We’re very excited to release our second EP "Winters Like These" on April 23rd. We’ve been working on this release for almost a year and a half as we’ve plucked away at a handful of singles over the course of 2020, despite the added complexities of the pandemic. Now we’re grateful to be able to release the four singles we put out last year, packaged together with two new tracks “Trying to Be a Stranger” and “Nothing to Show,” which we’ve had in our live repertoire for some time.
As always there are many people to thank. While Spencer, Tara, and Scott recorded the majority of the EP, we couldn’t have done it without the talents of Sam Amos, who helped us track guitar, vocals, and banjo on half the tracks (and even got swindled into adding vocals on “Nothing to Show”) and Geoff Weber who tracked, mixed, and mastered the bulk of the tracks on Winters Like These. We’re also grateful to Gabe Jones and Donald Monroe for adding drums and pedal steel, respectively, on “Trying to Be a Stranger.” It was a joy to collaborate with them in a time when in-person collaboration is not always an option. And we’re grateful to Stuart Ross Johnson of the band Ross Hollow for mastering “Nothing to Show.”
If the original Migrant Birds EP was an exploration of a blues-inflected folk sound, Winters Like These is a testament to the breadth of the folk genre as a whole and the different styles that have folded into each other to influence us as artists. “Lay It Down” pulls inspiration from the protest songs and labor movements of Appalachia, while “Three Strand Cord” draws on the melody “Wayfaring Stranger” and the spirit of traditional folk tunes. “Chalk Peddler” and “Feel It All,” on the other hand, are pure pop-folk. And while “Trying to Be a Stranger” has the body of a country-western ballad, it wears the clothes of some of the rock songs we grew up listening to, the same kind that inspired “Nothing to Show,” our most purely folk-rock song yet. Folk and Americana are big tents, and we’re grateful to be under them.
Winters Like These embraces the various strands of our musical heritage (including the gang vocals that Tara’s punk background brought to the mix), but what unites it conceptually is that it is a collection of deeply personal songs. Introspective and honest, these six songs have been an expression of who we are musically and personally over the past few years and we’re grateful to share them with you. We’ve got a different direction in mind for the next phase of Migrant Birds, but for now we’ll leave it at that. Thank you for your support and for being part of our journey.
Released on 4/23/2021. Lyrics and music by Migrant Birds. Engineered, mixed, and produced by Sam Amos, Geoff Weber, and Migrant Birds. Artwork by Tara Lancaster Logue.