In case you've missed all the hub-ub on our Facebook page recently, we're starting a new project. It's called "Double Americana," and will be a weekly FB Live session airing each Wednesday at noon EST where we can talk Americana and play you a folk song we've learned that week. Most of the time these will be traditional songs, but if one of our own tunes slips in there, well, that's just the way folk songs get passed around.
We've had this idea in the works for a while, from way back when Scott used to sling coffee for a living. Early one morning when he had to open the shop, in a stroke of brilliance instead of calling from the bar "Double American-O," he accidentally called "Double American-A." It could have been that Lucinda Williams was playing on the stereo or that he hadn't had enough coffee yet, but when Mallory came in to get her free morning fix, he leaned over the bar and said: "How about this? Album title: Double Americana. Album content: Traditional Folk songs." Mallory leaned over and responded: "Album Artwork: The two of us in a giant coffee cup."
So, now you know. You can blame Scott for this very obvious coffee/folk music pun and you can blame Mallory for the cutesy artwork. But you should also know that they aren't sorry.
Lately we've been thinking about the importance of playing music for the love of playing music and appreciating the musicality of local communities. We're in a really fortunate situation where we travel full time and find ourselves in these wonderful, weird musical communities where songs are still created because they need to be sung. And believe it or not, before there was a music industry, before music could be recorded, the only way you could listen to music was if your neighbor played it or if you did. A song might only be heard once in your lifetime. There was no repeat button. And while we are grateful for technology and the ways in which it helps us connect with music we love, with this project we're going to try to connect with the simplicity of a song we share with a community. We've got the most basic recording technology to help us and the only goal is to have fun and explore some great songs that have been around for a while.
This project is still open ended and we'll see where the muse takes us, but we hope you follow along with us. We plan to do some collaborating with other musicians and maybe even throw in some prizes for you to win. We'll be posting lyric sheets and chord charts for the songs we play live so that you can follow along as well. And in case you've missed it, we'll be bringing back our favorite segment, "What's in our Fruit Bowl?"
You can tune in to our very first episode tomorrow-- Wednesday, May 24th, 2017 at 12PM EST.