Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi Find the Comfort in Old-Time Sad Songs

When Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi began considering what songs to perform at the many home livestreams they played during the early days of 2020 lockdown, they started coming up with songs they hadn't sung or even thought about in years. For Giddens, that meant old-time fiddle tunes, like "Black As Crow" (often called "Dearest Dear," or "The Blackest Crow") that she learned in her early twenties in her native North Carolina. For Turrisi, it meant traditional Italian songs, like the lullaby "Nenna Nenna," which he used to sing to his baby daughter. "We were comforting ourselves with them for a while," Giddens of these familiar songs, "and then we thought, we need to do something with these." With both musicians spending lockdown in Ireland, far away from their respective home countries of the U.S. and Italy, those homesick tales became the basis of They're Calling Me Home , Giddens and Turrisi's latest album, out in April. "We created our own little space where we can fill in the gap of missing home," Turrisi says of the record, which features unexpected arrangements — Giddens on the viola and Turrisi playing the cello-banjo — of traditionals like "Amazing Grace" and "O… Read full this story

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