There is something to be said about songwriter duos and dropping irresistible harmonies is that of essentiality: Welch & Rawlings, The Milk Cartons Kids, Simon and Garfunkel: the list goes on and on. Add songwriting duo Robinson & Rohe to the embraceable mix as their second full-length album Into The Night is due out May 26, 2023 on Righteous Babe Records. Glide is premiering the gorgeous title track (below) where a mythic live concert transforms a “backroom bar” into a place of brief, sacred communion. Robison & Rohe take the less-is-more approach and lets their melodic precision create a crisp fusion of preciseness and poignancy.
Written in 2019 by Jean Rohe and Liam Robinson, Into the Night was recorded in New York City in two phases: basic tracking with an all-star rhythm section before the pandemic in February 2020 and horns and backing vocals after the first round of vaccinations in July 2021. In the intervening months while the project was on pause and sirens echoed through the streets at all hours, this collection of songs revealed itself as a reflection on our mortality and a call to live our brief lives with joy, imagination, integrity, and music.
“Listening to takes and editing this record was both a depression-obliterating joy and the source of some pretty painful longing for all that we’d lost,” says Jean. Working with some of their dear friends, frequent collaborators, and fixtures of New York’s diverse music communities, they gathered engineer Jake Lummus (Toshi Reagon, Gregory Porter), Christopher Tordini (bass – Becca Stevens), NYC go-to Tony Mason (drums – Amy Helm, Norah Jones), Jon Cowherd (organ – Brandi Carlile, Brian Blade, Rosanne Cash) and Bob Lanzetti (electric guitar – Snarky Puppy) at Eastside Sound in Manhattan. When they picked up tracking again over a year later, they heard their horn and vocal arrangements come to life at The Bunker Studio in Brooklyn. By early 2022 they were able to bring acclaimed LA mixing engineer David Boucher onto the project (Encanto, Randy Newman, Madison Cunningham), working remotely in a piece-by-piece process that allowed for a gradual refinement of the sonic landscape. “It is a testament to the many generous contributors to this record that I continue to feel the blood coursing through these songs,” Liam reflects.
“I wrote “Into the Night” as a tribute to the transformative and ecstatic act of music-making. A mythical concert opens with two voices and spare accompaniment. The spotlight is tight. The audience is ready. The lens pulls back, revealing more and more characters. The elemental forces of American music have gathered––are called together––like the four winds: the rumbling rhythm section, the growling horns, the keening fiddle, and of course, the voices. All our voices together, lifting up these ephemeral spells we call songs. When Jean and I started recording this album in February 2020, none of us knew what lurked just around the corner. Years and countless studio hours later, “Into the Night” has morphed and expanded in meaning. The tribute holds true but cuts me deeper. “While we still have breath inside of our lungs / We’re lifting our voices up / Into the night.”
