I’m With Her’s collaborative music traverses time and space

To see nature, open your eyes and a window. To hear it, feel it and connect with it, stream I’m With Her’s newest album, Wild and Clear and Blue. 

My window ushers in the high-noon breath of Central New York summers — its sticky humidity, backdropped by the shades of green that paint Syracuse each summer. 

Two thousand miles away, Sara Watkins’ window invites cool morning air into her Los Angeles abode, just before the sun sweeps in with some “pool worthy” heat. 

Yet Watkins and I meet somewhere in between: on a phone call to discuss I’m With Her’s latest musical offerings before Friday’s performance at Beak & Skiff Apple Orchards. That’s what the female folk trio’s sophomore album released in May is all about, really: a meeting space from distant places — where themes of nostalgia and aging converge, where listeners connect the natural world to phases of life and the passage of time. 

I’m With Her is a trio of singer-songwriters and multi-instrumentalists: Watkins (fiddle, cello), Sarah Jarosz (mandolin, guitar, banjo) and Aoife O’Donovan (guitar, piano). Each member brings an accomplished solo career and deep roots in folk, bluegrass and Americana, but together, they blend those traditions into a cohesive sound.

While the group formed back in 2014, their debut album See You Around arrived in 2018, followed by a string of singles. One of these singles, “Call My Name,” earned a Grammy in 2020. The group’s recent release of Wild and Clear and Blue highlights I’m With Her’s continuously-evolving collaborative voice.

This album is a passage of time in itself; the group started writing the titular track for the record, “Wild and Clear and Blue,” in the fall of 2021. The song was initially inspired by fallen folk “musical ancestors” Nanci Griffith and John Prine, but these early themes of “heritage” blossomed into an album-long meditation of how we walk through life.

“We draw on our natural surroundings a lot for metaphor, and also for this sort of time-travelly, mystic way of understanding,” Watkins said. “[It’s] how we can draw upon strengths given to us and sort of imagine our way through these hard moments.”

But Watkins is quick to interject that the album has a spirit of optimism as well. 

“There’s also a lot of joy on the record, and adventure, and curiosity, and celebration of going home and all of that,” she said. “I think there’s a very broad footprint of time on this record.”

Live performances and touring offer some ground for this “broad footprint” to include some dancing at times. Watkins said the group enjoyed witnessing how listeners connect to the music.

“There are some songs that obviously hit people a little bit personally and you can see people’s faces get a little emotional,” Watkins said. “There are also lots of fun, energetic hoots and hollers for the more virtuosic, solo moments.

 “These songs really do come to life in a concert setting.”

This Friday’s show in Lafayette is the penultimate date on I’m With Her’s co-headlining tours with Iron & Wine — the stage name for Southern singer-songwriter Sam Beam whose latest single, “Robin’s Egg,” features the trio in collaboration. Like I’m With Her, Iron & Wine delivers rich melodies and lyrical depth, exploring the complexities of human experience through an indie-folk sound.

Before embarking on the tour that is spanning a dozen shows across the Midwest and eastern States, Watkins said she expected plenty of fun nights sharing the same stage. 

“I think it’s going to be a really beautiful combination, and I think that people who love Iron & Wine will really enjoy us, and vice versa.”