Laurel Premo is known for her rhythmically deep and rapt delivery of roots music on fiddle, guitar, and vocals. Her solo performances dive deep into traditional and new fiddle music, musically revealing a bloom of underlying harmonic drones, minimalist repetition, and rich polyrhythms. Presenting these sounds on finger style electric guitar and fiddle, Premo fully leans in to the archaic melodies and in-between intonations that connect folk sounds to the mystic and unknown.

She is a Michigan-based artist who has been writing, arranging, and touring since 2009 with vocal and instrumental roots acts, and is internationally known from her duo Red Tail Ring. Premo holds a BFA from the Performing Arts Technology Dept. of the University of Michigan School of Music, and has spent half-year stints at both the Sibelius Academy of Music in Helsinki, Finland and the University College of Southeast Norway in Telemark to study traditional music and dance. Important mentors who have helped shape Laurel’s lens in folk arts have been her parents Bette & Dean Premo (fiddle, guitar, and traditional song, Michigan), Joel Mabus (clawhammer banjo, Michigan), Arto Järvelä (fiddle, Finland), and Ånon Egeland (fiddle, Norway). Alongside several continuing music projects, she is active in organizing community events that connect people with folk art and dance.

NEW RELEASE: ‘GOLDEN LOAM’ (Release date October 8, 2021)
Laurel Premo’s latest solo work presents original and traditional music voiced on finger-style electric guitar and lap steel. Perhaps by its most honest classification “roots guitar,” the sonic vocabulary of Golden Loam is informed by guitar’s antecedents in American traditions – fiddle and banjo, the rhythms, melody and intonation therein, as well as that music’s relationship to movement. Glowing, droning, tugging, scraping, revolving, Premo bears renewed electric dirt, the golden loam layered by centuries of folk.

Following The Iron Trios (2019), Premo’s sophomore release builds on the dark roots world she arranged, with seeking, untethered delivery and a masterful use of space, on a dynamic wave of warm, gritty sustain. Laurel’s vocals on two pieces ‘Hop High’ and ‘I Am A Pilgrim’ are traditional calls beaconing the guitar’s response, and fold in timbrely like additional instrumental lines sustaining the drone.

Golden Loam was self produced and recorded during the pandemic lockdown of summer/fall 2020. The majority of the record is solo performance, but two featured collaborators are woven in to this embodied rhythmic collection. Percussive dancer Nic Gareiss (Michigan) appears on tracks 5 & 9, and bones player Eric Breton (Quebec) on track 3.

“subtle but dazzling and rich in texture. Watching a live performance is pure hypnosis.”
– MTV 10/08/21

“Laurel’s voice is used sparsely, though when it does eventually come in, notably on “Hop High”, it comes in with an assured confidence, reminding us of her place in roots music.”
– Northern Sky, UK 10/01/21

Compact disc and vinyl preorder available here. Digital version available here. Streaming options here.

THE LAUREL PREMO TRIO
A fiddle-led instrumental trio featuring fingerstyle electric guitar and bowed double bass, introduced with The Iron Trios (Release date October 11, 2019).

This self-produced trio record marks Premo’s second major instrumental work, following a banjo-nyckelharpa duet collaboration with Swedish artist Anna Gustavsson (2016). Premo’s voice is singular as she creates a new landscape by combining walking-paced traditional fiddle repertoire with finger style guitar, unearthing polyrhythms and intonation choices that connect back to banjo and old blues roots in American music. Two driving fiddle duets provide a breath in the midst of the gravity of the trio material, and an instrumental rendition of a shape note hymn closes the collection with a thunderous reverence that further reveals Premo’s nature to produce harmonically huge arrangements with deep-bodied pulse.

“For an album demonstrably unconcerned with even the basic premise of the construct of “authenticity,” it accomplishes that squishy term impeccably and effortlessly. Yes – with electric guitar.” – Justin Hiltner, The Bluegrass Situation.

Physical album and book available here. Streaming options here. Visit the Patreon page to support Laurel’s independent releases and see more behind the scenes work on this project.

RED TAIL RING
Since 2009, Laurel has performed in the internationally touring duo Red Tail Ring, a collaboration with Michael Beauchamp-Cohen that blends traditional American songs with new compositions and features Laurel’s ruminant nature on clawhammer banjo, fiddle, and vocals. The band has four full length records under their belt and several eps.

“Red Tail Ring is re-imagining Americana music with pure soul and without pretension”
– Jay Lapp, The Steel Wheels. 

“The very best of the 21st century’s minimalist and highly original folk music . . . a peerless duo.”
– American Roots UK

BOWHUNTER STRINGBAND
Bowhunter is an old-timey quartet built in 2011 for the highest goal of providing solid music for square dances. Michael Beauchamp (guitar), Sam Cooper (fiddle), Sam Herman (banjo), and Laurel Premo (fiddle) come together in this project to render old time tunes to fuel a traditional dance floor frenzy.

“This was my first chance to hear them all together and let me tell you: They get it done, and they do it right. There’s going to be plenty of good dance music in the Midwest for some time to come.”
– Paul Tyler, the Volo Bogtrotters

BEETHOVEN & BANJOS
Beethoven & Banjos was founded by Laurel’s brother and double bassist, Evan Premo. The weeklong event held in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is an annual cross-genre music festival. Each year, members of Decoda, Carnegie Hall’s affiliate ensemble, and a folk ensemble create and performing music together. Laurel Premo participates yearly as a composer and as part of the folk contingent.