In the months after Hurricane Helene struck their home in Western North Carolina, Leah Song and Chloe Smith volunteered on supply drops, rescue efforts and water deliveries. Some days, as the band tells it, they gathered under a lean-to, plugged their banjos and fiddles into a generator and sang to lift the spirits of everyone around them.
The sisters who lead Rising Appalachia released their new album, Trade My Troubles, on October 2, 2026, and it is a record about rest. In the band's words it is "a soft light glowing from a quieter, more introspective time": sixteen songs that celebrate renewal after burnout and replenishment "in the wilds and in tradition." One of them is called "Helene." In 2027 they take it on the road, eighteen shows in fourteen cities, from Atlanta in February to Boulder in May.
Leah and Chloe grew up in Atlanta in what their biography calls a "blue collar bohemian family." Their mother was a fiddler, their father a sculptor, and childhood meant contra dances, the neighborhood forests, banjos and harmony singing. In her early twenties, while studying art and Indigenous activism in Chiapas, Mexico, Leah found her way back to folk music. The sisters set out together from there: busking in New Orleans, traveling with a circus from Southern Italy to Northern Sweden, collecting songs in Ireland, Bulgaria and Colombia.
New Orleans held them for seven years, and they learned their craft playing on the street in the French Quarter. The band explains its sound through an old Appalachian farming practice, companion planting, in which corn, beans and squash grow stronger together. Its three plantings are Southern folk traditions, New Orleans swamp culture and Atlanta's street spirit, bound by the seamless harmonies, songcatching and storytelling the band is known for.
The road kept widening: North America, South America, Europe, the Celtic Isles and Australia, with stages from the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and Red Rocks to NPR's Tiny Desk. They have reached communities big and small by train, horseback, biodiesel bus and sailboat. Along the way the band pioneered what it calls the Slow Music Movement, an effort to tour sustainably that meant handmade merch and a welcome at their shows for local nonprofits, herbalists, farmers and poets.
The advocacy runs alongside the music. Leah and Chloe have partnered with the Prison Yoga Project and Honor the Earth, and have been invited to perform on the Hopi Reservation and at Standing Rock.
The records trace the same wide circle. Leylines, named in the band's words after "the earth energies that connect sacred sites," was produced by Joe Henry, with Ani DiFranco and Trevor Hall as guests. Live from New Orleans at Preservation Hall was a homecoming, made with Aurora Nealand and Branden Lewis of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Folk and Anchor gathers covers of songs by everyone from Bob Dylan to James Blake, Erykah Badu to Beyoncé. The Lost Mystique of Being in the Know, highly improvised and hypnotic, was recorded in a single day, with their occasional bandmate Arouna Diarra of Burkina Faso on ngoni.
Trade My Troubles is a generous record, sixteen songs running a little over an hour. It opens with a traditional Irish traveller song and closes with an Appalachian fiddle tune, nods, the band says, to their ancestral lineages. In between are songs about motherhood, moonlight, heartbreak and birdsong, under titles like "In Love with the Quiet," "Life is a Poem" and "Mud and Honey."
"The album tilts towards our inner experiences," Chloe says in the band's notes on the record. "I wanted to write about love and how it expanded and broke open in new ways after I became a mother." Aoife O'Donovan, Ayla Nereo, Bonnie Paine and Brittany Haas join as guests.
On stage the sisters are joined by Duncan Wickel on fiddle and cello, David Brown on upright bass and baritone guitar, and Biko Casini on drums and percussion, players the band calls "tradition keepers in their own right." It describes its shows as "communal gatherings where people remember their connection to the earth, each other, and the old songs that have carried us through every season of being human."
Paper Wings, the Nashville folk duo of Emily Mann and Wila Frank, join the West Coast run from Seattle to Los Angeles, Portland aside. Friends since music camps and festivals in their childhood, with roots in Oregon and California, they sing in two-part harmony over clawhammer banjo, fiddle and guitar. They are known for their song "Troubled Soul," and have shared bills with Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams, The Milk Carton Kids and Watchhouse.
