AMERICANA HIGHWAYS
While country singers often keep the angst, heartbreak & “he did me wrong” humor in a strong orderly & cultured manner this duo having come from R&R (Robin was with the wonderful See No Evil & their song 1989 “Don’t Cry” still scrapes my memory from time to time — a personal favorite & desert island song) will now take a broader brush to their new music.
Edgier, darker, soulful & shuffled together to make their 16 intrinsic tunes flow from River of Tears (BLUE BETTY RECORDS) produced by Robin with Grammy Award-winning engineer Joe Smith. This well-drafted & recorded set has a country tinge with the rough edges only slightly polished. Afton has a strong vocal with clarity & excellent accentuation & articulation. Robin shines on the rockier “Rent Is Due,” & the follow-up Afton’s “Get Out of Your Own Way” runs like a cool sparkling stream. Two masterful tunes.
Despite his excellent rock voice Robin Salmon developed an ideal country projection & with Afton’s voice, they coupled quite complimentary alone or together vocally. When voices like this are provoked by the music the tune is no longer a song, it becomes something strangely more & “Cry Baby,” is one such performance.
The duo usually wrote together but it was noted they wrote many of this CD individually. Due to space constrictions, I don’t often go into detail about what each song’s about but all of the tunes on this set have an enduring pervasive quality.
THE ROCKIN MAGPIE
Timeless Americana/Alt. Country That Colours Outside the Lines of Both.
I’d never heard of married couple Robin Dean and Afton Seekins Salmon aka Surrender Hill until this disc arrived a few weeks ago, so it was dutifully logged into the system and life went on.
Cue a short car journey last week and I needed to find something to listen to for review purposes and couldn’t hit on anything that tickled my tastebuds until I clicked ‘play’ on the opening track River of Tears and what I heard via Robin Dean Salmon’s pained vocals and heartbreaking production very nearly made me pull the car over into a lay-by!
The song itself is a sad song full of hope, as the man’s life is going down the pan until he meets the love of his life … which is exactly what happened to me that fateful day 49 years ago when my eyes first lit on the future Mrs Magpie!
The couple can certainly write a cool, incisive, and eloquent song and either individually or duetting and deliver it to the listener faster than the UPS driver.
I’m not even sure what’s the most impressive here, the songs, the voices or the arrangements which seamlessly combine both the detail of Americana with the edginess and historical values of Alt Country with Rent Is Due, That Kind of Living and in Our Own Time all being prime examples that colour outside the lines of both genres.
Surrender Hill are the type of band (duo) that you dream of unearthing on an aimless Friday night in a sleazy bar on the wrong side of town or perhaps third or fourth from the top on a Festival bill; preferably coming on stage just as the sun is going down over the yardarm.
I’ve been immersing myself in Mr and Mrs Salmon’s vocals and songwriting talent so much that I’ve virtually missed the guitar playing throughout this record; mostly understated but never undervalued and mostly courtesy of Mike Waldron and Jonathon Callicutt plus Eric Fritsch providing sublime Pedal-Steel and Dobro too, while Matt Crouse and Drew Lawson hold it all together on drums and bass.
With 16 tracks here, there’s certainly something for everyone to fall in love with, not least Afton’s beautiful crooning on Get Out of Your Own Way or the damaged beauty of Pining Over You and You Can Always Call or the slow burning Last Goodbye and Angel, The Devil and Me which could all have easily appeared on any of those AMERICA Johnny Cash albums, although these arrangements are totally mesmerising and don’t need to be messed with.
There’s not enough time to describe every song here and I’m more than happy for you to discover them for yourself anyway; but there are a couple of particularly memorable songs that I’m torn between as my personal Favorite the punchy and saliant Rent Is Due is most certainly a timeless song of our times that could be a tale from the Depression but is actually an anthem for the forgotten people of Middle America and across the UK too.
Then of course there’s the wistful and plaintive songwriter’s song, That Kind of Living which starts with Robin Salmon crooning …
“Walked the streets where Elvis did
and filled the rhythm in my feet
drank at bars whisky soaked by the likes of Doc Holliday
busked for change on the sidewalk on the streets of New York.”
and when Afton comes in with her angelic harmonies I defy you not to wipe a tear from your eye.
