House and Land is a two-person experimental Appalachianold-time music band based in Asheville, North Carolina. The band members are guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Sarah Louise Henson and fiddler/banjoist Sally Anne Morgan. Both musicians contribute to vocals.[1] They have two albums, the self-titled House and Land, released in June 2017, and Across the Field, released in June 2019.[2][3] Their first album received a very positive 83 aggregate score on Metacritic and was named the 25th best album of 2017 by Magnet magazine,[4] while their second received an 84 and was named Folk Album of the Month by The Guardian.[2][5]
The band members met when Sarah Louise opened as a solo act at the Mothlight in Asheville for another band, the Black Twig Pickers, in which Sally Anne is a vocalist and fiddle player, and after appearing separately at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tennessee.[8][10][11]
Outside of their music careers, Morgan is a letterpress artist with a degree in geology while Henson is also an herbalist.[8][10]
Musical style
The duo are known for giving a modern, feminist spin to historic and sometimes patriarchal or misogynistic ballads from Great Britain, Appalachia, and the Ozarks region by giving greater voice to the songs' female protagonists.[8][12][13] They have also chosen to record other songs with problematic lyrics as instrumentals only.[8] Examples of this include the traditional murder ballad "Two Sisters", as a harmony for guitar and banjo in 2019, and songs "The Cursed Soldier" and "Rainbow 'Mid Life's Willows."[11][14] Artists whose songs they have reinterpreted include Robert Burns, Dillard Chandler, and Shirley Collins.[3] Shirley and Dolly Collins' 1978 album For as Many as Will is specifically credited as an inspiration for their second album, as was Swedish psychedelic group Pärson Sound.[8]
