While most of her peers were focused on getting through high school, Sarah Jarosz released her first full-length album, 2009’s Song Up In Her Head. The Wimberly, Texas, native and mandolin prodigy would spend the next decade building her reputation as a songwriter and performer, releasing three more solo albums, collaborating with Sara Watkins and Aoife O’Donovan in the supergroup I’m With Her, and winning three Grammy awards in the process.
For her latest effort, World on the Ground, the 29-year-old Jarosz, who now resides in New York City, returned to her Lone Star roots for inspiration. The album opener, “Eve,” tells the story of a little girl “a long, long time ago in a little Texas town,” while “Hometown” centers on an older protagonist who couldn’t wait to leave home but found her way back anyway.
Below, watch Jarosz and Grammy-winning producer and co-writer John Leventhal perform a socially distanced duet of the gorgeous “Orange and Blue,” a song that paints a vivid picture of the Texas Hill Country. “John had most of the piano melody written and recorded, and when he played it for me in the studio, I was sonically transported to my hometown,” Jarosz says. “All I could think about were those ancient cypress trees that line the rivers and creeks all throughout Wimberley and Central Texas. This song poured out of me in a few hours in an almost dream-like state.”
World on the Ground is set for release on June 5, and is available for pre-order here.
