Folkadelphia Session: Kristin Andreassen

Week after week, you may have noticed that we continue to post up new Folkadelphia Sessions. With each session, we are afforded the opportunity to meet, spend time with, and record brilliant and inventive musicians. We often make new friends. As music lovers often do, our friends recommend new artists for us to check out, projects to listen to, albums to spin. Such is the winding road of recommendations that led us to Kristin Andreassen and her Folkadelphia Session.

Look to our session with Anais Mitchell from way back in 2012. Mitchell brought two fantastic musicians in their own right to accompany her – Rachel Reis and Ben Davis. Ben told us all about his group Cuddle Magic and we stayed in touch. We invited Cuddle Magic to record a Folkadelphia Session of their own in 2014 and later would present a show with them that summer at Germantown’s Rigby Mansion. Cuddle Magic is a collective filled with talented musicians, each working on a range of artistic endeavors beyond the scope of the group. One such member is the truly productive Alec Spiegelman, who does a great job keeping me in the loop about when he’s in Philly, who he’s playing with, artists he’s recording, and so on. Alec clued me in to check out Kristin Andreassen who was in the midst of recording her first solo studio album Gondolier (which, by the way, is out now and a dreamy listen). From there, one thing led to another, Kristin, Alec, and I got to emailing and made plans to record the Folkadelphia Session that you’re about to listen to.

Andreassen, accompanied by Spiegelman on clarinet and Chris “Critter” Eldridge (you know, from the Punch Brothers) on guitar and harmony vocals, performed a breezy set of songs from Gondolier. Let them wash over you.