Located about an hour North of Los Angeles in the Santa Clara River Valley sits a sprawling ranch where music is made in a soothing environment surrounded by blooming citrus trees.
Traditional American roots masters Jesse Milnes & Emily Miller found themselves in this relaxing oasis, invited for a residency in January 2015.
Their up-close and intimate recording session there became Volume Two of an innovative new series of recordings from The Deep End Ranch.
Deep End Sessions Vol. II
Jesse Milnes & Emily Miller
Their first album as a duo drops Friday, July 30th 2015
The ranch dates to the early 1900s, and was resurrected by renowned visual artists David Bunn and Ellen Birrell - who, after twenty-five years of living in Los Angeles, decided “Deep End” was just too special a find to pass up. With its close proximity to LA, it could serve as both a tonic escape for weary urbanites longing for a country respite, and an adjacent urban dose of old California that still retained a close tie to the city.
David decided to start an unamplified, unadvertised house concert series focusing on Southern Appalachian traditional artists, which organically grew into an ongoing recording project reflecting the intimacy of the ranch’s living room shows.
After a few days of unwinding from the road and relaxing on the ranch, singers and multi-instrumentalists Jesse Milnes and Emily Miller put on a stunning house concert to about seventy lucky listeners.
Over the course of the following week, the duo set up in front of a pair of microphones in the living room, playing and singing the tunes they had brought all the way from West Virginia.
What emerged was an honest and powerfully nuanced expression of Appalachian roots music, captured with minimal production and reminiscent of the best early field recordings.
This type of setting demands the utmost from artists, and Jesse and Emily were clearly up to the task. On this recording one can hear two absolute masters who have great respect for tradition, but bring a new vibrancy of life to every note they play and sing.
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