In the wake of the luminous album The Natural Lines, Matt Pond has decided his next move is to return to the beginning—to the ideas and instincts that led him to music in the first place.
“The original ethos was to collaborate with anyone at any time,” he says. “I’m getting back to that.” He’ll also go back to recording under his own name, once again referring to the band as Matt Pond PA.
Pond’s name itself evokes the natural world in which his songs are so often set, with their evocative lyrics about the sometimes jagged edges of love, the pros and cons of connection, and the agony and ecstasy of memory. He has always mapped the universal emotions of being alive onto the contours of his own stories. That’s much of the reason his work is so resonant.
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Alexa Rose was born in the Alleghany Highlands of western Virginia, raised in the tiny railroad town of Clifton Forge. Though no one in her immediate family played or sang, she inherited a deep musical legacy.
“Growing up I would hear stories of my great-grandfather Alvie who, for a time, lived and played with [bluegrass great] Lester Flatt when they were both young men,” says Rose. “Apparently, Lester tried to get him to move to Nashville and pursue a career. But my great-grandfather decided to stay in the mountains with his wife on their farm.”
That sense of place and storytelling spirit became woven into Rose’s voice and songwriting. In 2019, she released her debut album Medicine For Living, the title track of which won Merlefest’s revered Chris Austin Songwriting Contest. Her 2021 follow up Headwaters garnered national attention from American Songwriter and Rolling Stone, among others. Rose wrote most of the album in the early stages of the pandemic, which she astutely characterizes as having “that weird lucid feeling of not-time.”In the wake of the luminous album The Natural Lines, Matt Pond has decided his next move is to return to the beginning—to the ideas and instincts that led him to music in the first place.
“The original ethos was to collaborate with anyone at any time,” he says. “I’m getting back to that.” He’ll also go back to recording under his own name, once again referring to the band as Matt Pond PA.
Pond’s name itself evokes the natural world in which his songs are so often set, with their evocative lyrics about the sometimes jagged edges of love, the pros and cons of connection, and the agony and ecstasy of memory. He has always mapped the universal emotions of being alive onto the contours of his own stories. That’s much of the reason his work is so resonant.
—
Alexa Rose was born in the Alleghany Highlands of western Virginia, raised in the tiny railroad town of Clifton Forge. Though no one in her immediate family played or sang, she inherited a deep musical legacy.
“Growing up I would hear stories of my great-grandfather Alvie who, for a time, lived and played with [bluegrass great] Lester Flatt when they were both young men,” says Rose. “Apparently, Lester tried to get him to move to Nashville and pursue a career. But my great-grandfather decided to stay in the mountains with his wife on their farm.”
That sense of place and storytelling spirit became woven into Rose’s voice and songwriting. In 2019, she released her debut album Medicine For Living, the title track of which won Merlefest’s revered Chris Austin Songwriting Contest. Her 2021 follow up Headwaters garnered national attention from American Songwriter and Rolling Stone, among others. Rose wrote most of the album in the early stages of the pandemic, which she astutely characterizes as having “that weird lucid feeling of not-time.”
