sustain possible on electric seemed really natural, and exiting to me, because there was a shared language with the world I was coming from. My touch on the fiddle has a sort of analog “dynamic distortion” to it anyways, being able to play cleanly but also pressuring my way into grit or having some intonation choices shake the tone from time to time, so that touch from what I liked to express in my fiddle playing was digested and came out in it’s own new way too. Many things shared, a few things different with those two instruments when it comes to the moments of wanting to “lean in hard.”
How do you find new areas to explore within these traditional frameworks? What is your process as you develop a song?
I guess simply, I listen to the tune deeply, listening with my own ear, informed by my unique musical journey and life, and then I stretch out places and highlight things that are compelling to me. Or I add new things in to help bring to the light a compelling element of the traditional material for me, and that could be as obvious as just loving the chord that dominates a tune the most, or as micro as, woa, I love the rhythm that’s born from simply how often the fiddler is hitting a specific drone string. I know that this is going to be different than how other folks would do it, because it’s my ears and heart at work, and this wild history of mine that went into who I am today, from growing up with music in the house, to the kind of strange stuff that I’ve decided to go and study within trad music, that exact combination can only be me. So even though I don’t think I’m making anything very complex, I’m confident that it is completely my own voice, and that it comes from a real appreciation of the complexity that can be found within this rather minimalistic traditional music.
Have you changed your practices to ensure that your team is diverse?
The more I’ve worked on my own for the last few years, the more I found peace, and really, success, in getting to control this really important shaping of who I want to spend time with professionally. I just try to work with people who equally lead and listen, watch out for each other’s needs, and perhaps work with practices leaning towards a more feminine economy. I’ve found that the more I work with other women or queer folks, the more that that is the environment we create together. So, though I’m not having those labels be the gateway of who I choose to work with, it often correlates. I work with men too, right, they are a majority of the industry, but I choose to team up with those who’ve done the work to try and learn how to participate in a work environment where voices are equal, where more questions are asked as opposed to apparent conclusive statements made, and where growth has a lot of integrity and is simply healthier for the team.
Have you ever been given something remarkable by a fan?
I was once handed a big hardcover tome of Maine ballads by a fan at a house concert up in the White Mountains in New Hampshire. Sure, it was a book that maybe I could have found in another way, a deep dive into used books on an internet search, but this was an old book, one this fan had kept for quite a while, and I guess just the idea that he thought it would be safe with me and better used by me, I felt honored by that trust. It lives in my bookshelf of regional folk tradition research alongside the big Child Ballad books and John Jacob Niles works, too. I love that shelf, and truthfully, most of those books are used ones given to me by folks from my past who thought I’d do well with them.
Golden Loam will be released on October 8th