Vivian Leva & Riley Calcagno Ready New Self-Titled Record
Individually, Vivian Leva and Riley Calcagno are already two of the most exciting, promising, and talented up-and-comers in most all of roots music, fluidly moving through old time, bluegrass, and classic country modes with an ease of execution, and displaying a passion for the enterprise of reviving old music that is infectious with the audience. Put them together, and they’re even greater than the sum of their parts, intertwining disciplines and influences seamlessly until it comprises a roots music symphony of two.
This conjoined magic has already been on display in a number of projects, including the old time band The Onlies, who just released a new self-titled album this year (read review), and on Vivian Leva’s solo debut Time Is Everything from 2018 which Riley also had a heavy hand in (read review) . But the two will be putting their duo magic on full display on March 12, 2021 when they release a self-titled album through Free Dirt Records.
Vivian Leva is from Lexington, Virginia, and her father James is a cherished multi-instrumentalist. Her mother Carol Elizabeth recorded with Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard, and at the age of 9, Vivian Leva was already writing and performing original songs with her father in hallowed halls such as the Carter Family Fold.
Vivian embraced the heritage that surrounded her, and set to expanding the music’s legacy with her own original interpretations of timeless themes served upon ageless instrumentation, making waves locally and regionally for years at festivals such as Clifftop in West Virginia, and then nationally at places like Portland, OR’s Pickathon.
Riley Calcagno has a similar story, it just started on the other side of the continent where he began playing at a very young age in The Onlies as a musical prodigy in the Pacific Northwest. A musical virtuoso on multiple instruments with exquisite harmonies or leads at the ready, he’s able to go wherever the music takes him.
Produced by Grammy-winning Cajun roots legend Joel Savoy, Vivian Leva and Riley Calcagno looks to take the very heart of roots music and spirit it forward with adept originality. All the songs are written by the duo.
Ahead of the album, they have released a new song called “Will You.” Vivian Leva and Riley Calcagno is now available for pre-order.
TRACK LIST:
1. Will You
2. Leaving On Our Minds
3. Hollowed Hearts
4. On The Line
5. Red Hen
6. Biding All My Time
7. Love and Chains
8. On Account Of You
9. My Teardrops Say
10. You Don’t See Me
11. Good and Gone
December 15, 2020 @ 7:51 pm
Interesting. Given their fondness for time songs and other similar subject matter I wonder if they’d do a cover of There is a time which Maggie Peterson performed on The Andy Griffith Show with the Dillards. They’ve got the talent to do it
December 16, 2020 @ 10:49 am
This song is so beautiful!! I’m surprised it’s not covered more often, honestly…
December 15, 2020 @ 8:19 pm
Most anything Joel Savoy works on is going to be good. Check out his Valcour Records.
December 15, 2020 @ 8:29 pm
Gillian Welch and David Rawlings?
December 15, 2020 @ 10:38 pm
I think there’s a connection between Vivian’s mother Carol Elizabeth Jones and one of the guys in Western Centuries (Jim Miller), one of this year’s Ameripolitan nominees – they played in a hot old-time band in the 90’s. there’s not usually much crossover between old-time and honkytonk but here it is.
December 15, 2020 @ 11:15 pm
There is definitely a little scene that includes Vivian and Ryan, Western Centuries, The Onlies, Caleb Kaluder and Foghorn Stringband, Joel Savoy, and a few others. I don’t know how all the pieces fit together, but you definitely see these names showing up and playing together, guesting on records, and producing each other’s work. It’s also a great, great scene of music.
December 15, 2020 @ 11:33 pm
From what I can tell knowing some of the folks, the connections are a combo of ‘folks who are family’, “folks who are agemates” (this used to be a really bid deal in the old-time music scene because for a really long time there weren’t a lot of young people so there’s a weird gap in that scene between a huge scene of great musicians of Boomer age and this huge cluster of Millennials), “people who go to festivals out West” (which used to be a big dividing line in the Southeast-centric scene). There’s some awesome music coming out of all those folks.
The thing about old-time music is that it doesn’t cross over too well to more commercial-style country music too well. The fiddle technique (I say as an old-time fiddler) is pretty stifling, people don’t learn anything about improvising if they stick with Appalachian old-time, etc. So it’s been interesting to see what people have done when they’ve ventured out of the boundaries of that music. Of course “the kids today” are better musicians anyway because it’s so much easier to become a great musician in the age of youtube that they’re less likely to be stuck in just one scene and it’s style so now we have much more interesting crossovers happening than we did in that scene in the past.
December 17, 2020 @ 10:13 am
You are correct! I’m Viv’s mom, and played with Jim in the Wandering Ramblers, which has just been re-released for free on Bandcamp. Contact me at the link below for a free coupon code.
https://wanderingramblers.bandcamp.com/album/rambling-wandering
December 16, 2020 @ 2:31 pm
Time is everything was great..i’m looking out for this new one
December 16, 2020 @ 7:22 pm
Time is Everything is definitely in my top 10 albums of the past few years. Looking forward to this for sure
December 16, 2020 @ 7:23 pm
Really nice!
December 17, 2020 @ 12:38 am
their vocals are greater than the sum of their parts . I think they are luck for that.
its a timeless rootsy sound …always in fashion , always real and always powerful given a solid lyric .
December 17, 2020 @ 6:06 am
That’s the news a soul yearns to hear at the end of a shitty year!