$20 - Help Surrender Hill celebrate their new Album River of Tears at this intimate listening show of the songs and the stories behind the songs. Americana duo Surrender Hill to release new album, River of Tears, on June 14, 2024
“…the couple’s multi-cultural, multi-genre, fiercely unique histories… fuel their songwriting.” – American Songwriter
“The duo’s voices are perfectly suited… the musicianship is absorbing.” – Americana Highways
Americana duo Surrender Hill is set to release its seventh album, River of Tears, on June 14, 2024, via Blue Betty Records. After exploring many sonic nooks and crannies across their previous releases, with this album the pair has produced its grittiest release thus far, leaning into rock and soul influences, delving into classic country and western sounds, taking listeners dancing into roadside honky-tonks, and devastating them with heartfelt ballads and love songs. The album came together as a tribute not only to the loss of some loved ones but a way of life, and the writing and the making of the album became a cathartic experience for the duo, an honest expression of where they were at the time.
Band members – and husband and wife – Robin Dean Salmon and Afton Seekins Salmon recorded River of Tears at Blue Betty Studio in their hometown of Ellijay, GA. Robin produced, engineered, and mixed the album, with Grammy Award-winning engineer Joe Smith doing additional mixing. Joining Robin (lead guitar, acoustic, vocals) and Afton (vocals, percussion) in the studio were Jonathan Callicutt (guitar), Matt Crouse (drums), Mike Daly (steel guitar, dobro), Eric Fritsch (organ), Drew Lawson (bass), Kevin Thomas (organ), and Mike Waldron (guitar).
“Some of the songs called for an edgier, at times, darker perspective,” says Robin Dean Salmon, who previously spent several years in a rock band signed to a major label and has also produced acts making everything from gospel to metal music. “We ended up exploring a rock & roll edge, balanced equally with tender, Southwestern soul-feeling landscapes.”
For this newest offering, the range of sounds matches the range of emotional experiences. As Afton points out, those titular tears are both sad and joyous. “I certainly shed a tear when Robin played ‘River of Tears’ for me, a love song about us,” Afton recalls, “and writing ‘Cry Baby’ helped me through a very rough patch.” Overall, River of Tears “is about relationships that we have with people in our lives — family and non-family — and places we’ve lived and been, and growth in our personal lives,” Robin says.
Past albums usually found the duo co-writing the songs, but River of Tears came together differently. Much of this album consists of songs written individually. Afton was mourning the deaths of two important people in her life while working on the album, and the process of songwriting proved therapeutic to her as she processed major life events and distilled them into song. She came home from a childhood friend’s funeral and immediately wrote the previously mentioned rocker “Cry Baby.” “It was a healing process for me, big time,” says Afton, who penned more than her usual share of songs on River of Tears. She wasn’t writing as often or as many songs as usual, but, adds Robin, “Every single song she wrote was a winner!”
Another of Afton’s songs is the single from the album, “Get Out of Your Own Way,” which will be released on May 31, 2024. “This is a song about perspective,” she explains. “I have always believed that if I had a dream or wanted to change something about my life, I had the power to do it. My parents have always allowed and encouraged me to follow my own path, and that gave me the courage to take chances. Because of that, I have traveled and seen the world, gaining a new perspective on life, love, and people.”
“This record’s not so much about our relationship, although there are moments,” says Robin, “specifically, the title track and ‘Holding Me.’” Robin wrote the former for Afton, and she wrote the latter for him, both for Valentine’s Day in 2023. “Those two songs, for us, are wonderfully important,” Robin says. “They’re very much from the heart, very honest, and for each other.”
As a musical duo, as a romantic couple, and as partners doing life together, Surrender Hill has experienced “unbelievable” growth in recent years, largely due to reflecting on their shared and individual pasts, lives lived with gusto, enriched by adventure in travel, relationships, love, hurt, school, work, art, play, and the end of an era through deep loss. The results of that time of reflection are present throughout River of Tears’ 16 songs. For Robin and Afton, the album is a cathartic journey — and they hope it will be for listeners, too, as well as for the audiences who get to hear the new songs in a live setting.