Bonny Light Horseman today released “Summer Dream,” the warm and tender second single off their anticipated new album Rolling Golden Holy, due out on October 7th via 37d03d Records. “I think of ‘Summer Dream’ as the ultimate example of the ‘yes, and’ process we got into for this record,” explains Mitchell. “There was something we could all feel about this ‘ghost of a summer’s past,’ so the scene is true to each of us but somehow remains mysterious–a phantom. We could have sung that wordless outro for an hour, and in the rough track we basically did. We wanted it to ‘spill all over’ like a summer night.”Rolling Golden Holy is available for pre-order HERE.
Produced by the band’s Josh Kaufman, Rolling Golden Holy is the follow-up to their critically acclaimed, self-titled debut which earned two GRAMMY nominations (Best Folk Album and Best American Roots Performance) and was named one of the ‘Best Albums of 2020’ by Paste, Boston Globe, MOJO, Uncut Magazine, and more. “Summer Dream” follows the new album’s breezy lead single “California,” which earned praise and support upon release via Pitchfork, NPR Music (#NowPlaying), Stereogum, Brooklyn Vegan, and more. The band—who will perform at the Newport Folk Festival on July 23rd—recently added several shows as part of their fall headline tour across the U.S., including a performance as part of The Big Climate Thing festival at Queens, NY’s Forest Hills Stadium (a current itinerary is listed below).
If Bonny Light Horseman’s debut LP felt at all like the work of some short-lived supergroup or a one-off diversion (it never was), Rolling Golden Holy rebuffs the notion with preternatural beauty, charm, and imagination. These 11 songs—all originals, written and realized by the trio as a whole—follow the paths of the traditional tunes the band cherishes to new musical and lyrical frontiers, and give the sounds and situations of history the gravity and shape of now. Rolling Golden Holy confirms that Bonny Light Horseman is not a project but a band, and one presently working at the forefront of modern American folk.
Rolling Golden Holy’s initial writing sessions—and two subsequent recording sessions, first at Aaron Dessner’s Long Pond studio and then at what they label their “spiritual home,” the gorgeous and bosky old church called Dreamland—were a series of “yes, and” encounters, each member encouraging the others to take an idea and run with it a little further, to push past comfort zones. The trio asks—and, with every tune here, answers—an essential question on Rolling Golden Holy: Where does traditional folk music end and modern folk music begin, if there even is such a binary? These songs continually suggest and embody an unspoken continuum.
Bonny Light Horseman Tour Dates:
7/23 – Newport, RI – Newport Folk Festival
8/04-07 – Edmonton, Canada – Edmonton Folk Festival
8/11-13 – Gothenburg, Sweden – Way Out West
9/07-10 – Park City, UT – Park City Song Summit
9/17 – Easthampton, VA – Arcadia Folk Festival
9/16-18 – Queens, NY – The Big Climate Thing at Forest Hills Stadium
9/30 – Sonoma, CA – Sonoma Winery Barn at Gundlach Bundschu
10/02 – San Francisco, CA – Palace of Fine Arts
10/04 – Portland, OR – Aladdin Theater
10/05 – Seattle, WA – Neptune Theater
10/07 – Santa Cruz, CA – Rio Theatre
10/08 – Los Angeles, CA – Lodge Room
10/09 – Los Angeles, CA – Lodge Room
12/1-4 – Key West, FL – COAST Is Clear Festival
12/06 – Nashville, TN – Basement East
12/10 – Washington, DC – Howard Theatre
12/11 – Philadelphia, PA – Underground Arts
12/13 – Cambridge, MA – The Sinclair
12/14 – Brooklyn, NY – Music Hall of Williamsburg
