the Honey Dewdrops
Americana duo The Honey Dewdrops – Laura Wortman and Kagey Parrish– have long felt the push-and-pull between their original roots in the Appalachian mountains and their current home in urban Baltimore. You’ll hear it in their harmony soaked songs and the mastery of their instruments’ acoustic tones, but also in their songwriting, which reflects the hard realities of today. With their fifth independent release, Anyone Can See released in 2019, they have primed the creative energy so prevalent on their previous releases. Each song sparkles with focused intensity, and, with their new album, the duo show that they’re growing rapidly as artists, enthusiastically exchanging an impossible quest for perfection for the compelling ebbs and flows that accompany an intimate, authentic kind of expression.
With Anyone Can See, Parrish and Wortman wanted to recreate the flexible, spontaneous atmosphere of their live performances. “We focused in on that live energy by sitting close to each other in the studio so we could hear everything in a natural way,” says the duo. "By recording each song in its entirety and keeping edits minimal we found the takes that had the magic often had some variation of voice and rhythm, like the songs were unfolding themselves.” Chasing this magic, Parrish and Wortman also found their sense of musical clarity evolving over the course of the album’s creation. “The process made us look at how we define what is “right” in our performances,”
Ultimately, The Honey Dewdrops decided to keep their listeners at the forefront of their thoughts throughout the production of Anyone Can See. “We want people to feel like they are sitting in the room with us, close by,” said the duo. The result is a record drenched in sonic roominess, each of the tracks stretching to fill the space, but with a warmth that allows the album to fit comfortably anywhere. In this way, the intimacy oscillating throughout the record complements and overturns the melodic vastness: nobody will get lost in this expanse.