DECEMBER 2007 ONLINE EDITORIALS
Wildwood Holler! - Round Trip
By Nate Harper
"Round Trip,” the new long-player from local acoustic folk trio The Wildwood Holler!, is a thoroughly homegrown affair. Recorded at Alphabet Studios - Fort Collins’ nonprofit recording studio - the record is a continuation of the group’s fixations on “consciousness, nature, making music, and the Divine.”
The new record is a follow up to their 2005 debut, “Exclamation,” a record that helped the group to win Best New Artist honors from KUNC the year it was released. And though no one in the group has any complaints over the previous album, the amount of time and energy they were able to put into the new one has allowed the band to produce something they feel is truly representative of their vision as musicians.
“We are proud of how ‘Exclamation’ sounds,” said banjo player and vocalist Josh Beard, “but (we) feel that we have really stepped the quality up a few notches with ‘Round Trip'.”
As Beard describes it, the process of making the album was more akin to the writing of a novel than to the recording of an EP.
“We probably spent a week just finding the right placement of the mics to get exactly the tone we wanted.”
And though the process was at times painstaking, the group feels that the cause of the struggles, their quest to get “the sound,” was ultimately successful.
“Given an opportunity to spend a lot of time on quality at Alphabet, we became painfully aware that there is ALWAYS more that can be done to make the sound better,” Beard said. However, he and the group remain fully confident that those who enjoyed the debut will “be pleased and impressed with Round Trip.”
In addition to getting the sound, the group was also able to expand their own sounds with enhanced instrumentation on the record. Along with their usual duties, bassist/vocalist Pierre Houssney played the durbecki drum and masmar, a type of Middle-Eastern double reed woodwind. Mandolin player/vocalist Michael Kirkpatrick also played sitar, and the band was joined by MindGoFlip’s Doug Scarborough on the Fender Rhoades and John Magnie of the Subdudes on accordion for a few tracks as well.
“The highest expectations are the ones we have for ourselves,” Beard said of the record. And as far as the public’s reaction: “First we need to get folks to hear the cd!” “Round Trip” is available at cagefreerecords.com, or locally at the Finest and Passion for the Planet Eco Boutique.