In a day and age where it’s more important than ever to embrace our brothers and sisters from around the globe and ponder what might just connect us from generations gone by, Minneapolis folk ensemble Red Thread brings this notion of unity to life in their music.
Despite the sextet’s vast cultural influence, the band all calls Minneapolis home. This situation is actually a first for frontwoman Sarah Larsson, who’s only ever been part of ensembles who are pan-coastal. While this current collection of artists have been making music together for just a fresh two years now, they’ve collectively brought many years of experience together to form a timeless, ocean-spanning sound.
Sometimes haunting, sometimes illuminating, yet always beautiful, Red Thread’s collection of voices and instruments never ceases to create a resounding effect, and this is evident in their brand new album, Immigrantke, which greeted listeners February 23rd.
Immigrantke displays an effortless beauty through ethereal harmonies and masterful instrumentation, piercing the hearts and souls of those listening with its reflective ear to the distant past.
From digging deep into their ancestral pasts, each member of Red Thread takes something unique from their distant lineage, weaving together a sonic portrait of struggle, triumph, and life in between for that of an Eastern European immigrant. Immigrantke delivers a profound wave of emotions throughout each of the eight tracks, offering a palpable sense of culture, tradition, and timelessness few others can execute.
We got to chat with Larsson to learn more about Red Thread, the new album, and much more.
So how has the year treated you so far?
It’s been very exciting! Just a big pile of things all happening at the same time.
Can you talk about how Red Thread got together and started making music?
I personally had been studying and singing Eastern European folk music since I was a college student. I sang for many years in a group called The Nightingale Trio. And that group was all Eastern European folk music arranged for three part harmonies.
So after Covid, I started singing more and more with these other amazing women who each pull from their own traditions. One of my collaborators, Julia [Hobart], was someone who I met in a project where she was rewriting traditional murder ballads. So she had done a ton of research on Americana and British Isles traditions, things on that front. And Erika [Lantz], another singer in the group, she’s frequently on the Classical side of things, but also speaks Swedish and has Swedish heritage. And Colleen [Bertsch], the fiddle player, she’s basically a master player in Transylvanian traditional fiddling. She plays in a Hungarian folk band and a Bulgarian folk band, and is one of my heroes.
So I was really feeling this pull especially as someone who is a mixed heritage descended person, to be like ‘okay, what would a band sound like if we were pulling from all of these lineages?’ In particular, in my own heritage, I’ve got Eastern European-Jewish family, Swedish family, and Irish and Scottish family. And so I try to combine that in the sonic world of alternative folk, or these days, “Americana.”
Let’s talk about your new album, Immigrantke. What’s the inspiration and influence behind it?
So that word – Immigrantke – is in Yiddish, kind of like a feminine noun for an immigrant. There’s a lot of folk music, especially in Irish and Jewish traditions, about the immigrant experience of coming to America.
For me, it’s my own identity as a person. At minimum, I’m like three generations away from the people who immigrated, and at maximum like eight. So I’m separated from that experience, but I also in my own personal life collaborate with all these folk artists who are themselves first generation immigrants from different communities, and it’s like being connected to all of them that makes me more motivated to want to learn my own traditions.
So it’s about reframing being a folk musician on the European-descended side of things, and all of this coming through an immigration path that stretches into the past to reconnect with those stories. And also I think, ‘what would my experience of immigrating be if I were myself in that position?’ It’s about building empathy honestly, and making new stories for us, the European descendants, to connect to a little better.
Was there a song on the album that was the most difficult to write/record for one reason or another?
Hmm, I think this particular traditional song that’s called “Eyder Ikh Leyg Mikh Shlofn,” which is in Yiddish. Part of the reason that that song’s so challenging to do is because that music tradition is primarily just an unaccompanied vocal. So just a singer, singing alone, no harmonies, no band, no nothing.
