Vienna Carroll & The Folk

A friend sent me this recording and I was enthralled. So many recordings are over-produced, tinkered with, electronically fussed-over, that their essence is obliterated. Not this utterance — deep, unaltered, aimed directly at the listener.

“Swing Low Sweet Chariot” is Vienna Carroll & The Folk’s new single from their upcoming CD, Harlem: Afro Future Roots, a special collection of Spirituals honoring 31 enslaved Africans headed from Baltimore to certain Deep South death in 1826. Instead, they took their future in their own hands, threw their captors overboard, and escaped to freedom.

Vienna is joined by her “groovetastic” band, The Folk: Stanley Banks (George Benson) on bass; Washboard XT/Newman Taylor Baker (Matthew Shipp, Ebony Hillbillies, Henry Grimes) on washboard; and Keith Johnston (Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, Jon Hendricks) on guitar.

“We freed ourselves from slavery. We are the center of our own freedom stories. The Spirituals are our liberation songs,” says Carroll.

Keith and Vienna created this passionate sound during the award-winning run of “Singin Wid A Sword In MaHan,” Vienna’s musical docudrama about a family escaping slavery. This was followed by Vienna’s first album of the same name, a reprise of Spirituals from the play, in collaboration with Washboard XT. The CD Harlem Field Recordings, recorded with the Folk and released in 2020, celebrates early Black music and its influence on the music of today.

“Swing Low Sweet Chariot,” to be released on Friday, February 10, 2023, will be available on viennacarrollmusic.com, Spotify, Bandcamp, and Apple Music.
For more information visit www.viennacarrollmusic.com.

Vienna Carroll and the Folk will be at the Metropolitan Museum of Art NYC, to celebrate the Met’s Seneca Village exhibit with their Afro-Future Roots music on February 24 and 25th, 6-8:30pm, Petrie Court Cafe.

May your happiness increase! - JAZZ LIVES

Vienna Carroll could be called a New York counterpart to Rhiannon Giddens. Both artists share a deep, historically-informed, often witheringly insightful knowledge of the roots of African-American music, and can be riveting performers. Carroll’s new album, Harlem Field Recordings – streaming at youtube – includes both politically-charged reinventions of classic blues and gospel themes as well as more traditional numbers and originals which sound like 19th century standards. It’s classic music as you’ve probably never heard it before. Carroll also has a show tomorrow night, March 6 at 5:30 PM at a familiar haunt, the American Folk Art Museum; admission is free.

She opens the record’s first track, Strawberries and Glory with the shout of an oldtime urban fruit vendor. This is a one-chord gospel jam sung rousingly over a backdrop of Michael O’Brien’s fat bass chords, Keith Johnston’s stingingly resonant dobro and Newman Taylor Baker’s subtly swinging washboard percussion. Midway through the song, Carroll switches to a hilarious subway vendor scenario, bringing this story into the present day: over the years, good entrepreneurs may change their pitches, but ultimately, business savvy hasn’t changed much. Happily, Carroll’s story doesn’t include what could have happened to this enterprising businesswoman, when she moved to another car on the train…and got busted by an undercover cop, simply for trying to make an honest living.

The group follow with a bouncy, country blues-tinged version of the old spiritual You Better Mind. Carroll’s slowly simmering 6/8 take of Come Into My Kitchen draws a straight line back to the Howlin’ Wolf classic Sitting on Top of the World, with a sparkly guitar solo at the center. She half-sings, half-speaks her way through the grim narrative of No Mo Freedom, the vengeful promise of a wrongfully convicted prisoner at Mississippi’s notorious Parchman Farm. She uses the same technique a little later on in her spare bass-and-vocal arrangement of Grinnin’ in Your Face.

Prison Blues, with the full band adding a funky sway behind her, is just as harrowing – and just as vindictive, in keeping with a familiar theme in Carroll’s work, four hundred years of defiance and subversion against racism and repression. Her interpretation of Let’s Go Down to the River is several levels more fervent than the wispy version you may have heard on the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack.

With the band blending in a thicket of psychedelically-influenced guitar (and a wry Coltrane quote), Carroll’s approach to I Just Wanna Make Love to You reinforces its origins as a transgressive slave anthem. Likewise, Carroll’s stark remake of All the Pretty Little Horses, spiced with Melanie Dyer’s viola reveals a level of crushing sarcasm in what’s usually interpreted as an innocuous lullaby. The black nursemaid sees a bright future for the slaveowner’s kid in her arms; meanwhile, her own baby is crying from hunger in the slave quarters.

