HARMONY ROW - THE YEARLINGS WITH LADY GRACE SUNDAY MAY 4TH
Alt. folk duo The Yearlings combine warm boy-girl harmonies, delicate flat-picking and sparse country blues to create songs that are at once haunting and soothing.
Live it’s two people (a couple) on a stage surrounded by acoustic guitars, playing songs, telling stories and letting you into their world for an hour or so - a living, breathing affair of the heartstrings with inspired rhythm and traditional flattop picking cradling keen melodies.
Robyn Chalklen and Chris Parkinson have wasted no time in getting down to the business of making music since meeting at the Tamworth Country Music Festival in 2000. Their successful self-titled debut album (released on Reckless Records in 2003) was recorded live in 8 hours and long-listed for an ARIA nomination. The Yearlings took their album out on the road, touring nationally to sell-out crowds and performing at festivals along the way, including Port Fairy, the National Folk Festival, Harvest, Queenscliff, FUSE and Apollo Bay.
The Yearlings joined the ranks of the great duos of country/folk/acoustic music with their latest album Wind Already Blown (Mixmasters Records), the trademark skeletally sweet harmonies and sparse but alive playing blow a spring breeze through faded black and white photographs over 13 original tracks. Two tracks from this album were chosen for Claudia Karvanís award-winning television series, ‘Love My Way’.
The Yearlings continue to garner praise for their mesmerising live performances and won a SAMI award for the AWESAM Most Popular Australiana Act 2005, and have been nominated for a Golden Guitar Award (Australia’s country music holy grail).
They have just completed their Bless This House tour, which involved playing a series of intimate shows and house concerts throughout Australia and included Nannup Festival and Port Fairy Folk Festival.
The Yearlings are performing at the prestigious New York Guitar Festival in February 2008 and will share the bill with Teddy Thompson, Jim Lauderdale and Ollabelle. After which they are staying on in New York to record their third album.
The Yearlings songs rock, sad and slow… like a chair on an old wooden porch.
“Utterly charming and horribly irresistible.”
Tom Jellett, Weekend Australian
“If The Yearlings’ debut was promising, this album marks them out as something special.”
Bernard Zuel, Sydney Morning Herald
“Bony guitars, tales of bloody suicide and lost friends, all imbued with harmonies to turn your spinal fluid into ice water. Sparse, spectral and spectacular, this music will reduce the hardest heart to ashes.”
Jason Walker, Juice Magazine
“A terrific album.”
Jo Roberts, The Age
“The intimacy, authenticity and joy lift this album into its own, transcendent realm.”
Sophie Best, The Age
“The Yearlings, together in unison and harmony express the lyrical truth of storylines about real life that poetically tug at the heartstrings.”
Jimmy Little (Living Legend)
“The Yearlings’ debut album was a surprising blow for freshness and quality… Robyn Chalklen and Chris Parkinson sing slow and sad, picking out tunes like a couple of prospectors gnawing away at the troubles of life.”
Bernard Zuel, Sydney Morning Herald
“Consider me a fan. Bands like this donít come along every day, but bless ‘em when they do.”
Rip it Up Magazine
“I have been ‘hanging out’ for another one to play. I have a belief in this band and want to share their music with Australia.”
John Nutting, ABC Radio National
“Like all the best lonesome songs, from Foster down to Townes Van Zandt, in the end it leaves you feeling you aren’t so alone in the world after all.”
Noel Mengel, Daily Telegraph
“This band would have to be one of the world’s great bands, a bunch of committed musicians, with an attitude of humanity and helpfulness to the new kids in town, no pretention or arrogance, just plain … ‘Lets sail this boat together’.”
—Mick Wordley
Lady Grace is Melbourne based singer/songwriter and guitarist Rachel Stefaniak. Combining her love of jazz and blues with pop and folk, she creates sonic sketches underpinned by gorgeous melodies that are sometimes cheeky, sometimes haunting and always lyrical and enchanting.
Born in North East Victoria, and raised on a healthy diet of The Beatles and The Easybeats courtesy of her father’s Rock’n’Roll hey day, Rachel’s love and talent for music was apparent from a young age. Teaching herself to play piano by ear in primary school, she went on to immerse herself in performance as a teenager, playing flute and singing in multiple school born outfits that earned her an award for excellence in music and a reputation as a respected musician.
It wasn’t until she moved to Melbourne to study however that Rachel picked up a guitar and started writing her own material, inspired by many a boozy evening watching Melbourne’s finest singer/songwriters ply their trade in the dark innards of band venues north of the Yarra. After years of solo projects and fronting off and on again bands and duos, the alter-ego Lady Grace was born in 2006, providing a musical veil for Rachel to showcase the pop-folk sensibilities behind her numerous incarnations.
2007 has seen Rachel carving a place in the Melbourne music scene, frequenting venues such as The Brunswick Hotel, The Artery, Eurotrash Bar and The Edinburgh Castle Hotel. Her svelte vocals have resulted in her being likened to artists such as Katie Noonan and Sarah Blasko, making Lady Grace an up and coming artist not be missed.