In Portland, both the early and the late show open with Buffalo Kin, a duo whose music draws on the Old West where they live, blending traditional cowboy folk tunes with haunting originals. They made their first record, Wild Open Country, at home in rural Oregon; their latest EP, Vaquera, is all original music.
On the closing night in Boulder, The Little Mercies open: Bronwyn Chelette, Shanice Richards and Rosalee Walsh, who came together through their love of old-time music and are known for powerful vocal harmonies and raging twin fiddles. They went from three friends at the local jam to headlining festivals in two years, and have been Official Showcase artists for the Southeastern Regional Folk Alliance and finalists for the Freshgrass Awards.
The band's listings name no opening act for Atlanta, New Orleans, Bentonville, Springfield or the first night in Boulder.
The tour opens where the sisters grew up, in Atlanta, and two nights later reaches Tipitina's in New Orleans, the city where they learned their craft on the street. March and early April belong to the West Coast, with two nights each in Berkeley and Grass Valley and an early and a late show in Portland. Late April brings a weekend in Arkansas and Missouri, ending at Springfield's Earth Day Music Fest in Jordan Valley Park, a one-day, plastic-free music and sustainability festival that raises money for local environmental organizations. Two nights at Chautauqua Auditorium in Boulder close the run in May.
- Friday, February 19: Atlanta, Georgia, Variety Playhouse
- Sunday, February 21: New Orleans, Louisiana, Tipitina's
- Friday, March 19: Seattle, Washington, Neptune Theatre, with Paper Wings
- Saturday, March 20: Portland, Oregon, Aladdin Theater, early show, with Buffalo Kin
- Saturday, March 20: Portland, Oregon, Aladdin Theater, late show, with Buffalo Kin
- Tuesday, March 23: Berkeley, California, The Freight, night one, with Paper Wings
- Wednesday, March 24: Berkeley, California, The Freight, night two, with Paper Wings
- Thursday, March 25: Grass Valley, California, The Center for the Arts, night one, with Paper Wings
- Friday, March 26: Grass Valley, California, The Center for the Arts, night two, with Paper Wings
- Saturday, March 27: Napa, California, Napa Music Hall, with Paper Wings
- Wednesday, March 31: Petaluma, California, Mystic Theatre, with Paper Wings
- Thursday, April 1: Monterey, California, Golden State Theatre, with Paper Wings
- Friday, April 2: Santa Barbara, California, Lobero Theatre, with Paper Wings
- Saturday, April 3: Los Angeles, California, Lodge Room, with Paper Wings
- Friday, April 23: Bentonville, Arkansas, The Momentary
- Saturday, April 24: Springfield, Missouri, Earth Day Music Fest, Jordan Valley Park
- Friday, May 21: Boulder, Colorado, Chautauqua Auditorium, night one
- Saturday, May 22: Boulder, Colorado, Chautauqua Auditorium, night two, with The Little Mercies
Each date links to its BrightStar listing, which carries the ticket link from the venue or the band, and more on their music lives on Rising Appalachia's profile. Before the 2027 run, the band's tour page also lists a few autumn dates: the Moab Folk Festival in Utah on November 7, 2026, two nights at Assembly in Kingston, New York, on November 19 and 20, and two at National Sawdust in Brooklyn on November 21 and 22.
Sources
- Rising Appalachia, official site: home, about, tour and press kit
- Trade My Troubles, release date and track list: Apple Music
- Paper Wings: paperwingsband.com; Buffalo Kin: buffalokin.com; The Little Mercies: thelittlemercies.com
- Earth Day Music Fest: earthdayspringfieldmo.org
- Show times and age policies from the venues' own pages: Tipitina's, Lodge Room, The Freight, Lobero Theatre, Golden State Theatre, Chautauqua
- Photographs: Rising Appalachia (the still on their tour page, and the press photos on their press-kit page)
