Larkin Poe released Blood Harmony on November 11, 2022, through their own Tricki-Woo Records. Their sixth studio album grew out of a practical ambition: sisters Rebecca Lovell and Megan Lovell wanted their recordings to capture more of the interplay audiences heard at their concerts.
The family connection in the title was something they had learned long before forming the band. Megan told WABE’s City Lights that their mother, who sang harmonies with her own siblings, taught her children to sing together at the piano. Those lessons helped inspire the title track, “Blood Harmony.” The song acknowledged the person who had encouraged their music from childhood, while its name described the experience of two sisters finding their voices together.
Making the album widened that family collaboration. Rebecca’s husband, guitarist Tyler Bryant, joined the sisters as co-producer, and members of their touring band contributed drums and bass. Sessions took place in Rebecca and Tyler’s home studio and another familiar local studio. Rebecca told The Line of Best Fit that working in comfortable surroundings helped remove the pressure of watching the cost of an unfamiliar, expensive room mount. After returning to the road in 2021, they wanted songs they could take back to the stage without having to reconstruct elaborate recordings.
That meant putting more work into the songs before recording them. The sisters spent days in Megan’s basement testing arrangements as a duo, making sure each song could hold up with only their two parts. In a Guitar Player interview, Megan explained why they brought in live drums after earlier records had used programmed rhythms. Rebecca also resisted doubling guitar parts to make the choruses bigger. The arrangements had to generate their own changes in intensity. “We didn’t piece things together. It was kind of raw,” Megan said.
Careful preparation still left room for a song to change. “Kick The Blues” acquired a new riff when Megan arrived at the studio with a replacement part. Rebecca had become attached to the earlier version and needed time to adjust. As she explained to Guitar World, accepting the change meant listening beyond the arrangement she already knew. Album opener “Deep Stays Down” went through roughly five approaches, including a hoedown treatment and a slower, more spacious version, before Megan’s lap-steel riff helped them settle on its direction. The sisters were willing to reopen a song even after spending weeks trying to solve it.
The writing also returned to the places that had shaped them. “Georgia Off My Mind” drew on their move from North Georgia to Nashville and the mixed feelings that came with crossing the state line. Rebecca described that transition to WABE as a leap of faith, with attachments to the past alongside the possibilities ahead. Megan told The Line of Best Fit that the sisters had sometimes pushed away from their Southern and bluegrass background. For this record, they were deciding how to acknowledge that upbringing on their own terms. That gave the album’s family theme a wider setting: the music they shared was tied to home even as their working lives took them elsewhere.
Blood Harmony won Best Contemporary Blues Album at the 2024 Grammy Awards, earning Larkin Poe their first Grammy. Their earlier album Venom & Faith had received a nomination in the same category in 2020.
