@STRAZ CENTER
MONDAY, DEC 18, 7:30PM
JAEB THEATER
Straz Center for the Performing Arts
presents
The Grahams
as part of
Club Jaeb
Alyssa and Doug Graham have spent nearly their entire lives exploring music together. Friends
since she was seven and he was nine, they became a couple in their teens, then husband and
wife. Somewhere along the way, they also became The Grahams, a dynamic Americana duo
who’ve married their love of adventure with a desire to build on foundations laid by their
musical predecessors. Their rst song-crafting expedition, along the Mississippi’s Great River
Road, became their 2013 debut, Riverman’s Daughter. For its follow-up, they rode the rails
– and wound up recording not only a studio album, but a documentary and live album on the
move and in venues from Sun Studio to Amtrak’s famed City of New Orleans train.
The explosive and aptly named Glory Bound, released in May 2015, was helmed by Grammy®-
nominated producer Wes Sharon at his recording studio in Norman, Oklahoma. Recording
in Oklahoma holds special signi cance for a couple raised as Dylan-loving New York City
suburban kids who spent weekends strumming camp re songs in the Adirondacks. Like many
Dylan fans, they traced their way back to his greatest inspiration.
Simultaneously, the band released Rattle the Hocks, a musical documentary focusing on the live
recording, and the relationship between the railroad and American roots music. Both lm and
album were directed and produced by Cody Dickinson of the North Mississippi Allstars. The
Grahams debuted the lm at the Folk Alliance International conference in Kansas City.
“After we recorded Riverman’s Daughter, we were listening to a lot of Woody Guthrie,” Alyssa
explains. “The song ‘Farmer Labor Train’ kept sticking in our minds, so we wanted to write
a song about trains. We wrote ‘Glory Bound,’ then decided that we really wanted to ride the
trains in honor of Guthrie, Lead Belly and other old folk legends who used the train system to
bring voices together. We had to go to Oklahoma, obviously, because Woody was our mentor or
guide.” Adds Doug, “The river was the original way that people got around and moved through
the country. And moved music around the country. The rivers are the veins. And now, here we
are on trains, the next means of motion, the arteries of America that brought people and music
and cultures together. So that had to be the next progression for us.”
The Grahams’ songs for these projects, often co-written with collaborator-since-childhood
Bryan McCann, capture the rhythms and energies of that transport system and the momentum
of its time, with Doug’s masterful resonator slide-work and harmonies fueling Alyssa’s
locomotive voice and acoustic guitar chords. “We’re still our own artists; we’re still living in
the modern era,” Doug explains. “We say in the lm, and it’s really true, we’re not trying to recreate
anything, we’re trying to let the echoes ring in our ears.” “The modern echoes,” Alyssa
adds. As the lm conveys, they’re still best friends and they love nothing more than making
new friends via the communal bond of music.
“The dream,” Doug says, “is to play with as many great people as we can, and share the music
as much as we can.” Alyssa explains, “Our songs are pretty simple. Just feel something. Have
a good time. Enjoy the music and listen to the echoes.”
thegrahamsmusic.net • facebook.com/TheGrahamsMusic • @The GrahamsMusic
The taking of photographs and/or use of other recording equipment is strictly prohibited.
Program information provided by the cast and/or production company.