VIDEO PREMIERE: Martha Spencer Serves Up Appalachian Rendition of Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood’s “Summer Wine”

If you reach Appalachian singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Martha Spencer, it’ll be from the top of her mountain in Virginia, likely when she’s out walking in the woods. Spencer grew up nestled into hills as old as time. Raised in mountain music (she grew up in the famed Whitetop Mountain Band, which dates back to the 1940s), Spencer channels the old sounds, but she can just as easily create new sounds from her worldly travels.

Half of the songs on her new album, Wonderland, which came out September 2nd, are newly written, showcasing songwriting influences from classic icons like Dolly Parton and Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard to modern underground Nashville songwriters like Lillie Mae. On Wonderland, new songs rub shoulders with traditional songs; universal ideas, themes, and tropes fluidly passing  back and forth. It’s a testament to Spencer’s clever ear for turning a phrase, the kind of gift that used to make country singers famous. In Spencer’s hands, the songs shine with a humble beating heart, speaking the truths of her small mountain community, while telling the stories of the music and the people she grew up with, the kind of people who put “rags over riches, joy over judgment, love over all,” in her words. 

Today Glide is offering an exclusive premiere of the video for a cover of Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra’s “Summer Wine,” a standout track that finds Spencer collaborating with her good friend Kyle Dean Smith. Lending her Appalachian sensibility to this classically haunting song, Spencer layers the music with banjo, soft guitar strumming, and the light percussion of a foot tambourine. Kyle Dean Smith lays down the cowboy baritone part of Lee Hazlewood, offering a smokey contrast to Spencer’s enchanting vocals. The video finds the group offering a proper visual on the tune that solidifies its old west meets Appalachia sound, which is certainly a unique envisioning.

Spencer describes the inspiration and process behind recording the song:

“My friend Kyle Dean Smith played me this Nancy Sinatra, Lee Hazlewood song one day and said we ought to work it up. I enjoyed the playfulness of the song and when I started recording, I thought it would a fun one to include. I worked it up on clawhammer banjo with Kyle – he is one of those musicians who can hear every little note, lick and chord in a song. Kyle, Leon Frost and I had a lot of fun playing on it, and we all like to joke around and have fun, so I thought the song fit our personalities well.

Also I liked how the mystical woman came out on top at the end (wild women never get the blues), and the idea of what is real or a dream. We had fun giving it a western old time sound with the clawhammer banjo, guitar, bass, foot tambourine for the silver spurs, and wood knocker, to all create an atmosphere of walking through a western town and back in time.”

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