NASHVILLE, Tenn. (Jan. 23, 2017) - Kieran Kane and Rayna Gellert will perform at The Basement (1604 8th Ave S #330) in Nashville on Sunday, February 18. Show time is 8 p.m. and tickets can be purchased here. The duo will release The Ledges on Dead Reckoning Records on Friday, February 16, 2018, with pre-orders featuring "Wouldn't Be the First Time" as the instant gratification track available now. Pre-order The Ledges oniTunes and Amazon.
Kane and Gellert met in 2015 when both were performing at San Francisco’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. Fast forward to the summer of 2017 where the newly formed duo retreated to Kane’s lakeside cabin in upstate New York where they wrote and recorded The Ledges.
They brought with them fiddles, guitars, a banjo, an octave mandolin, five microphones and a vibe. Paring down to the essentials and recording live, the two emerged from the cabin with a collection of songs written and presented with an assured simplicity.
Individually, both musicians have racked up quite a resume. Gellert, steeped in traditional music from birth and inspired by her father Dan Gellert, emerged as a folk music force, touring as a member of the acclaimed string band Uncle Earl and recording with musical luminaries such as Robyn Hitchcock, Sara Watkins, Scott Miller and Loudon Wainwright III.
Kane grew up north of the Bronx with an affinity for blues and bluegrass. He hit Nashville and formed the award-winning O’Kanes, scoring numerous harmony-laden Top 10 country hits. In the mid 1990s, Kane became an unlikely label head when he launched the prolific Dead Reckoning Records. The label released a slew of exceptional projects by Kevin Welch, Tammy Rogers, Mike Henderson, The Fairfield Four, David Olney, Kane Welch Kaplin and others. The label was an alternative to the contemporary country music beat of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Kieran Kane and Rayna Gellert’s The Ledges is a raw, organic master class in minimalism and musicality. This outing is “the reinvigoration of Dead Reckoning Records,” says Kane. “I am so thrilled that we are doing this.”
As The Country Music Hall of Fame’s writer and editor Peter Cooper says about The Ledges: “[It’s] a resplendent, acoustic, avant-garde variant that could be called alt-Americana. It isn’t like anything else you’ll hear this year, yet it is reminiscent of so much that we treasure in American roots music. It is the embodiment of soulful musicality."