The Yearlings
MusicSA Feature Artist 5 May - 26 May 2008
Alt. folk act The Yearlings combine warm boy-girl harmonies, delicate flat-picking and sparse country blues to create songs that are at once haunting and soothing. Since meeting at the Tamworth Country Music Festival in 2000, Robyn Chalklen and Chris Parkinson have wasted no time joining the ranks of the great duos of country/folk/acoustic music.
They have toured nationally to sell-out crowds and performed at countless festivals along the way, including Port Fairy, the National Folk Festival, Harvest, Queenscliff, FUSE, Apollo Bay and the prestigious New York Guitar Festival in February 2008. They have also won a SA Music Industry Award for the Most Popular Australiana Act 2005, and were nominated for a Golden Guitar Award (Australia's country music holy grail).
The Yearlings' successful self-titled debut album (released on Reckless Records in 2003) was recorded live in 8 hours and long-listed for an ARIA nomination. Second album Wind Already Blown (Mixmasters Records), had two tracks chosen for Claudia Karvanís award-winning television series, 'Love My Way'.
Now, with the release of their third full-length recording including eleven new songs, The Yearlings have created an album of outstanding beauty - it breathes. "Highway Dancing" is a departure from The Yearlings’ former stripped back, acoustic approach to recording. Using their weaving guitars and seductive harmonies as a base, this album has the backing of a band – giving full favour to their music. "Instead of getting squashed or lost in the sonic soup that is a band, I think our songs have been augmented and given a new life, new clothes," says Robyn.
Recorded in Brooklyn, New York over four days during the American winter of February 2008, the album was produced by David Spelman (founding director of the New York Guitar Festival and Adelaide Guitar Festival), who saw The Yearlings playing a gig in Adelaide and felt he just had to work with them. Inspired, David herded the musicians together at Excello studios - three members of New York roots band "Ollabelle": Tony Leone (drums), Byron Isaacs (bass), Glenn Patscha (keyboards) plus multi–instrumentalist Larry Campbell (pedal steel, dobro, mandolin, fiddle), who has worked as a sideman for Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson and recently won a Grammy for producing Levon Helm's latest record.
Highway Dancing was recorded by Oz music legend Mick Wordley who has worked with many artists including Jeff Lang and Chris Whitley at his renowned Adelaide studio Mixmasters Records in Adelaide. Mick flew over to help arrange and capture the music in four days live, on-the-fly, and onto 2-inch tape. This old-school style has left the record breathing a life often trampled by modern technology. "It's a blues record," says Chris. "Not in the musical sense but thematically. Love, loss, longing, addiction, redemption - it's all in there."
Highway Dancing is a triumph and superb achievement for The Yearlings, their strongest work to date tastefully supported by world-class musicians. This is one cool record.
The Yearlings will launch the album in SA over two evenings, Fri 23rd May & Sat 24th May at the Promethean, with special guests Emily Davis & Marcel Borrack (Fri) and Huckleberry Swedes Duo & Marcel Borrack (Sat). They'll also be hitting the road with shows in Melbourne and regional Victoria from 6 May.
