BORN, BLESSED, GRATEFUL & ALIVE

1. Turn Off The News (4:23)

2. Something's Gotta Change (3:40)

3. Heart So Hard (3:44)

4. Play Freebird* (4:04)

5. Traveling Kind (4:10)

6. I Want You ** (3:23)

7. Wake Up (4:38)

8. Maybe Someday (3:59)

9. Noman Man (3:48)

10. These Words Alone (4:24)

11. Down At The Dancehall (3:14)

12. Grieve On (3:03)

All songs written by Blake Christiana except*  written by Blake & Mandy Christiana 

and ** written by Blake Christiana & Shane Spaulding.  

Produced by Damian Calcagne & Blake Christiana

Engineered & Mixed by Damian Calcagne

Mastered by Fred Kevorkian

RELEASE DATE: JULY 26TH, 2024

Marketed by 333 Entertainment

Distributed by Symphonic 

ALBUM BIO

This record started to take shape when Blake Christiana decided to book a weekend of solo shows, one in Roanoke, Va as a rehearsal for the one at The Down Home in Johnson City, TN the following night, to record as his first ever live recording.  Blake decided to write mostly all new material for these shows, as well as dig out some songs that never wound up working for Yarn.   

At first this show was going to be Blake all alone on stage, but as he started writing and curating the show, he started adding some other musicians to the line up.  Ultimately, Joey Recchio (Big Daddy Love), Heather Hannah, Brian Dickell (The Steel Wheels), and Bill Stevens joined him on stage for 2 very intimate shows.  The weekend changed his entire perspective, it made him want to write more, play more, and most importantly, collaborate more.   

Ultimately, that experience led Christiana to making this new record.  He wasn’t sure it was even going to be a Yarn record.  He was completely open to whatever and wherever the music led.  A producer/keys player and studio owner, Damian Calcagne, reached out to Blake after they wound up on stage together at a benefit show in NJ.  Calcagne wanted Blake to come up from North Carolina and spend a weekend playing around in his studio, The Pinebox in Boonton Township, NJ.  The pair had zero expectations and zero inhibitions about any of what transpired that weekend at The Pine Box.  It led to another week up at his studio a few weeks later.  In between sessions, Blake found himself writing like crazy and specifically for what we were doing, When he felt the record needed a JJ Cale type sounding tune to round it out a bit, he wrote Traveling Kind in about 10 minutes before our 2nd session came around, along with several others in this very same manner.  The whole experience was like this, it just all happened without any pressure or expectation.   

Ultimately, what was left of Yarn wound up tracking on this recording as well, that would be Yarn’s rhythm section, Robert Bonhomme and Rick Bugel.  Also in the studio with Yarn were Mike Robinson (Railroad Earth), Andy Falco (Infamous Stringdusters), Mike Sivilli (Dangermuffin), Johnny Grubb (Railroad Earth), Heather Hannah, Elliott Peck (Midnight North) and of course Damian Calcagne.  It seemed right to keep the name Yarn going on this record, Yarn has always been evolving, their sound has forever been doing whatever it wants to do.  That is Yarn and this is our next chapter. 

Born, Blessed, Grateful & Alive is yet another milestone in the evolution of Yarn's music.  Born in a time of near implosion of the band and blessed by a generous cast of unique and super talented colaborators.  The band is beyond grateful for yet another chance to hone in on the philosophy of their music, and ALIVE more than ever before with the heartbeat of their collective human experience.  A collection of 12 songs to keep you company in this lonely and nearly impossible to navigate life.

TOUR DATES

MAY 1 - HARRISONBURG, VA

MAY 2 - HAGERSTOWN, MD

MAY 3 - EASTON, MD

MAY 5 - WAYNE, PA

MAY 7 - PITTSBURGH, PA

MAY 8 - BUFFALO, NY

MAY 9 - SYRACUSE, NY

MAY 10 - BLAIRSTOWN, NJ

MAY 11 - HOOSICK FALLS

MAY 12 - BURLINGTON, VT

MAY 25 & 26 - ROOSTER WALK

JUNE 22 - CHARLES CITY, VA

JULY 13 - LOUDON, TN

JULY 19 & 20 - ERWIN, TN

JULY 26 - RALEIGH, NC

AUGUST 2 - CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA

AUGUST 3 - ASHEVILLE, NC

MORE DATES TBA

RELEASE TIMELINE

MARCH 29 - "Heart So Hard" single & video release

APRIL 26 - “Turn Off The News” single & video release

May 7 - Album Presale

MAY 31 - “Grieve On” single & video release

JUNE 28 - “Traveling Kind” single & video release

JULY 26 - Album release date & “I Want You” video release

RECENT PRESS

"…you will likely become a true believer after only a single listen."

NO DEPRESSION

“…borrowing from country, folk, and classic rock & roll to knit together a sound that is Americana at its genrebending best.”

POP MATTERS

"successfully entwining the thread between country and rock to create the warm, sonic tapestry that is Yarn. Highly recommended."

ELMORE MAGAZINE

"The demands of the stage make it so that Yarn can operate in a couple of different modes — as a rowdy rock band with honky-tonk sensibilities, and as slow and sad country-tinged troubadours."

YES WEEKLY

“If you like your country roots music unvarnished and raw, give a listen to Yarn.”

