BRATTLEBORO — When Liz Simmons gets into her car to drive to Springfield, Massachusetts, where she teaches voice at Community Music School of Springfield, she listens to music ranging from Dolly Parton to Emmylou Harris, from Patsy Cline to Beyoncé, from Alison Krauss and Union Station to Indigo Girls, from Shawn Colvin to Kate Bush. She admits her taste in music is diverse.
When not teaching youngsters how to sing, Simmons fronts her Brattleboro-based band, Low Lily, whose members have toured all over the U.S., the U.K., and Canada over the past decade and garnered two No. 1 songs on international folk radio and, in 2019, two Independent Music Awards: Best Bluegrass Song and bluegrass Vox Pop Fan Favorite, both for “10,000 Days Like These.”
With the release of a new album, Angels in the Wreckage, after a delay due to the pandemic, the American Roots band brings its three-part harmonies and original music to The Stone Church on Sunday, April 30 for a long-awaited album release party.
Low Lily, founded in 2014, is made up of Liz Simmons, 44, of Brattleboro, on guitar and vocals; Flynn Cohen, 52, on guitar, mandolin, and vocals; and Natalie Padilla, 34, on fiddle and vocals.
Padilla joined the band last summer, and her world-class fiddle playing has won her fiddle championships in multiple styles, including bluegrass, old time, and Texas fiddle. Low Lily will be joined by Stefan Amidon of Brattleboro on drums and Hazel Royer of Boston on double bass for this album release tour.
Simmons and Cohen are married and have one son, Gabe Bradshaw, 21, who studies recording, production, and engineering at The Blackbird Academy in Nashville.
The Commons reached Simmons by phone recently to talk about Low Lily's award-winning song from the band's first album, “Hope Lingers On,” the new album “Angels in the Wreckage,” and the upcoming album release party.
* * *
Victoria Chertok: Congrats on the release of your new album.
Liz Simmons: Thank you! We've put out a few singles these past few years, but because of the pandemic, it's been five years since our last full-length album. What came out is a 14-track album.
It felt right to do a little more of an epic project. It takes the listener on a journey and has some ups and downs. In general, we're capturing the energy of what we do musically, as well as more soft, introspective moments.
We put out our last full length album in 2018 and we did an EP - a short-play, six-track album in 2015. We brought a fiddle player, Natalie Padilla, from Bozeman, Montana, on board last summer after Lissa Schneckenburger, our former fiddle player, amicably parted ways. (Though Schneckenburger is no longer a performing member of the band, Low Lily's new album features four of her original songs.)
V.C.: What does the band's name “Low Lily” mean?
L.S.: It's a colloquial name for the trout lily, a flower that grows in low-lying areas, particularly in the Northeast, a sweet homage to where we are from.
V.C.: Does Low Lily play originals only? Any covers?
L.S.: We do mainly originals with a couple of reimagined covers. We have a few on the album: a Jethro Tull song, “Wond'ring Again,” which closes the album, and a Shawn Colvin song, “Round of Blues,” which opens the album. We have personal connections to these songs.
Natalie and Flynn write instrumentals, and we include a couple of those as well.
V.C.: How did you pick the title of your new album, Angels in the Wreckage?
L.S.: It comes from thinking about light and dark, love and loss, beauty and destruction, and how these dualities always live side by side in this world. And humans always manage to find anchors in the storm, like angels in the wreckage.
V.C.: Some of your lyrics on the new album have social justice themes and tackle complex topics of love, loss, hope, justice, family heritage, and environmental destruction. Tell me about the origin of the songs “What'll You Do” and “One Wild World.”
L.S.: “What'll You Do,” which Lissa wrote on the new album, is a kind of sequel to the song “Hope Lingers On” from our first album, which really took off. Choirs around the world are still singing it as an anthem for peace and justice, and we thought that was so cool. You send a message, and it reverberates around the world.
“What'll We Do” is edgier and is speaking about the disproportionate violence against Black people by the police. It's a rallying cry for people to stand up and shout for justice.
We were a little concerned about putting it out there - we didn't want it to be misinterpreted. There are plenty of police people who are respectful and kind, so what we're really saying is “no racist police” - standing up against those police who operate from that place that yields violence, racial profiling, and incarceration.
“One Wild World” is a hopeful song about growing from love, appreciating the good things that humans have created in the world, making the world a better place to leave for our children.
We have to operate from hope and love in order to carry on. Sometimes it is time to fight, and sometimes it is a time to come from a place of love.
V.C.: “Angels in the Wreckage” was produced by banjo legend Dirk Powell. What was it like to work with him?
L.S.: Dirk is an amazing musician, a multi-instrumentalist, and recording producer in our genre. I had the opportunity to work with him on my friend Kyle Carey's record several years ago and liked working with him a lot. Then he mastered Low Lily's 2018 album.
We felt his perspective and his take on music would be a really valuable thing to add to what we do. He did just that, and he added so much. He played bass and banjo on almost all of the tracks, and he added a bit of his Louisiana Cajun sound with accordion and triangle on our song “Lonely.”
V.C.: Who were some of your early music influences?
L.S.: My parents are my earliest musical influences, as they are both musicians. My mom used to sing me to sleep with old-time ballads from the American folk tradition, and English, Scots, and Irish traditions, too. She was a real product of folk revival and knew all those old songs, also from her mother who sang to her.
As I got older, I was into all the folk music, including (at the time) contemporary artists like Indigo Girls, Tracy Chapman, and Sarah McLachlan, but I was also into pop music.
I was classically trained in my teens and sang in musicals and in school and local choirs. I did find my way back to folk music in my late teens. At the time I was passionate about Irish traditional singing and then later became re-enamored with bluegrass and Americana styles.
V.C.: Which instruments do you play?
L.S.: I play guitar on stage, but I'm also a closet pianist. I don't really tell people that. My first instrument was the ukulele when I was 4 years old. But then I started taking flute in fifth grade and played for six years. I also started with piano lessons at age 11, then acoustic guitar when I was 13.
V.C.: Finally, what are you most excited about with your new album and your album release show?
Flynn Cohen: I hope our audience feels both inspired and viscerally excited by listening to the music. I also hope that our existing fans appreciate the new songs as much as the old ones. I am personally excited to play more bluegrass-inspired music and to perform all of this new material that we haven't done before.
Natalie Padilla: I hope this album inspires the listener to join us in a journey through lyrics and melodies, taking the time to sit still and enjoy music. I have a good time rocking out on stage with Low Lily in trio form, but this will be next level, and I can't wait!
L.S.: Putting out an album and planning a tour is a lot of work, so I'm excited to finally play the music for an audience! We spend so much time promoting it, and sometimes I forget why I actually do it, and when I get on stage and there is magic.
Then I am reminded of what the point of it all is.
* * *
Low Lily's album release party for Angels in the Wreckage takes place on Sunday, April 30 at 7 p.m. at the Stone Church, 210 Main St., in Brattleboro. Doors open 6:30 p.m. Tickets ($17) are available at stonechurchvt.com.
For more information on Low Lily, visit lowlily.com.