I’m actually going to choose something extraordinary as my actual Favourite Song, End Of The Line a desperately emotional song of unrequited love, of sorts and throws everything from the Alt. Country playbook at it from crunchy electric guitars through searing pedal steel, rustic drums and bass all alongside a singer barely avoiding letting his emotions spill over … 10/10.
Robin Salmon joined his first band circa 1994 after a teenage life immersed in the music of Bob Wills, Johnny Cash and Marty Robbins as well as The Sex Pistols, U2, The Clash and The Ramones and if you squint your eyes, there’s a tiny bit of all of them in here; but Afton Salmon’s voice is pure molten Country from start to finish which all goes to create a totally distinctive ‘sound’ that is purely Surrender Hill.
RUSSEL TRUNKS EXCLSIVE MAGAZINE
This wonderfully flourishing, mightily impassioned new recording opens on the waning yearn within River of Tears and the gentle twang of Holding Me and then we get the quietly rambunctious Rent Is Due, the languishing rocker Get Out of Your Own Way, the veritably cinematic In Our Time, and then come the euphorically emotional Last Goodbye, the balladry of Great Divide and the earthy nuances that drive Palomino.
Along next is the ambiently sculpted Unconditional Life and the gritty storytelling of That Kind of Living and they are in turn backed by the free wheeling Cry Baby, the low slung Pining Over You, and then comes the soaring Black Birds Are Black, the rangy End of the Line, the album rounding out on the all-embracing ballad You Can Always Call, closing on the enthralling Angel, The Devil, and Me.
For this newest offering, the range of sounds matches the range of emotional experiences. As Afton Seekins Salmon, the other half of the duo and Robin’s wife, 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 the healing sadness writing ‘Cry Baby’ helped me through a very rough patch”.
“It’s not dark or morbid at all, but it’s very, very reflective of personal relationships and experiences”, Robin says of the album’s subject matter. “This record’s not so much about our relationship, although there are moments", 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 2 songs, for us, are wonderfully important”, Robin says. “They’re very much from the heart, very honest, and for each other”.
“Overall, though”, Robin says, “‘River Of Tears’ is more 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”.
TAKE EFFECT
The duo of Robin Dean Salmon and Afton Seekins Salmon, as Surrender Hill they return with their grittiest album to date, where rock, soul, classic country and western ideas are present.
The warm and hazy title track starts the listen with Robin’s expressive voice alongside cozy pedal steel and thumping drums, and “Holding Me” follows with fluid guitar amid Afton’s pretty pipes that embrace plenty of country traditions.
Moving into the middle, the rich and emotive “Last Goodbye” is a dense and powerful duet, while “Palomino” is an intimate and poetic moment that places much attention on mood and builds into a rugged album highlight.
Further still, the dreamy “Black Birds Are Black” tugs on the heartstrings via the jangly and sincere songwriting, and “Angel, The Devil And Me” exits with an initial calm demeanor that shifts into a frisky, dance floor ready appeal that emits an infectious energy.
If legends like Rodney Crowell, Waylon Jennings, Bruce Springsteen, Dolly Parton, Stevie Nicks and Emmylou Harris are of your interest, Surrender Hill’s top notch brand of Americana should be in your collection.
FATEA MAGAZINE
In the course of the six albums they've released since the band was founded in 2011, making their album debut in 2015, Robin Dean Salmon and wife Afton Seekins Salmon have established them as one of today's very best Americana duos and yet, despite critical acclaim and awards their profile remains almost under the radar outside of the States. As far as I can tell, they've never played Europe or the UK, indeed even back home their shows tend to centre around Georgia and Texas. Their last album, the double set Just Another Honky Tonk in a Quiet Western Town, was one of the finest country albums of the decade so far and nothing here falls short of that benchmark. It is, though, a departure from the norm in that the songs were most written individually rather than as a couple, partly as a healing process for Afton after the loss of close friends, and, featuring Matt Crouse on drums, bassist Drew Lawson, Mike Waldron on electric and baritone guitar, Jonathan Callicutt on electric and Mike Daly on steel and dobro, embracing rock and soul elements alongside the familiar country and western and honky tonk sounds.
The album's also less about their own relationship, although there are two love songs each penned from the one to the other, both penned as 2023 Valentine Day gifts, the first being Robin's gently strummed title track opener ("Baby I was lost and then in you I found my home/You showed me there was a reason for the pain …When you touch my face, the hand you touch me with/Gives me the strength not to break"). Following straight on, the other, Eric Fritsch on organ, is Afton's warblingly sung country soul 'Holding Me' ("Through all the fury and the quicksand/You still catch my fingertips/And when I'm lost in the silence/You can still make me feel like this").
