Rising Appalachia: Ever-Widening The Circles, And Slowing Down The Music In Spring 2016

This weekend finds Rising Appalachia getting back on the road for their Slow Music Tour, bringing a revolution in song and an empowering brand of neo-activism to the masses across this great nation. After a quick jaunt that took them along the eastern seaboard and through the Northeast, then across the border to several Canadian stops in the great North, the band is heading down to their beloved Bayou, reigniting the Spring tour with a high-profile performance at The Parish at the House of Blues in New Orleans. The prior afternoon, Rising Appalachia is teaming up with the Permaculture Action Network and dropping in on CRISP Farms in the Upper 9th Ward for an action day; both events take place during the second weekend of Jazzfest in New Orleans.

An activist group with a cornucopia of styles, the sister tandem of Leah Song and Chloe Smith are a dynamic force of nature, both onstage and off. A righteous hodgepodge of influences are reimagined as powerful, feminine medicinal hymns. Conceived and conceptualized in Atlanta, GA, and spending seven years embedded in the art and music communities in NOLA, the group finally decamped to Asheville, NC. Beginning with a promising debut album Leah & Chloe, all the way up through their most recent masterpiece Wider Circles, they’ve released six albums as modern-day musical troubadours. The sisters’ refusal to be pigeonholed in a genre, sound or scene finds them harking back to old-timey mountain tunes, New Orleans parade melodies, Bulgarian, Congolese, and Cuban influences galore, juxtaposed with sweet and emotive crooning and timeless, riveting poetry.

On the live circuit, Rising Appalachia has been steadily mesmerizing sold-out audiences from sea to shining for nearly a decade. During a brief but productive touring hiatus, the girls returned to their treasured Crescent City for over a month this passed winter. During that time, the sisters could be found soaking in the sin and scenery, the beauty and horrors, the parades and promise, that define the banks of the Mississippi River and color so many Cajun and Creole traditions. The band’s music is a melting pot of influences, marrying the simple approach of folk music with deeply textured compositions.

With the able assistance of multi-instrumentalist David Brown and masterful percussionist Biko Casini, the Rising Appalachia cannon is brimming with fantastic songs; afghans of different indigenous sounds and instruments, as one can hear banjos, fiddles, double bass, acoustic guitar, congas, djembe and a myriad of percussion, among so many other implementations. The grooves can employ everything from mid-90s R&B and hip-hop to melodic, chanting reggae vibes; the vocal harmonies emanating from the siren sisters are tear-jerking and grandiose. Alongside an opening set from The Lost Bayou Ramblers, a wide swath and potent dosage Rising Appalachia’s now-patented medicine music will be on display at their Jazzfest second Sunday hoedown, May 1st at The Parish at the House of Blues.

Chloe Smith spoke about their soulful, spiritual connection to NOLA (in Providence Journal):

“As for soul, I think the entire world knows New Orleans as the champion of spirit, music, and dance. The voice and songs of New Orleans will knock you off your feet and strike you quick with an almost obsessive heartache and love. Leah and I went down to the city after Katrina to work with an amazing theater troupe on a post-storm art collective piece and basically never left. We lived for in NOLA for 7 years and cut our teeth busking in the streets of the French Quarter and soaking in the jazz and brass of its people. Naturally, and in its own way, those sounds seeped into our music as well as into our identity as southerners. We are always sort of pointing our compass and our calendars to a time when we can go back to that wild and messy city.”

Rising Appalachia has always been a conscious conglomerate, focused on environmentalism, sustainability practices, and causes progressive in nature and ideology. So it comes as little surprise that the team has joined hands with the Permaculture Action Network for an action day in their former home city. Their long-time commitment to the “slow music movement,” and continuing focus on community roots has indeed proven them a “cultural influence and catalyst of justice.”

The Permaculture Action Network is not new to this kind of collaboration. The non-profit organization linked up for a groundbreaking US tour with The Polish Ambassador in 2014, the aptly-named Permaculture Action Tour. It was during this impactful, first-of-it’s-kind sojourn that the fertile seeds for Rising Appalachia’s involvement with the PAN were sewn. This new project is a mission to promote sustainable touring, to bring in local outreach to each and every event, to reduce single-use waste at the shows, and source farm-to-table food for backstage areas and catering, and so much more. Their unifying goal is to live, breathe and implement the permaculture principles as best they can, leading by example and utilizing the tools for an era of change.

Ryan Rising, a founder of the Permaculture Action Network, had this to say about the beginnings of this movement:

“It’s incredible to see the number of folks who came to a Polish Ambassador show or a Permaculture Action Day last year, and first discovered this world of ecological and social transformation, and are now making this part of their everyday lives, dedicating themselves to this movement, living at land trusts and in intentional communities, joining urban farms. It shows how incredible music and arts can be to making the world a better place, and inspiring people to take hold of their lives.”

We asked Chloe Smith about their plans for this forthcoming New Orleans action day at CRISP Farms:

“We are so excited to come out of this winter’s hibernation season with some new action steps towards making this touring musician thing a sustainable reality both for ourselves as well as for the communities we visit. Recently, we made public our Slow Music Movement platform, which has been in the cooker for years as a sort of set of ideas and practices aimed towards slowing down this fast paced business so as to remain rooted and active in the real work of bringing together community through music. There are many different layers to the movement, including alternative transportation (train, horse, sailboat!), local based food and lodging support, local nonprofit partnerships, as well as “action days” before and after shows; where folks can come out and volunteer with members of the band. This year we have three dates where we are teaming up with an incredible organization based in the Bay Area called Permaculture Action Network, and our first action day is set to be at CRISP Farms in the Upper 9th Ward in New Orleans, on April 30th.”

You can find out more information about the event here.

Smith continued, “Crisp Farms was established in 2013. With the help of some neighbors the once blighted property is now a thriving community garden that focuses on research into sustainable permaculture and exploring alternative growing practices for an urban environment. The farm hosts various events on its stages including the well known 9th Ward Festival.) This day will be focusing on cobb-building, installations, and planting together. Crisp is already a thriving garden and now wishes to be more of a space for neighbors to spend time together and create deeper relationships- true resilience. We are looking forward to the opportunity to get dirty and connect with CRISP during the busy Jazz Fest Season and begin to explore the ways we can recycle some of the energy we build up at concerts BACK into local communities. This is the first step of many!”