Announced on July 2, coming off of the release of her highly-praised, sassy new single “Come In (But Don’t Make Yourself Comfortable),” indie country/pop singer-songwriter Caroline Jones today released “The Raglan Sessions,” an unplugged performance series alongside New Zealand bluegrass group The Trenwiths. Set atop a breathtaking cliffside in Raglan, New Zealand, the stripped-down session features a handful of Caroline’s original songs such as “What A View” and “Rise,” as well as covers of Mandolin Orange’s “Wildfire,” Emmylou Harris’ “If I Needed You,” “Wayfaring Stranger,” and more. To view these performances, as well as commentary on how the recording came about, view the video below:
“I was fortunate enough to spend most of the past year in New Zealand, where I met The Trenwiths, a bluegrass band whose founding members have been playing together since the 1960s,” said Jones. “Their family band now consists of three generations of musicians and singers. They are some of the most good-humored, good-natured, authentic people I’ve ever had the pleasure of being around. Before I left New Zealand to come back to America, I brought a couple of cameras along to capture one of our jams, which we edited down into this video called ‘The Raglan Sessions’.”
Having relocated to New Zealand towards the beginning of the pandemic, Jones set out to find inspiration and work on her sophomore studio album. Always open to trying different styles of music, and as COVID cases eased, she researched local musicians and was introduced to The Trenwiths, a bluegrass harmony band made up of two brothers and their father. This is the second time the two have worked together, as their first collaboration was in November 2020 for a two-track holiday collection, Silver Bells, featuring upbeat bluegrass renditions of holiday classics “Silver Bells” and “Winter Wonderland.” Watch their studio session:
Jones has been busy creating new music over the past year. In May, the multi-instrumentalist released her current single “Come In (But Don’t Make Yourself Comfortable)” from her forthcoming sophomore album (expected late 2021), as well as the accompanying, cinematic official video filmed at a ‘western-style’ bar in New Zealand, co-written and co-produced by Jones also.
Photo by Laura Tait
ABOUT CAROLINE JONES: Declared one of Rolling Stone’s “10 Country Artists You Need to Know” as “an ambitious, entrepreneurial guitar heroine primed to bring back the pop-country glory of the Nineties,” singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Caroline Jones wrote and co-produced her new lead single “Come In (But Don’t Make Yourself Comfortable)” off her forthcoming sophomore studio album with Grammy and Academy Award-winning producer Ric Wake (Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, Whitney Houston).
Throughout her career, Caroline has toured with the likes of Jimmy Buffett & the Eagles, Zac Brown Band & OneRepublic, Tim McGraw & Faith Hill, Vince Gill, Kip Moore, Kenny Chesney, Sara Evans, and Lee Brice, among others. Caroline has also shared the stage with both Buffett and Chesney which lead to a collaboration with the release of “Gulf Coast Girl (ft. Jimmy Buffett, Kenny Chesney, Lukas Nelson and Mac McAnally as “The Pelicanaires”)”. This past year, Jones also took to the virtual stage as part of Global Citizen and the World Health Organization’s “Together At Home” Concert Series.
When she is not on the road touring or in the studio, Caroline is also the host of Sirius XM’s Art & Soul where she sits down with top singer-songwriters for intimate acoustic performances and conversations about their craft and creating the perfect song. Find out more here: https://carolinejones.com/
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Source: Press Release
