‘Valley Of Heart’s Delight’ is the new album from which the single ‘Lowland Trail‘ is taken. It’s a richly warm and fundamentally optimistic folk song which uses a cattle drive as a metaphor for finding a positive route to an easier future: “cattle pushing high up the canyon side / looking for a lowland trail / got miles before me miles behind / looking for my lowland trail.”
The album’s title refers to an impossible homeland – the Santa Clara Valley where Cilker’s family had lived for generations has gone forever, it’s orchards replaced by the offices of Silicon Valley. As Margo Cilker explains it: “I wrote these songs surrounded by the wild landscapes of the Northwest, but I was leaning toward the place I’d come from. I felt cut off from my family and the valley that held them. I spent hours thinking about my sense of belonging. I’d traveled through many places and then, when the travel stopped, I ruminated on where I had ended up. Where were you when the music stopped? I was in Enterprise, OR. And there in Enterprise, my mind drifted back to the Valley of Heart’s Delight. I wrote about family — about death and rebirth, and the arcs of love and art through a family line. There are songs that hint at missteps and redemption. There are songs about trees: in orchard rows, family trees, redwoods. And water: agricultural runoff, wild rivers, dammed rivers, baptismal flows. And there’s a [cover] song about a fish, cause it’s a damn good song and I wanted to record it.”
‘Valley Of Heart’s Delight’ is out on September 15th on Fluff & Gravy Records / Loose Music.
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