It’s like after work or after dinner on a Friday night and everyone is sitting around, and somebody’s like, ‘Ethel! She’s a great singer, will you sing us that song?’ There’s usually no instrumentation whatsoever, so we chose to arrange it with harmonization and guitar and things like that. It was a cool process but it was like… how do we do this?
Did you find determining the order of songs on this album to be a challenge, and how important is that to you?
I actually love doing it, because I love making mix CDs for friends. [laughs] Or I guess loved– I haven’t done it in ages. It’s like crafting the arc of the CD. So I enjoy doing it for sure, but it’s definitely a labor of love.
What has been your favorite/the most rewarding part of making this album?
People respond so strongly and so much more than I thought they would to the traditional songs. And people are always saying to me like ‘Oh I loved that Serbian song’ or ‘I loved that Irish song.’ Those are the ones that are really connecting with people. And so it’s the making of the album, but also sharing these same songs live with the people.
I think people are really looking to that connection to the past, and are experiencing this bit of enchantment with ‘Oh this stuff isn’t old and outdated.’ They’re newly ignited being interested in them. I hear from people that they want to go back and listen to other versions of the song or learn more about it.
What does a day in the life of Red Thread’s songwriting process look like?
The best part – or my favorite part – is when we’re making a new song, and I am usually the one who comes to the group with a particular tune. Either an original or traditional song. But it’s just the melody or the melody and basic chords, and then what we do – which I adore – is we just kind of get a recorder going. And as a vocalist — and there’s 3-4 of us — we take turns improvising harmonies. Some of it is crap, but we get into a place where we do warmups and let ourselves make mistakes and be messy about it to just try things.
Once we finally like a certain take, we’ll stick on that and build on that. So we record all of it, and I take it home to transcribe the harmonies and pick out the favorite parts, and that turns into the arrangements of the song. It’s super fun.
What can you tell me about the Cedar Commissions and your involvement in it?
So the Cedar Commissions performance just happened, and took place here in Minneapolis. I was actually working on some music that’s separate from the album, but it was all in Yiddish and based on some collaborative work I’d done with visual artists in Canada. So these three visual artists and I were commissioned to convene at this camp in Quebec, and then again in British Columbia, and so I expanded on the music from that project for the Cedar Convention.
With this music now, what I want to be doing, is going to hubs of community life where the music is going to speak to people through their immigration heritage, but also, in Europe and especially with the Jewish music, I think a lot of people are surprised to learn that there are actually vibrant and happening Yiddish music scenes. So I’m already working with musicians in Vienna, Bulgaria, Scotland, and Berlin, and they’re in each of their cities doing this work to build scenes around Jewish music, so when I come in, I’m contributing to their community-building that they are already doing, which is really cool.
What does success as a musician and songwriter mean to you?
I think it’s about connection. Like I grew up as a person who loved music, but I’ve never been the kind to like sit in my basement and write and produce by myself and that’s the way I’m inclined to make art. I’m much more the type to play in a band, sing in a choir, or be in an ensemble. So I would count myself successful if what I do leads to collaborations which are really cool.
What does a dream gig look like to you?
Okay well, there’s a Jewish festival in Krakow, Poland, that’s just gorgeous. Very specific. [Laughs] But I would also adore playing a Pickathon or the Blue Ox Festival where people are mostly playing Americana, but there’s room for different traditions to sneak in, and I would love to be the person introducing these traditions to some of these people for the first time.
What are some of your goals – whether musically or otherwise – for the rest of 2024?
I really want to keep nurturing this ensemble. Now that we have these songs, just playing them together over and over to the point where we can eventually read each other’s minds is the goal. That’s what I really want to be working for right now. Each of these five people I play with are so individually talented, and I can feel each time we play, it gels more and more. I want to get that to the place where I can play a whole show with my eyes closed and know where everyone’s going to be. Then you can change things and stretch and improvise from there because it’s so tight.
Featured photo by Michelle Bennett ; Cedar Commissions slideshow photos by Wolfskull Creative
