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Wilmington Star
Sam Quinn and Jill Andrews wanted to rock. The two had been playing and singing alt-bluegrass together since 1999, but now that they'd lost their band's third member, dobro player David Richie, they were ready to try for something a bit louder.
"Neither of us was really listening to bluegrass," says Quinn, "and we were pretty tired of playing with people who were listening to bluegrass. So we just kind of did what we wanted."
The result is the third album by the everybodyfields, a wide-open country-rock catharsis titled Nothing is Okay, out Aug. 21. As the title suggests, these songs are rife with tensions between friends and lovers. They're about conflicting desires, about letting go and leaving. Quinn says they stand in for conversations he, Andrews and other band members never had.
"And sometimes, it's just sort of easier if you play guitar behind it, rather than talk."
But before we range too far with our Fleetwood Mac comparisons, it must be said that many of the themes on Nothing are coded in folk imagery that's more universal than purely self-referential: the album is dotted with long country roads, airplanes taking off, and blackbirds flying away. The work is not without its growing pains. At times, the welcome release of country electric guitar is relegated to a quiet background track rather than allowed to star in the song. Hearing that sound really soar is a pretty good reason to catch the everybodyfields at the Soapbox on June 22. The best reason, though, remains the stunning vocal harmonies of Quinn and Andrews; which ground the everybodyfields' sound, no matter how large it gets.