Harrow Fair formed when Miranda Mulholland met Andrew Penner through the Toronto music scene. The two started writing songs together after the release of Miranda’s solo album, 2014’s Whipping Boy, on which Andrew played the dobro.
“We wrote a bunch of stuff pretty quickly,” Andrew said. “We didn’t really talk about it that much. It was just more like it worked really well, and there was a cool chemistry, and there was a sound that kind of happened right away.”
Miranda had been a member of Great Lake Swimmers and Andrew a member of Sunparlour Players, and they worked closely together to carefully craft a specific sound for their new act.
“We had a discussion about, ‘What do we want to do as far as what it’s going to look like?’” Andrew said. “It wasn’t a super long discussion … But I think the discussion was more like stripping that down even more, where it was just something much simpler that was still providing enough of a wide kind of sonic thing going on. You have the sizzle of hi-hats, and then you have the fiddle that can just go through, but it’s going through pedals and going through amps.”
For Miranda, working with Andrew has been extremely positive and has allowed her to continue to grow as an artist, she said, even though she already has years of experience.
“I’ve been taking more chances ’cause Andrew kind of allows me to take more chances sonically than I perhaps could’ve in other bands,” she said. “And I can kind of be a little more rock n’ roll, I guess, in a way that I really wasn’t able to before.”
Together, Miranda and Andrew manage to appear as if they’ve been playing together for over a decade even though it’s only been about half that. Their Troubadour Festival set highlighted their ability to perform a tight and memorable show featuring subtle gestures between the two members as they effortlessly balanced their individual roles to form a homogeneous duo. Miranda chalks up that dynamic to good communication.
“We had a good place to start from,” she said. “I think going on really long drives on tour you get to know each other really well, and you have a lot of trust.”
“We’ve both played so much I think we know when not to question things,” Andrew added, “Then we also know when to question things.” From: https://www.rootsmusic.ca/2019/10/22/how-harrow-fair-got-so-good-so-quick/
