Folk Singer Steps Out

Rhiannon Giddens's self-assured debut solo album, Tomorrow Is My Turn, belies the true message. Forget tomorrow: The singer, violinist, and banjo player’s day has arrived. Then again, as a founding member of the old-time string band Carolina Chocolate Drops, she’s already got a Grammy Award to back up her moxy—not to mention collaborations with musical all-stars such as Elvis Costello, Taylor Goldsmith, Jim James, and Marcus Mumford.

A North Carolina native, Giddens grew up surrounded by old-time music and even moonlighted as a contra-dance caller while studying opera at Oberlin Conservatory. In 2005, she met the original members of the Carolina Chocolate Drops at the Black Banjo Gathering in Boone. The friends began traveling each week to the home of octogenarian fiddler Joe Thompson to learn, listen, and jam, ultimately forming their virtuosic band as a tribute to Thompson, his unique bowing style, and the legacy of Southern African-American string bands.

As the sole remaining original member of the band, Giddens steps out on her own with a soulful album rich in paeans to her influences, from Dolly Parton’s “Don’t Let It Trouble Your Mind” to folksinger Odetta’s “Waterboy.” rhiannongiddens.com 

Wheels Up

Roots band Steel Wheels has always cast its lot in the roving ways of Appalachia, from its road-ready name to its mountain minstrel sound. Based in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the four-piece string band further explores the push and pull of travel in their fourth album, Leave Some Things Behind, in which the thrill of adventure meets the sting of homesickness. Frontman Trent Wagler calls the songs “short stories on the Exodus theme,” with such telling titles as “Find Your Mountain” and “So Lonely” a result of the past five years of intense touring. “Towards the end of the album, in a song called ‘Rescue Me, Virginia,’” Wagler explains, “there is a line that says, ‘It makes a difference where you go, it makes you different where you go.’ But in the end the song is about coming home to Virginia.” Recorded at Blue Sprocket Sound in Harrisonburg, Virginia, the new album looks to the horizon but sounds firmly rooted in place. thesteelwheels.com