They’re Calling Me Home is the follow-up to Rhiannon Giddens’ Grammy- nominated 2019 album with Francesco Turrisi, there is no Other which we covered on these pages. As you learned then, as that album was recorded in Dublin, that Giddens and Turrisi both live in Ireland when they aren’t on tour. They have been there since March 2020 due to the pandemic. The two expats found themselves drawn to the music of their native and adoptive countries of America, Italy, and Ireland during lockdown. Thus, the album title and theme of these songs speak to the longing for home as well as the metaphorical “call home” of death, which has been a tragic reality for so many during the COVID-19 crisis, all twelve songs culminating in a recording that took only six days to complete at Hellfire, a small studio on a working farm outside Dublin.
The minstrel banjo, accordion, and frame drums that have become characteristic of the pair’s sound are well represented on the album, but it’s the viola and cello banjo combination that brings the intensity. Joining them at key moments are Congolese guitarist Niwel Tsumbu and Irish traditional musician Emer Mayock on flute, whistle, and pipes. Engineer Ben Rawlins was key to the shape and sound of the record while Giddens and Turrisi produced, and Kim Rosen mastered. The album features several traditional songs that Giddens hasn’t played for years, including some of the first old-time pieces she ever learned: the defiant antem “I Shall Not Be Moved,” the pleading love song, given an Irish flourish with Mayock’s flute, “Black As Crow (Dearest Dear)” and the theme-centric “Waterbound.” In some of the traditional songs, you’ll find as you did last time, Turrrisi playing unfamiliar stringed and percussion instruments such as chitarra battente, tantan, tombak, and calabash.
The album also includes an Italian lullaby, “Nenna,” that Turrisi used to sing to his infant daughter that took on new resonance during the lockdown as well a public domain tune arranged and translated by the duo and performed with Giddens singing and Turrissi on that aforementioned cello banjo in the melancholic, beautifully rendered “Si Dolce el Tormento.” The cello banjo appears again with Giddens on vocals and octave viola for the traditional ballad “When I Was In My Prime.” There are also two well-known songs about death: “Amazing Grace,” with Uillean pipes no less, and “O Death” (remember the late Ralph Stanley singing it in O Brother Where Art Thou) spare as can be with just vocal and frame drum. Two instrumentals appear with some of the more unique instrumentation in an album full of it – “Niwel Goes To Town” was written by Giddens who plays gourd banjo, accompanied by Turrisi on tomback and Tsumbu on the nylon string guitar while the traditional “Bully for You” features Giddens (minstrel banjo), Turrisi (chitarra battente), and Mayock (Irish flute) for another of the Irish flavored tunes.
The term “Avalon” often takes on spiritual and mythological meaning as it does in the song of the same name penned by the duo along with J. Robinson. Here Giddens plays viola, Turrissi the frame drum, and guest Niwel Tsumbu adds a terrific nylon string guitar. Regarding “Waterbound” and its incessant chorus – “Waterbound, and I can’t get home, down to North Carolina,” it’s a traditional fiddle tune first recorded in the 1920 and directly addresses the longing for the comfort of home and family in this time of prolonged isolation. Rhiannon says, “‘Waterbound’ is a song I learned a long time ago and it brings me forcefully home to North Carolina when I sing it, and considering that I am, indeed Waterbound, and have been for a long time, it’s a rare moment when a folk song represents exactly my situation in time.” Both the title track and “Waterbound” have already been released as singles and videos.
While this work may not be as riveting and stunning as its predecessor, due mostly to the familiarity of many of the tunes, that dynamic cuts both ways because there are few interpreters as adept as Giddens for traditional fare. Also, the remarkable musical chemistry between the duo just continues to grow.
Photo credit: Karen Cox
