Jolie Holland & Samantha Parton

Before recording their new album, ‘Wildflower Blues,’ longtime friends and founding members of Vancouver’s Be Good Tanyas, Jolie Holland and Samantha Parton, hadn’t made music together in quite some time. Holland had been pursuing her own career, releasing six solo albums since leaving the band in 2000, and Parton, while continuing on with the BGTs had been out of music for a number years recovering from two serious brain injuries that left her unable to play music. But an “out of the blue” call from Holland to Parton, with an invitation to make music together, came at just the right time. “I was in this wilderness of health problems,” Parton recalls, “and I hadn’t been able to do anything musically for three years. When Jolie called me up, I was so sick of lying on my back staring at the ceiling in a doctor’s office, that I was ready to say yes to anything, whether I could do it or not.”

After gradually easing back into the demands of touring, they sat down to record ‘Wildflower Blues’ in a Portland, Oregon studio. What resulted is a soulful collection songs that “wanders from rural blues to folk and ragtime, from smoky jazz to emotive R&B and fearless rock & roll.”

Jolie Holland and Samantha Parton stopped by Beehive Productions studio in Saranac Lake, NY in December while on their Northeast tour to play songs from the new album.