The Boulder, CO-based bluegrass trio Ragged Union announced their first new album Round Feet, Chrome Smile will be released on September 30, 2022. Today, they released the official video for the album’s first single “Somebody Call the Doctor.” Glide Magazine praised the band’s “damn fine harmonies” and “top notch bluegrass picking,” and proclaimed, “Ragged Union definitely delivers the kind of bluegrass goods that fit right in on a sunny summer day with a beer in hand.”
“‘’Somebody Call the Doctor’ is about realizing the world you grew up in is messed up, phony and repressed, and you’re ready to seek out a new place, ‘where the minds are open wide,” explains singer and guitarist Geoff Union.
Round Feet, Chrome Smile is the group’s third album and first in more than 5 years. Ragged Union has evolved musically from their origins focusing on fast-picking bluegrass and big harmony vocals to a more progressive style of string band music. The trio consists of singer/songwriter and flatpicker Geoff Union, mandolin/vocalist Elio Schiavo, and fiddle player/vocalist Rebekah Durham, a Juilliard-trained violinist who has toured internationally with the indie rock band San Fermin.
“Round Feet, Chrome Smile is a collection of original songs (and one obscure John Hartford cover that sums it all up), that continue in the same boundary-less lyrical direction that Ragged Union has always followed, while adding a musical evolution away from the stricter bluegrass sound of the previous albums,” explains Union. “I wrote or co-wrote all of the original songs, Elio and Rebekah composed the instrumentals, and we recorded it all live in a huge room in Boulder. Together we came up with some really cool and unexpected arrangements and rhythms, and it felt like a true collaboration. Elio took the vision to a whole other level in the mix. The result is an album that’s rich in tone, deep and wide in content, made with love, and totally unafraid.”