Carroll’s rousing Make the Devil Leave Me Alone leaves no doubt that this is no mere hymn; it’s an escaped slave’s anthem. She winds up the album triumphantly with Singing Wid a Sword in My Hand, a thinly veiled tale that takes that escape to its logical conclusion. It’s a party for our right to fight, something we really need to take seriously at a point where the DNC is shooting itself in the foot, handing over the 2020 election to the Trumpies just as they did in 2016. - NEW YORK MUSIC DAILY

The blues, according to B.B. King, is about survival, and if there’s a list of people who know about both the blues and survival, King’s got to be near the top. The blues, we learn from King, isn’t about being beaten down, it’s about getting back up again.

Singer Vienna Carroll knows about blues and survival, too. And she knows history, which her new album, Harlem Field Recordings, is full of. Carroll has written plays and contributed to a museum exhibit about African American life in pre-Emancipation America. She graduated from the African American Studies program at Yale University. It’s also worth noting that her grandmother played guitar with country star Minnie Pearl. There’s a strength in her voice and a richness in her blood.

Harlem Field Recordings has history and survival by the bushel. It’s simple and it’s deep. It’s wise and it’s relatable, smart and soulful. It’s an easy listen, but not one to be taken lightly, as steeped in the past as it is modernity. The album is packed with references. Not just in the songs – Carroll and her tight little band play tunes penned by Willie Dixon, “Son” House and Robert Johnson, along with her own songs and some whose authors are lost to history – but in the musical telling of the tales. The album touches on country and gospel and riffs on Gershwin, Rogers and Hammerstein, Jimi Hendrix and the Stylistics, to name a few.

Carroll displays a storyteller’s versatility right off the bat. The first track opens with a cry that quickly brings to mind the strawberry saleswoman in Porgy and Bess, but she’s soon supplanted by an adolescent boy (still voiced by Carroll) selling candy on the subway, as if to say, the times, they ain’t a-changed. Time remains suspended with the country two-step “You Better Mind,” then moves easily into Johnson’s “Come On in My Kitchen.” Here, as with Dixon’s “I Just Want to Make Love to You” the switch from the original vantage to a female narrative is easy. Carroll’s aim is a humanist one, and when it rains, it rains on everyone.

A trio of prison songs serve as the centerpiece for the record. “No Mo Freedom” is a variation on the Parchman Farm blues, given a staggering delivery without accompaniment. The band kicks in with a contemporary groove for “Dangerous Blues” and “Do Berta,” slyly contemplating cheating and killing. The second half of the album includes some uplifting gospel, a beautiful, slave-era lullaby with a brief, professorial introduction and a killer take on “Son” House’s “Grinnin’ in Yo Face.” The closing “Singin Wid a Sword in Ma Han” is downright inspirational.

The band is propelled throughout by the light precision of Newman Taylor Baker, who has drummed with a number of avant-garde jazz luminaries but here sticks to shuffle and swing on the washboard. Guitarist Keith Johnson is well-versed in a number of blues styles, helping along the changing scenes, and Stanley Brooks provides bounce while maintaining footing, with guest string players rounding out some of the cuts.

Survival can feel like a new game, but it’s been around as long as people and other things have been living, and singing has long been a way to make it through the storm. Times seem right right about now to sing along with Vienna Carroll. - Red Hook Star Revue

"Our appreciation to you for the captivating performance last night. You are the embodiment of soulfulness and I love you. Last night you owned the house with a constant groove of blues and roots music.

We experienced your creative majesty and it was an honor to have you in Turners Falls." - Richie Richardson, Producer - RiverCulture - Turners Falls, MA

"It was a wonderful show - engaging, entertaining, and educational. People who attended the show mentioned how much they enjoyed the program, from the sing-along aspect to the storytelling. I completely agree." - Doni Hoffman, Executive Director - The Cooperage, Honesdale, PA

"There was a really good energy in the room. Great players too!" - Jennifer Gilson, Owner - The Living Room, NYC

"a mezzo soprano voice that is both reverberating and sweet." - Elisa Kimble, Staff Writer - Broadway World

"The soul-raising negro spirituals...were divinely sung and powerfully arranged. I instantly knew that this show had to become apart of my education programming season.. And it was with great success." - Deirdre Hollmanm, Director of Education and Exhibitions - Schomburg Center for Research In Black Culture, NYC

"Thank you to both you and Keith for participating in our Festival...It was a wonderful performance!" - Johanna Mathieson, Executive Producer, Kickin Country Music Festival - Long Island, NY

4 Stars - “Captivating”
“The vibrant songs are both moving and catchy...Anyone who enjoys enthusiastic church choirs and oral storytelling will be singin’ along.” - Time Out New York Review - NYC Fringe Festival

"Thank you so much for your wonderful program, it was so very inspiring. " - Elaine Braithwaite, Assistant Director - Mt Vernon Public Library, NY

"I am inspired by you." - Linda Nettleton, Senior Manager of Adult Learning and Public Programs - Newark Museum, NJ