Acoustic folk duo Over the Moon, composed of Suzanne Levesque and Craig Bignell, released its latest album Chinook Waltz on Oct. 29.
Released by Borealis Records worldwide, the album will be their second.
“All our music’s acoustic and it’s very real and that’s kind of a change for this day and age. A lot of stuff now is really produced and processed, kind of like Velveeta cheese,” he said.
“We don’t use any studio tricks because we don’t know any.”
As lifelong professional musicians, the banjoist said the two have played for a number of bands over their lives.
“Sue and I are musicians first—we made our careers as being musicians for other artists our whole lives and being artists after that,” Bignell said.
This gave the two a large repertoire of talent in various genres.
“Playing so many different types of music, we get kind of tired if we do one thing, so on that album you’ll hear some swing tunes that sound like they come from the ‘40s to real folky tunes,” Bignell said.
“There’s some old Western twang so it’s a little bit cowboy music, and with the banchos it’s a little bit hillbilly, so we’re calling it ‘Cowbilly’.
“We get bored and like to challenge ourselves to do different things.”
Having met on another gig when Levesque’s band hired Craig to record instrumentals, the two have grown their style together.
“Our songwriting is maturing together a little bit—except for the song I’m Not Cool, but it’s just immature,” Bignell said.
“But we always record at home and this album sonically sounds really nice.”
They also took the opportunity to pay homage to black cowboy and area legend John Ware on a track of the same name.
“He worked on the Bar U ranch just south of us, and he’s pretty famous around that area,” Bignell said. “We started hearing stories about him and started looking at a documentary about him, and it was really moving.
“To find out that he came from slavery down in South Carolina and then moved to Texas and drove cattle all the way up here, eventually owning his own ranch, really moved us.”
While the release party to be held at East Longview Hall was postponed until health restrictions ease, the two are still putting their work out in the world.
The party they say, will still go on.
For now, Over the Moon is gearing up for a tour of Ireland and the United Kingdom, followed by mainland Europe.
Its particular acoustic stylings, Bignell added, are well received overseas.
“Already BBC and a bunch of these stations are playing our album over there like crazy,” he said. “I think it's catching on, I think they like that our album’s very organic.”
The album can be found on major streaming platforms such as Spotify.
