After more than a decade making music together in Maine’s premiere bluegrass band, The World Famous Grassholes, fiddler Heather Kahill and guitarist Sam Pfeifle have branched out with the advent of 2024 to release their first single as a duo, “In the New Year.” It is available now, January 1, 2024, on Bandcamp and YouTube. 

Working in the tradition of New Year’s songs paved by the likes of U2 (“New Year’s Day”), Taylor Swift (“New Year’s Day”), Death Cab for Cutie (“The New Year”), and the Walkmen (“In the New Year”), the new release plays on the good intentions engendered by the turn of the calendar, as the pair alternate making promises for a year of good works and selflessness. Ultimately, though, both decide that forces beyond their control will decide their fates. 

“In the New Year,” Pfeifle sings in the open, “I’ll help out all my friends/ Watch the means and not the ends/ I’ll try to make somebody’s day.”

Recorded live at the duo’s India Street studio in Portland, and written by Pfeifle just last week in a stroke of inspiration, the arrangement is spare and immediate, with Kahill’s fiddle an intimate presence and Pfeifle’s percussive guitar playing keeping an urgent rhythm. In contrast to what can be a raucous five-piece drive on the four Grassholes’ records Kahill and Pfeifle have played on, or the grandiose nature of Kahill’s work in the Bangor Symphony Orchestra, this bends more into the folk traditions of storytelling and close listening, where there’s nowhere to hide. 

Part of that is thanks to the mastering and touch-up work done by in-demand engineer Chris “C$” Burns, who provided a warm New Year’s Day glow. And it looks sharp thanks to design work from Glen Halliday, who recently relocated his GHDesignCO offices to Merida, Mexico.

Look for more releases and a growing performance schedule for Heather + Sam in 2024 and beyond, in addition to a full slate of World Famous Grassholes gigs and releases.