Movies made the transition to color from black-and-white along about the time of The Wizard of Oz, held back only by the economics in the years of the Depression. Photography, on the other hand, maintains a vibrant vein of black-and-white artistry to this day. Monochrome enhances the effect of light and shadow without the distraction of other hues and draws your eye to different elements in the picture. That’s kind of the effect I get when I listen to the latest album from Minnesota-born but current central Texas songstress Long Prairie, entitled By Sunrise. The record has the usual instrumentation you expect from a folk/Americana project, with the arrangements straightforward, leaning sometimes toward stark, and they highlight a different sound.
At first I was tempted to say this was a bluegrass album, but as I continued to listen I realized it’s more old-timey and Appalachian in its content. In My Dreams was inspired by a trip to western North Carolina. When the lyric mentions “I get a second chance”, it’s about the music, but it could be about other things in life, too. Genuine is a little more uptempo, with diamonds as a metaphor for types of relationships. The Roses is a country song where Long Prairie laments that “roses don’t take the pain away, roses don’t un-break my heart.” Give Thanks gives a nod to a favorite church hymnal.
Geography comes into the picture when she goes to visit her dad near her hometown of Long Prairie, MN, in the depths of Lonely Winter. When she voices her dad’s question about “where did my people go”, it’s not a philosophical question but a rhetorical comment on staying home in the wind and snow. At the opposite end of the seasonal spectrum is Sunflowers Touch the Sky, where summer sun helps the namesake grow tall, especially to a child. Along a more modern observation is Hill Country Storm that does ask a philosophical question, “Lord, what did we do” to deserve this weather.
There are of course a myriad of ways to produce a record. You can push the limits of a 64-track machine with layers of instruments and special effects, and it will sound modern. Long Prairie and her producer Omar Vallejo went the other way and the result is timeless. By Sunrise could just as easily have been cut 50 years ago, with all the focus on her voice and acoustic guitar, and that’s the reason you want to listen to it in the first place.
About the author: I've actually driven from Tehatchapee to Tonopah. And I've seen Dallas from a DC-9 at night.