Album Marks 1st Ever Violin Commission Between Two Black Women, Luthier and Violinist, In the U.S.
Linden said, “Anne Harris is a wonderful musician and artist. She takes her broad knowledge and great passion and welds together a beautiful puzzle of soulful and beautiful music. I was honored to have been her snake charmer of this album!!”
Harris’ newly commissioned violin is the first ever official violin commission between two professional Black women, luthier Amanda Ewing and violinist Harris, on record in the US.
Here’s what I’m reading and hearing about I Feel It Once Again:
“Harris has been a well-lit beacon of inspiration for more than 25 years.”
Hobart Rowland, Magnet Magazine, March 18, 2025
“I love what I heard.”
Dana Kozlov, CBS News Chicago, May 9, 2025
“Vibrant, effervescent… Anne Harris writes songs that feel ancient, mythical, earthy, and yet totally fresh.”
Marilyn Rea Beyer, WFMT Chicago, March 22, 2025
“A burning ember about to burst into flame… It features songs which draw on influences that span folk, spirituals, blues, and gospel.”
Jonathan Aird, Americana UK, May 8, 2025
“Reflective and taking it nice and easy as it builds… the fiddle is slow and magnificent.”
Melissa Clarke, Americana Highways, May 7, 2025
“Luminous… moving… poignant.”
Lauren Leadingham, American Blues Scene, April 28, 2025
The album’s coda is “Time Has Made a Change,” a midcentury gospel song written by Harkins Frye. Harris makes it feel like a personal meditation, singing softly atop delay-soaked guitars, calling it “a sweet and sad rumination.” The song came out last month as a single and video (HEAR/SHARE).
Of the commission, Harris wrote in No Depression, “Even as a lifelong fiddle player, and someone who has made music my career for the last 26 years in spaces where I was, without exception, a minority, it never occurred to me that I would ever play a violin made by someone who looked like me… What is so astonishing to me about this isn’t the fact that up until that point I had never seen an African American woman violin luthier, but rather that I had never even questioned why this was. It just was. That’s the way things were.”
Highlighting her eclectic influences, Harris has performed, toured, or recorded with artists as varied as Cracker, Guy Davis, Anders Osborne, Living Colour, Amy Helm, Los Lobos, Shemekia Copeland, and Vieux Farka Toure. She has performed at the Philadelphia Folk Fest and Chicago Blues Fest and won Living Blues Magazine’s 2024 Critic’s Choice Award for Best Musician [Other] Violin. She toured with legendary Trance Blues artist Otis Taylor for 9 years, recording on 4 of his critically acclaimed albums, and drew inspiration and resonance from his pioneering Black Banjo Project.
She previously shared the first single, “I Feel It Once Again,” accompanied by a beautifully choreographed music video featuring her daughter dancer/choreographer Ara Krossovitch.
The song was written by Harris with Dave Herrero and GRAMMY Award-winning producerJacob Olovson (Camilla Cabella, Frank Ocean, Diplo, Mark Ronson). Of the song, Harris says, “The night is a time of the revelation of things we mask during the day. It’s when the subconscious mind, and all we’ve hidden, simmer up to the surface and beg to be seen, felt, acknowledged.”
The galvanizing second single “Everybody Gotta Rise Up” came out last month, meeting this historical moment.
“I Believe In Being Ready” is a traditional Appalachian spiritual arranged by Harris and Linden. Of the song, she says, “This is an old Appalachian Spiritual, and it feels like a spell. It is as timely and important as ever.”
The rolling, jangle-y “Can’t Find My Way” is an album centerpiece. The song finds Harris drawing inspiration of the farmlands and woods of rural southwest Ohio, where she grew up. Speaking of the song, she says, “Those roads and that land are indelibly etched into my dreamscape. This song is about my family’s journey of aging and dementia, and how over time those roads, once familiar as the lines on our palms, can reconfigure and twist.” Legendary vocalist Regina McCrary adds her voice here.
Another highlight of the album is Harris’ performance of the instrumental “Snowden’s Jig,” which she first heard via the Carolina Chocolate Drops. It was written by Thomas Snowden of Clinton, Ohio and performed regularly by the Snowden family Band, the longest lasting black string band of the 19th century. It was originally (and mistakenly) credited to and popularized by Dan Emmett, the most popular minstrel performer of his day, and called “Genuine Negro Jig.” Harris says, “The Snowden Family Band holds a very important place in my spirit because two of its members, sisters Sofia and Annie, both played fiddle in the band, and were possibly the only females known to do so at the time. This fact was used on handbills advertising shows because it was such a rarity. I get chills when I play this song knowing that the first hands to play this song looked like my own. Here I’ve respun it as a Surfer Rock meets traditional fiddle tune.”
Joining Harris on the album are bassist John Dymond (Bruce Cockburn, Linda Ortega, kd lang) and drummer Jerry Roe (Brittany Spencer, Mickey Guyton, Dolly Parton, Darius Rucker, Rodney Crowell, Molly Tuttle, Jerry Reed).
Harris first was inspired to pick up the violin as a child after watching the movie Fiddler on the Roof. I Feel It Once Again is her eighth album.
