THE DEEP DARK WOODS ARE SET TO RELEASE A COLLECTION OF REIMAGINED FOLK STANDARDS, BROADSIDE BALLADS VOL. III, VIA VICTORY POOL RECORDS ON MAY 1
The long celebrated, and JUNO Award Nominated group, The Deep Dark Woods has announced their upcoming album, Broadside Ballads Vol. III. An 8-song LP, the record will lend a familiar melancholic warmth to a collection of traditional folk songs spanning centuries and continents.
Intertwined amongst their albums of original material, Deep Dark Woods has been steadily building up a series of releases called Broadside Ballads, focusing on traditional Irish, English, and Scottish folk songs. It’s a fitting tribute to the music that influenced Ryan Boldt’s writing and singing since first forming the band, and like their forebears, Deep Dark Woods aims to take their own experiences of traditional music and create something new and vital. The songs in this collection mine some of the more brutal depths of human experience, touching on broken hearts, love, murder, and the act of leaving. Boldt notes that “there are not too many jolly songs in there”, but the album is not a dour affair, instead benefiting from tasteful, unstated arrangements and an organic, no-frills recording sound. The songs on Vol. III generously display Deep Dark Woods’ deep-seated links to the past while still sounding just like themselves.
They’ve shared “Spanish is the Loving Tongue”, a song based on the poem ‘A Border Affair’ written by Charles Badger Clark in 1907.
“Clark was a cowboy poet who lived throughout the American West, and over the years, the song was recorded by many top recording artists, including Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, and Ian and Sylvia,” notes Boldt. “I’m influenced first and foremost by Bob Dylan. He is the greatest vocal phraser in all of folk and rock music, not to mention the finest songwriter of the 20th and 21st centuries. As a live band, we are definitely influenced by the Grateful Dead and the way they took their songs to interesting places each night. I’m personally influenced by the traditional music of Britain, Ireland, Scotland, and, to some degree, America.”