Making Tracks Home
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Making Tracks home is the 6th full-length album from globally-inpsired indie folk group Taarka.
AFTER ADVENTURES IN VAGABONDIA, TAARKA IS MAKING TRACKS HOME;
MARCH 24 RELEASE LINKS BLUEGRASS, GYPSY-JAZZ INFLUENCES
Classically trained Colorado couple freely breaks boundaries with latest indie folk collection
LYONS, Colo. – Taarka, the nom de band of David Tiller and Enion Pelta-Tiller, has a variety of meanings, from the sound roasting spices make in Indian cooking to the concept of vibrating energy strings in the Grand Unified Theory of particle physics.
Somehow, the notions of sizzling spices and string vibrations seem equally apt for a couple whose main instruments are violin and mandolin, who draw musical influences from Romania and Appalachia, and whose previous album, Adventures in Vagabondia, was inspired in part by Songs from Vagabondia, an 1894 poetry collection. Its follow-up, Making Tracks Home (March 24, 2015), features new explorations of bluegrass, Celtic, classical and gypsy-jazz, woven into a unique sonic quilt best characterized as folk-rock.
The Nashville Scene describes it as “a distinctive, moody sound.” The Source Weekly of Bend, Ore., offers an even livelier assessment: “The Colorado grass-fiends known as Taarka sound like a collective of train-riding pranksters trained in classical music by gypsy wolves in the foothills of the Appalachians.”
While the closest they got to training by wolves was studying Prokofiev, Tiller, who also plays bass, tenor guitar and bouzouki and sings, was born just outside of Washington, D.C. and raised in the National Historic Landmark district of Waterford, Va., a region rich with bluegrass history. Pelta-Tiller, a classically trained five-string violinist and vocalist, was born in San Francisco and raised in Oakland, Calif., where she began studying violin at 3½. Now making their home in Lyons, Colo., the pair met in 2001 in New York, where they busked in the subway and became members of Brooklyn Browngrass before forming Taarka. Their touring band includes bass master Troy Robey and guitar prodigy Mike Robinson; on Making Tracks Home, their accompanists include guitarist Ross Martin and bassist Sam Grisman.
Originally an instrumental string band, Taarka has evolved into an act with two lead vocalists; the pleasant contrast can be heard on “Heart and Song,” which features Pelta-Tiller, and “Old Waterford Town,” featuring Tiller. As befitting a pair of vagabond musicians (they’re raising their already-performing son, Aesop, on the road), the couple simply likes to go where the music takes them.
“We just go as deeply into the music as we can and see what happens when we come out the other side,” Tiller tells Boulder Weekly. The results of this exploration can be heard on Making Tracks Home.
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