Nashville’s The Danberrys are somehow both charmingly old-world and very much of this moment. The married couple’s rich pastoral blues and muscly folk evoke the big-hearted storytelling of pioneering giants like the Carter Family but could only come now, as a mixed offshoot of roots music’s ever-growing family tree.
In 2009, the two recorded singer/guitarist Ben DeBerry’s original material together on a whim, and The Danberrys were born. More than a decade later, six Independent Music Award nominations, including two nods for best Americana album and one for best EP, punctuate/their résumé. Their 2016 LP Give & Receive earned serious acclaim, and the pair’s fourth album, Shine (out 7/24) sails past the high expectations that ensued. Produced by ace drummer Marco Giovino (Band of Joy, Patty Griffin, Buddy Miller) and executive produced by Brian Brinkerhoff, Shine captures the Danberrys’ fiercely guarded independence––and revels in it. Singer Dorothy Daniel’s commanding voice roars low and high––an ideally nuanced partner for DeBerry’s subtly virtuosic guitar playing. For the first time in their career, the two co-wrote every song together, pulling in the help of a third songwriter on a handful of the tracks.
Their unforced creative approach is on triumphant display on Shine, the twelve-song collection reveals a pair of artists putting years of passionate study in bluegrass, blues, funk, folk, gospel, and pop to brilliant use: conversational stories and metaphorical sketches of the natural world rest on beds of complex bluesy folk. “I’ve always loved music that makes you guess what it’s about,” Daniel says. “We want our songs to be vague enough that they could be interpreted to mean different things.”
Glide is proud to premiere “The Road” (below) from The Danberrys, a self-described “unfinished gem” and one of the first co-writes between Dorothy and Ben. The duo lends itself an inspiring flair that delves into the Nashville Americana pop immediacy of Margo Price, while stepping in the southern blues roots of Lucinda and Dolly.
“We knew we had to find our way together as writers, so we began scheduling co-writes with songsmith Jon Weisberger. “The Road” was one of our first co-writes, and we are so thankful and happy to have Jon’s creative voice on this song and record, say Ben. “It was the perfect material to start with – a song about the bumps and illusions we face on the road of life and finding the will to get up every day and keep going. It’s also about being gentle with yourself and accepting that there is no “getting there”…it’s only ever about the journey, and we’re all walking that same old road together. ”
