Bozeman Magazine

Sisters Leah Song and Chloe Smith tear into sound with sensual prowess as stages ignite revolutions and words light up soul fires. Listen to their beautiful sound for banjo and fiddle duets and poetic harmonies like only sisters can do... Joined full-time by their beloved band, Biko Casini on percussion, and David Brown on stand up bass and baritone guitar, expect everything from folk standards to jazz, to New Orleans soul, to old mountain traditionals, to activist anthems, as their style redefines folk music as a truly living art. Using sound as a tool to spark a cultural revolution and birth a new movement, come join them as they create soul sounds for us all....
 
Having toured over 25,000 miles across the US, and graced many stages around the world, Rising Appalachia’s vision and sound is quickly proving to be contagious to everyone it touches. Their shows have included and array of community-run venues and collective events, as well as the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, NPR’s All Songs Considered, E-town, The School of America Vigil, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, Emory University Shwartz Center, The Beacon Theater NYC, The Lake Eden Arts Festival, Radio Popular Verona, Italy, Guerilla Radio Amsterdam, The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Highlander Center 75th Reunion, Burning Man, Urkult (Sweden), and Festa Del Fuoco (Stromboli Italy) and many more.
 
Their prolific self-sculpted career has included 6 independently released full length albums, including their brand new album Wider Circles, and has sculpted a path for a new generation of music aficionados. Having been raised in the American South with Appalachian lullabies at night and soul music for breakfast Sisters Leah and Chloe have drawn great inspiration from their global community. Their mother and father claimed art and music as a full part of their lives and the girls have been shaped by the sounds of the South. They have continued to use those powerful roots to find musical connections and community around the world.
 
"Music is the tool with which we wield political prowess. Melody for the Roots of each of us...spreading song and sound around the globe. Music has become our script for vision... not just for aural pleasure, not just for hobby-but now as a means to connect and create in ways that we aren't taught by mainstream culture...we are building community and tackling social injustice through melody- making the stage reach out with octopus arms to gather a great family. It is taking its own personality, carrying us all along the journey down the damp and strange alley ways and cryptic coded pathways... to poetic observations, social change, lyrical messages, political rage, symphonic coercing, ferocious bantering, bicycles and train tracks, primal will, fresh air intoxicants, harmony and alliteration, noise and something sweeter than words can ever touch. " Leah Song.
 
Rising Appalachia has been voted “Green Album of the Year” by the Huffington Post and Atlanta's Best Folk Act by the Creative Loafing, and have been written up in Paste Magazine, The New York Times, The Performer Magazine, Dirty Linen, Sing Out, Anti-Gravity, Maverick and more. Their tours have taken them across Europe, through the Caribbean, into Central America, into the Indian subcontinent, and across the United States making sacred sounds and elaborate stages wherever they go. They are creatively committed to keeping their work accessible at the local, street level, as well as expanding to larger audiences abroad, and have continued to maintain autonomy by self- managing, recording, producing and creating, and directing their work. They are greatly honored to do the work that they do.
bless.
 
Tickets are available at 1111presents.com, Pub Station Box Office (2502 First Avenue North), or by calling (877) 987- 6487.