Butter Wouldn’t Melt – Where the Roots Grow Deep (Old River Records)
Kiwis may not be enamoured by what’s going on in the U.S. these days but many do have an enduring love affair with American music traditions.
Witness the sell-out shows by country singers like Chris Stapleton. And the affinity for American traditional styles stretches way back. As a youngster, the Hamilton County Bluegrass Band had a weekly TV show and I recall when kiwi country stars John Hore and Brendan Dugan came to Whangarei Town Hall.
These days a new generation is more tightly tuning the dial into Americana traditions: You, Me, Everybody with bluegrass and Butter Wouldn’t Melt for their fusion of country and folk. With, of course, Kiwi-Canadian Tami Neilson’s fulsome voice taking her all the way to the Ryman in Nashville.
And now Butter Wouldn’t Melt have released their second album Where the Roots Grow Deep recorded at Old River Records in Papakōwhai near Porirua. Last time I saw them, they were a duo: Andrea Reid (vocals and rhythm guitar) and Nick Burfield (vocals and lead guitar). Since then, just as the price of butter has doubled, so has the size of the band. It now includes Cara Brasted (fiddle and vocals) and Marz Connelly (double bass and vocals). In quartet form, the sum is most definitely greater than the parts.
Their name intrigues before the pleasure of their sound is encountered. ‘Butter wouldn’t melt’ is not an expression I grew up with but apparently refers to someone seemingly so innocent that even soft butter wouldn’t melt in their mouth. In other words, all is not what it seems. A casual listen to this, their second album, and there’s an element of this; you’d swear it was straight out of Appalachia. But the band is from Welly not West Virginia and already have accolades to their name: they were finalists for the 2023 Best Folk Artist Tūī | Te Kaipuoro Taketake Toa.
The cover suggests where their roots grow deep: fertile soil, rugged hills and amber sunsets. Song for Maurice opens. My heart is always over the hill. Plucked guitar strings, layered harmonies, fiddle joining in as an additional voice.
Next up, Woman of Fire. Opens with a yearning persuasive voice and gently plucked bass and guitar. I was raised by a woman of fire/ I can be my own desire. Staunch intent and hints of Emmy Lou and Lucinda. Stunning.
A sweeter tune follows. Nick Burfield leads with Pieces of You, the melliferous sound of the Cara Brasted’s fiddle bridging the verses.
Take this to Forget appears to reference Dylan’s Thunder on the Mountain but sounds more aligned to the Marshall Tucker Band’s Fire on the Mountain. An elegy to past times and replete with plucking and picking. And a few heys for good measure.
Farewell is slow and wistful, as farewells can be. Southern drawl. When you sing I know my way. You were louder than the falling rain. Reminiscent of Kathleen Edwards. Stunning, again.
With four out of four in the band being vocalists, harmonies are aplenty. On Kind, they are simply exquisite. The song feels like some sort of centrepiece. One of those songs in which the voices and instrumentation gel in a gentle alchemy. Nothing makes a room feel quite an empty /as wishing someone else was in it too. A song of loss. Exquisite
The Way it Used to Be could be a tune heard in a bar or barn in Tennessee but its not. This, like the rest of the songs, are born and bred in Poneke. Replete with tropes from another land they nonetheless have a universality – family, land, loss, weather: life’s non-negotiables.
Last track Stars Hang Upside Down is almost sung as a round, its theme perhaps homage to the hemisphere of origin for this album. Part-way through there’s a whoop and a segue into a reel. Acknowledgement, surely, that for all the sombre themes of partings and tribulations, this is music infused with joy and performed to bring joy.
And that, surely, is all part of the paradox of America – the same nation that can perplex and perturb also offers a deeply braided river of musical traditions. Though their roots run deep here in Aotearoa, Butter Wouldn’t Melt embraces Americana with magnificent gusto, adding a contemporary flow to the deep-running current of kiwi country music.
Robin Kearns
Where The Roots Grow Deep is out now. Click here to listen and buy.
