Track x Track: Jobi Riccio “Strawberry Wine” EP
I’m a sucker for a short and sweet collection of tunes. Something concise. A line up of songs that I never tire of and will listen to again and again. Jobi Riccio‘s “Strawberry Wine” is a collection of songs that scratches that itch.
There is a refreshing simplicity to the delivery of these tunes. Clean and crisp in their nature. A slight twang on her vocal and nailing that high and lonesome sound as her voice sways in the breeze of the tunes. It’s country music but there is no ostentatious, over the top nature to it. It’s pure. The way that the folks making this type of music way back when intended it to be and thats a beautiful thing to witness played out in modern times. Jobi commands her voice and the style is such a way that is incredibly impactful. Its’ never more evident that how she absolutely destroys your heart on ‘Working Girl Blues’. That yodel, holy sh*t.
As “an ode to the women of country music she grew up singing along to in her bedroom” it hits the nail on the head with each listen. Soaring fiddle, steady acoustic guitar rhythm, lonesome steel guitar and plucky banjo lines. Sepia tinged and sweat stained bliss. Red dirt caked on boots and the smell of a cardboard vinyl sleeve that has been sitting in a record collection on a shelf for 40 years. All of these visceral experiences seem to be unearthed in experiencing her songs here and I can’t help but listen again and again.
We caught up with Jobi to give us a bit more of a look into the three songs on this EP, what they mean to her, where they came from. The story behind the story. Check it out below and go grab this EP today!
Working Girl Blues – “When I became interested in bluegrass and the bluegrass community as a teenager I was very aware I fit a different mold apart from just being a “picker.” For one thing, shredding/flashy picking never really interested me, though I did my best to hang with the people (often older dudes) I was jamming with in Denver. I felt caught between two worlds, I felt a part of the bluegrass community, but my strength was always my songwriting, singing, and rhythm guitar playing. When I found out about female songwriters, specifically Hazel Dickens, who held their own as solid rhythm guitar players and wrote bad-ass classic songs, it gave me a new sense of confidence of my place in the community. My sophomore year of college I became really obsessed with Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard, and “Working Girl Blues” became kind of an anthem for me. I loved the edge in their voices, the defiance of the lyrics, the yodel harmonies. Inspired by Hazel and Alice, I found myself playing and writing in this bluegrass meets classic country sound I heard in “Working Girl Blues” and this became the frame work for my EP.”
Hangin’ The Moon – “As a little girl I was obsessed with country music. Devastating heartbreak songs were my first musical love. I spent hours in my room learning to sing from Patsy Cline and LeAnn Rimes records and was determined to write a heartbreak song of my own. However, I was seven years old so all of the songs I wrote were pretty bad. This first spark that drove me to write songs in the first place never really left my songwriter’s subconscious, though I began to write and play in different genres. Even in the midst of moving towards bluegrass and away from country as a teenager, the sad slow waltz’s were always my favorite songs to lead and hear preformed, as they brought a sensitivity to this often hyper-masculine music. “Hangin’ The Moon” came from a personal experience I dealt with my freshman year of college, but also was a song I had been trying to write for years. I’m pretty obsessed with vulnerability in songwriting, and when I wrote “Hangin’ The Moon” I felt I was finally able to write this type of song I had always loved, in an honest and truthful way through experience.”
Strawberry Wine – ““Strawberry Wine” is a song that came totally unexpected and all at once. I was playing around with some Western swing chord shapes shown to me by a friend a few months before and the song just started to write itself. I had a rehearsal with my band the night I wrote it and I remember being determined to have it finished by the time they showed up at my house. Because of that I think it was the first song I wrote very much with the band instrumentation in mind, specifically the fiddle, and trying to give it an old Western swing kind of vibe. Somehow, I had no idea about the Deana Carter song by the same name, and brought it to a songwriting class where a professor broke the news that a song with this title had been a chart topping country hit in the 90’s. Despite this, I kept the title and made it the title track for my EP because I felt it best encompassed all of my influences for the EP, namely the iconic women of classic country and bluegrass music I idolized. It also happens to be the catchiest song.”
