Sierra Ferrell is the Could Queen of American roots music — it doesn’t matter what month it’s. For her summertime cease on the Tiny Desk, the West Virginia native adorned herself in garb befitting Florence Pugh’s star flip in Midsommar, a path of fabric pansies encircling her eyes. Ferrell, whose 2024 album is appropriately known as Path of Flowers, shortly confirmed that her finery wouldn’t get in the best way of a stellar musical efficiency; her fiddling on this set’s first music “I May Drive You Loopy” anchored each the band and the complete efficiency within the technically difficult but boisterous, bluegrass-meets-old-timey sound that’s made Ferrell a fast-rising star alongside buddies like Billy Strings and Zach Bryan. Specializing in the music, solely pausing for some whimsical banter concerning the legendary metropolis of tunnels that lies beneath Washington, D.C., Ferrell confirmed how her mix of heat, chops and inventiveness is remaking Americana music.
A former busker who realized roots music throughout her itinerant twenties, Ferrell exhibits no fealty to anyone fashion whereas honoring many in her glowing, insightful songs. For “Greenback Invoice Bar” she switched to guitar and sang with the attractive ease of a younger Bonnie Raitt as Oliver Bates Craven spooled out some Beatles-esque guitar licks. (He and mandolinist Josh Rilko have performed with Ferrell on and off since she first wowed Nashvillians a decade in the past on hipster nights on the American Legion Corridor.) Then the band shifts to a Spanish stroll for “In Goals,” throws in a bluegrass breakdown, and ends the set with the gorgeous “American Dreaming,” a ballad that Linda Ronstadt might need recorded in her early days. No circus hoop descended for Ferrell to seize and levitate — as she did at her final Nashville New Yr’s Eve present — however she’d nonetheless managed to fill the Tiny Desk with sparkle and pleasure.
SET LIST
- “I May Drive You Loopy”
- “Greenback Invoice Bar”
- “In Goals”
- “American Dreaming”
MUSICIANS
- Sierra Ferrell: lead vocals, acoustic guitar, fiddle
- Josh Rilko: mandolin, octave mandolin, acoustic guitar, vocals
- Oliver Bates Craven: fiddle, electrical guitar, vocals
- Geoff Saunders: bass, vocals
- Matty Meyer: drums
TINY DESK TEAM
- Producer: Lars Gotrich
- Director/Editor: Maia Stern
- Audio Technical Director: Neil Tevault
- Host/Collection Producer: Bobby Carter
- Videographers: Maia Stern, Joshua Bryant, Mitra I. Arthur
- Audio Engineer: Carleigh Unusual
- Manufacturing Assistant: Elle Mannion
- Photographer: Elizabeth Gillis
- Tiny Desk Group: Hazel Cills, Kara Body, Ashley Pointer
- Government Producer: Suraya Mohamed
- Collection Creators: Bob Boilen, Stephen Thompson
- VP, Visuals and Music: Keith Jenkins