Robin returns on lead for the chugging, twanged ebb and flow tempo 'Rent Is Due', a snapshot of industrial decline and its ramifications for small town blue collar lives ("Everything is quiet now/The world is standing still/Three old rusty boxcars/Remain colored up in scorn/A broken heart reminder/Of our life before the storm/When the mill shut down/And the train quit running through/When the mill shut down/And the rent is due") when the world changed from "This town was full of laughter/Men at work and children play/Money jingle jangle/In our pockets full of change" to "Some folks moved on down the road/Most didn't have the means to go/Me I joined a traveling show/With six gun Harlan and his rodeo".
Taking a slower, bluesier pace, written and sung by Afton and coloured with keening steel 'Get Out of Your Own Way'," is about opening yourself up to new perspectives and moving on you can look back and see the changes ("If I never left that desert sun/I'd never know where I come from/Everything looks different now…Sometimes leaving is worth a scar/It means seeing the better part/And if you're needing a little change/Just get out of your own way").
A similar idea informs the fingerpicked duet 'In Our Time' ("Every road I traveled left scars on my feet/Gave me every reason to believe/Opened up my eyes to you and me/Now I can breathe …I'm so grateful that I'm yours and you are mine") their voices coming together on the chorus refrain "Another precious moment in our time".
Of course, it wouldn't be a country album if there wasn't at least one song about leaving and heartbreak, even if this has more of a traditional folk foundation, so up steps the guitars drenched slow sway waltz 'Last Goodbye' ("Today I'm leaving you baby/Moving out with the tide/The seagulls are circling in the sky/Carrying words on their wings/Too broken to fly…As my ship sails from harbor you wave from the shore/Love's angels are screaming for one moment more/Warm tears are clouding my eyes/Could this be our last goodbye") as the storm gathers on the ocean.
Afton's back on vocals for the steel dappled, Parton-ish 'Great Divide' and its sentiments about leaving behind a world where "Egos make us fight our friends" and returning to kinder times, "Hoping we will finally leave/Bitterness to ancient men/And humble days will live again" as she asks "Will there be a place for our kids to run and play…Will our skies be finally clear, the poor and hungry disappear/And have a place to lay their heads at night?".
Throaty guitar underpins 'Palomino', that's a saloon not a horse, Dean's stories about the troubadour's life on the road and a bar stool ("I came to this town, a singer of songs/With a guitar and stories of where I come from/I found me a corner to do what I do/Sing about life and don't ya know most of it's true") and, of course, the obligatory drunk at the bar ("He bought me a drink so I played him a tune/About coyotes at midnight and gunfights at high noon").
Written in 20 minutes when she was so sick she couldn't sing, the touching 'Unconditional Life' was inspired by celebrating her grandparents' 70th wedding anniversary and her grandmother's 88th birthday, sadly just a few days before she passed, a musing on mortality ("It comes for everyone/The ending of a life") but also of a life shared together ("If you're a lucky one/You'll get to live it right I wanna dance in the footsteps/Of Grandma and Grandpa's light/A never ending fairytale/Living through our eyes/Oh a beautiful, unconditional life").
Cast in Guy Clarke, Rodney Crowell colours with its dusty rhythm and dobro, 'That Kind Of Living' is another of Robin's rootless rambling numbers ("I walked the streets where Elvis did and felt the rhythm in my feet/Drank at bars whiskey soaked by the likes of Doc Holiday/Busked for change on the sidewalk in the New York City heat/Rode a horse across the open range like an outlaw wild and free …I hang on to every heartbeat, there's a brave new world to meet/Step out on the highway, sometimes with broken feet/Live this life chasing every breath that I can breathe/That kind of livin's got a hold on me").
Neither the title nor its twangy alt-country groove would suggest that Afton wrote 'Cry Baby' (with an echo of Joplin perhaps) after returning from the funeral of a childhood friend, but there's no mistaking the emotion burning through the stages of grief lyrics ("It's hard to see the reason/Through the eyes of the grieving/Even if you do/It still hurts like hell…It'll all come in stages/When you get to the raging/You might wanna shatter windows/With your blame/And when you pass through the madness/You might buddy up to sadness/At least you know/You're on your way…It's okay not to be okay"), Robin's spoken verse ("When you wake up and your world has been shattered/And you can't hold your head up high/You feel like everything is broken, and you look sadness in eye") seeing it out.
