Roots Music Report

Liner Notes:

About the Album

Homestead Hands (Release date: Sept. 4th, 2018) is a collection of songs husband and wife duo, Jeff Rolfzen and Rocky Steen-Rolfzen wrote based upon their familial roots in the Black Hills, Eastern Montana, and the Mississippi River, fused with their current rural life in the Ozarks. Reflecting upon stories passed down through generations, and the dusty western prairie their ancestors settled upon via the Homestead Act of 1862, the album is a testament and love letter to the tenacity of country life. Recorded at Frogville Studios in Santa Fe New Mexico by Bill Palmer (Taj Mahal, ThaMuseMeant), and mastered by Brian Lucey (Black Keys, Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band), Homestead Hands is the duos follow up to their debut Songbirds and Fog released in 2016. Rocky (vocals, accordion, plectrum banjo, guitar, washboard, shotgun shell box percussion) and Jeff (vocals, resophonic guitar, flattop guitar, banjo, harmonica) co-wrote all of the songs.

The album is decidedly imbued with a country roots feel throughout, with more than half of the album dedicated to historic based tales. The lead off track "Code of the West” is based on anecdotes that Rocky’s prairie ancestors passed down about how to survive and form a community with the strangers, weather, and other passersby in the remote West. The title track "Homestead Hands" is centered around Rocky’s relatives the Holsti sisters, a singing group from Camp Crook South Dakota, who taught her to sing, harmonize and yodel at a young age. “The Old Red Rooster” laments the commonplace separation of families during the mining boom of Deadwood and Spearfish Creek, as the women stayed home on the farm and the man of the house left to seek fortune. Rocky sings lovingly of her western prairie upbringing in “Lonesome Western Heart,” while the harsher aspects of western life are exemplified with Jeff’s gritty slide guitar work on “Give My Regards to Mr. Hickok.” Nature, community, place, are all given their due on the lovely instrumental “Bitterroot Creek,” the homage to their Arkansas homestead on “Ozark Mountain Home,” and “Drink From The Bottle,” a tune inspired by the heartwarming welcome they received on their tour in Ireland.