VINTAGE GUITAR MAGAZINE

"Yarn is the band I always wish I had found"

BLUE RIDGE OUTDOORS MAGAZINE

"identifying highlights here was a difficult task, because, in its entirety, this album is stunning."

MOTHER CHURCH PEW

YARN BIOGRAPHY

Blake Christiana, founding member of Yarn, has the music in him. In fact, you could say that Blake is the music and the music is Blake; that’s how deeply he inhabits the songs he writes and plays. You can hear him struggling with his feelings, whether it’s on a skittering country shuffle or on a mid-tempo folk ballad or a straight-ahead rocker. His restless search for the chords and lyrics over the past 20 years has produced a plethora of memorable music, and since 2007 he’s led Yarn, a band that’s evolved from its earliest days as a bar band in New York City to an outstanding roots band that’s shared stages with Dwight Yoakam, Marty Stuart, Alison Krauss, and Leftover Salmon, among many others.

Yarn got their start by playing a weekly residency at Kenny’s Castaways in Greenwich Village in 2007. “We played there every Monday night for two years. I was writing like crazy, and we’d try out the songs. It was like rehearsing on stage; every night was different, and sometimes we played in front of five people and sometimes there’d be 100 people there.” Over the years, musicians have rotated in and out of Yarn, but drummer Robert Bonhomme and bassist Rick Bugel, along with Christiana, have remained the core of the band.

17 years and over 10 albums later, Yarn has a new album, Born, Blessed, Grateful & Alive, out in July 2024, and their exuberance shines as bright as ever; they lay down jubilant songs—even when the lyrics might be a little less than joyous—and play effortlessly across a number of genres. Joining Christiana, Bonhomme, and Bugel in the studio for this he album were guitarists Mike Robinson (Railroad Earth), Andy Falco (Infamous Stringdusters), and Mike Sivilli (Dangermuffin), bassist Johnny Grubb (Railroad Earth), harmony vocalists Heather Hannah and Elliott Peck (Midnight North), and keyboardist Damian Calcagne, who co-produced the album along side Blake Christiana.  

The soaring Allman Brothers-esque mid-tempo rocker “Turn Off the News” opens with a cascading piano run that tumbles into the band’s echoing vocals that reverberate with a gospel-inflected acclimation of the joy we feel when we can “turn of the news” and “shake off the blues” of the incessant 24 hour depressing news cycle. The country shuffle “Somethings Gotta Change” strolls along the crystalline riffs of a pedal steel that darts in and out of a honky-tonk piano; the song exudes a joyous spirit even in the face of the world falling down around it.

Christiana says that “Heart So Hard” never really worked with the old Yarn. “It needed a fresh approach with new collaborators.” The punchy rhythmic pace with a searing lead line, provided by Andy Falco,  in the instrumental bridge evoke the fast-paced emotional shifts that occur when you move from feeling desperately alone to finding peace in that loneliness. The spaciously unfolding “Play Freebird” flies high on a the sonic wings of Southern rock, incorporating a few lines and lyrics from Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Freebird,” as well as that song’s soaring harmonies and guitar orchestration. Christiana recalls that “My wife started writing this song a few years ago and she played it for me one night at our house. I thought it was a great idea and the beginning of a potentially amazing song. This was one of those tunes that immediately went from paper to the stage; I think we started playing it live the following week. It was written about her father who used to play Skynyrd and Marshall Tucker Band on his guitar around the house all the time when her and her sisters were little.  It’s also nice to have a song to play when some asshole in the audience yells “Freebird.”

The laconic country ballad “I Want You,” which Christiana wrote with his long-time songwriting partner Shane Spaulding, “loosely follows the plot of the ‘70s Willie Nelson movie, Honeysuckle Rose, about a married touring musician who finds his true love out on the road.” A road song, “Nomad Man” glitters with ringing finger-picking and soaring steel runs as it evokes the loneliness and solitude of the moving from one place to another, while the soulful “These Words Alone,” with its towering B3 and gospel-inflected harmonies sonically resembles Van Morrison’s later songs. The rollicking steel guitar on “Down at the Dancehall” introduces a twangy rambler that would be at home on any album by the Flying Burrito Brothers.

For Christiana, it’s all about the song, and the collection of songs on Born, Blessed, Grateful & Alive reflect the range of the human experience. Says Christiana, “No one has any idea why we're here, what we're supposed to be doing here or what comes next, and there are very few things in this life to connect us to one another, other than the fact that we all don't know these things. I like to think our music could be one of the places where we can connect.”

Yarn has definitely brought people together with their music; their devoted followers call themselves the “Yarmy,” and for the last 4 years the band has hosted a three-day music festival, Yarnival, that attracted hundreds of fans to Troy, Virginia. Yarnival is a music and alternative entertainment festival, complete with sword swallowers, burlesque dancers, magicians, freak shows, and of course their favorite hand picked musical acts. Along the way, Yarn has gathered accolades from festivals, The Americana Music Association, landed on the Grammy ballot four times, and placed in the top five of the AMA album charts on more than one occasion.

Yarn keeps spinning their stories, drawing audiences into their vibrant musical web, and delivering clever and resonant lyrics in memorable songs that reverberate and linger in listeners’ hearts and souls.