Rising Appalachia‘s “Chance at Wholesome” is a folk song about a specific type of man: the one who performs devotion and withholds it, who lights a fire and vanishes before it catches, who offers the shape of love without the substance. Leah Song and Chloe Smith sing him down in close harmony.

The sisters were born in Atlanta and have long been based in Asheville, in the North Carolina mountains, where they took up clawhammer banjo and fiddle in their twenties after a childhood of classical piano and weekends at fiddle conventions across the Southeast. Twenty years of Rising Appalachia has carried them from busking in New Orleans to Red Rocks and NPR’s Tiny Desk, all of it self-managed and independently financed. The group runs on sibling harmony, banjo and fiddle over world percussion, with David Brown on upright bass and baritone guitar, Duncan Wickel on fiddle and cello and Biko Casini on drums. The same lineup plays “Chance at Wholesome”, the sisters’ harmony carrying the verses.

“Chance at Wholesome” is the second single from Trade My Troubles, a sixteen-track album due on 2 October, bookended by a traditional Irish traveller song and an Appalachian fiddle tune. The US autumn tour opens with two nights at Pisgah Brewing in Black Mountain, the band’s annual Hurricane Helene commemoration shows, then runs through the Southeast to Moab Folk Festival before finishing in New York.

Stream “Chance at Wholesome” HERE