Vocalist Darryl Holter Releases Roots & Branches: Two-Part Album

It can be argued that all great popular songwriting is about relationships—the bond between friends, the seminal one between lovers and the larger connection between society and its leaders. On Roots & Branches, the latest release from Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter and activist Darryl Holter, he draws inspiration from relationships of every stripe.

“The product of age and reflection, many of the songs on Roots & Branches are upbeat affirmations,” Holter says, “and most have universal themes like love and regret, memory and nostalgia, hope and death.” Like his first four albums—Darryl Holter, West Bank Gone, Crooked Hearts, and Radio Songs—Roots & Branches is beautifully recorded and produced by the multi-talented, composer/saxophonist and Holter family friend Ben Wendel.

The album is divided into two distinct sections, each with its own band. The more traditional and acoustic Roots section that opens the album and harkens back to Holter’s days a folk features the heavyweight talents of Greg Leisz (pedal and lap steel), Todd Sickafoose (bass), Gabe Witcher (violin, piano, guitar) and Don Heffington (drums).

Equally important to the success of Roots and Branches, is Holter’s relationship with his daughter Julia Holter, who was also a part of his landmark 2016 album, Radio Songs: Woody Guthrie in Los Angeles 1937-39. Duet partners here on ‘Magazine Street” and “No Depression,” Julia is an accomplished singer/songwriter who has released four solo albums, the last of which, In The Same Room, was released on Domino Records in 2017. In the same year she also premiered her score for the 1928 silent film, The Passion of Joan of Arc.

Holter added more depth to his compositions by bringing some extremely talented guest vocalists including jazz singer and Snarky Puppy collaborator Becca Stevens, singer/Broadway stage actor Shayna Steele, singer and composer/producer of the folk opera Hadestown Anais Mitchell, New York-based bassist/singer/songwriter Chris Morrissey, and a man who really needs no introduction, the great singer/songwriter and record producer, Joe Henry. 

A tuneful, provocative collection that explores the intricacies of relationships both personal and universal, Darryl Holter’s Roots & Branches, points this vital, opinionated, historically aware artist in exciting new directions, hinting at the next chapter for this social activist and folk singer who loves his relationship with making music, that starts in time honored fashion, as he says in the liner notes, with “a guitar, a chord progression and a handful of lyrics.”