Today, West Virginia-bred, Nashville-based singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, Sierra Ferrell, releases a two-song single that marks her debut recording for Rounder. Jeremiah and Why’d Ya Do It will appear on Ferrell’s full-length album, slated for release in spring of 2021.
Produced by Gary Paczosa (Alison Krauss, Dwight Yoakam, Gillian Welch), the single features a stellar lineup of musicians, including country royalty like Chris Scruggs and Ferrell’s longtime collaborator Nathan Leath. Sprung from her self-described “country heart but a jazz mind,” Why’d Ya Do It is a beguiling and bittersweet lament partly inspired by Ferrell’s fascination with calypso and tango music. And with its galloping rhythm and classic bluegrass storytelling—as well as a guest appearance from GRAMMY Award-winner Sarah Jarosz on background vocals—Jeremiah sweetly delivers what Ferrell dubs “a broken song, with a gleam of hope at the end.”
Writing in No Depression last year, Amos Perrine said, “Singular is too inadequate a word to describe Ferrell. Her mixture of tempo, melody, and imagery — each often changed multiple times within a single song — would be enough to make even the most traveled purveyor of singer-songwriters sit up and take notice.”
Jessie Scott included Ferrell in NPR Music’s preview of last fall’s annual Americana Music Festival. “[Ferrell’s] got a tremendous voice that’s joyously lilting, and at once vintage and contemporary. She sings with abandon, with a huge repertoire that spans jazz, country and cowboy music, with undertones of the blues.”
Ferrell was among the artists The Boot profiled in its 2020 “Artists to Watch” feature. Carena Liptak noted, “With her quavering, lively vocal delivery…Ferrell immerses her listeners in a world of old-time influences and omnivorous musical tastes. The Charleston, W.Va., native packs a string-heavy punch, inflected with her love of jazz music.”
With her spellbinding voice and time-bending sound, Sierra Ferrell makes music that’s as fantastically vagabond as the artist herself. Growing up in West Virginia, she got her start belting out Shania Twain songs in a local bar at the age of seven, and left home in her early 20s to journey across the country with a troupe of wandering musicians. After years of living in her van and busking on the streets of New Orleans and Seattle, Ferrell moved to Nashville, where she drew the attention of Rounder Records, which signed Ferrell in 2019.
Now at work on her full-length debut for Rounder, Ferrell delights in defying all convention in everything she creates. “I want my music to be like my mind is—all over the place,” she says. “I listen to everything from bluegrass to techno to goth metal, and it all inspires me in different ways that I try to incorporate into my songs and make people really feel something.”