And from one song of loss to another with the old timey feel of Robin's dobro-driven, organ-backed denial 'Pining Over You' ("I've been making up old stories/Adding dollars to my dimes/Telling strangers how you miss me/Pretending that you're mine… I will not wake up from this beautiful dream/I will not see you in this world without me").
A sort of you can't run from yourself variant on the other man's grass, 'Black Birds Are Black' has Robin singing "Black birds are black wherever they go/Some doves are gray others white as snow/Can't outrun your own damn self, this I know" and "Freedom ain't around the bend, that's plain to see".
It hits the final stretch with 'End Of The Line' which, echoing Townes in its line "If I ever needed you would you come way and just sit by me/If I need a little bit of tenderness at the end of the line, could you be mine", and stained with steel is Robin returning to the theme of a rock to lean on in troubled times "When I struggle with my faith/Find it hard to trust the broken arms of fate/Have hands that tremble in the fading light/A crooked smile on a weathered face", the track glowing with a Southern country vibe. A sort of echo to his plea, Afton's final lead is the wistful balladry 'You Can Always Call' ("When time in standing still/You can't find belief without a doubt/Don't call it quits too soon, there's still a fight in you/I'll come and save you from yourself/Remember, you can always call for help").
Robin on lead and Afton harmonising, it ends with the prairie rolling feel of the Kristofferson-tinted 'Angel, The Devil and Me', an ode to the spirit of their hometown ("My city is dressed in black/With a heart of concrete and stone/Streets are held by a fighting hand/Her soul is flesh and bone/And the train rolls by my window/Painted red and too stubborn to bleed/Beat up and tired, she serves faithfully/The angel the devil and me …Each night I board that train/And ride with souls lost and found/Through subway steam and broken dreams/I buried my heart in this town") as it takes off into a traintime rhythm Johnny Cash gospel in the final moments, an exuberant finale to yet another outstanding album.
Mike Davies
AMERICANA HIGHWAYS
Surrender Hill is an energetic musical incarnation that has captured the flavor of “a little country in their soul” (and a little rock ‘n roll too) as a result of band leader Robin Dean Salmon’s global roots. Coming from a wide open background, Surrender Hill has synthesized life’s experiences into a universal sense of freedom both lyrically and musically. - MELISSA CLARK -
B-SIDES AND BADLANDS REVIEW - JASON SCOTT
Their backgrounds, both together and apart, inform much of their work. They weave in great understanding of the human condition, torn and battered, yet resilient and commanding, and across the new record, they center on stories ⏤ in whatever form that takes, from personal anecdotes to second-hand accounts.
STOMP AND STAMMER – JEFF CLARK
“Badge of a Punk Rock Band,” is a winner.”
“Afton Seekins, whose voice has a striking Stevie Nicks rasp to it, helps bring out the pop elements of their sound.”
TURNSTYLED JUNKPILED REVIEW - By Brian Rock
"Husband and wife duo, Surrender Hill, put a whole lot of work into their fourth album, A Whole Lot of Freedom. The album is an ambitious, eighteen song exploration of roots music and realized dreams. With plenty of minor keys, yearning fiddle strains and gorgeous vocal harmonies, Surrender Hill create a sumptuous Americana dreamscape.
Husband, Robin Dean Salmon and wife, Afton Seekins beautifully blend their voices in sonic synergy like fellow Americana musical couples, The Grahams and Brigitte DeMeyer & Will Kimbrough. Singing songs about chasing dreams while holding on to love, they combine personal, Guy Clark style lyrics with lush, Roseanne Cash influenced musical arrangements."
GLIDE MAGAZINE
Today Glide is offering an exclusive premiere of “Turn This Train Around”, one of the standout tracks on the new album. The simple drum beat and sparse and twangy guitar immediately evoke the sound of the American West. Salmon handles the lead vocals, conjuring images of traveling across a barren landscape as he sings about a life of travel and making major changes in life. Seekins lends her own vocals to the track to give it shimmering harmonies. The imagery of of trains and driving across the desert definitely brings to mind the great road songs across outlaw country and Americana, and “Turn This Train Around” fits right in.