Premiere: Carolyn Shulman remembers the past with ‘Old Farm House’

Carolyn Shulman had been binging popular drama series Yellowstone. Through its exploration of urbanization and the destruction of rural lands, the singer-songwriter got to thinking about her own story. She then put pen to paper to write “Old Farm House,” a delicate and moving ode to her family’s mountain home. “Call it progress, call it pain,” she sings. Her words leave pulsing wounds, from which you may never fully recover.

Shulman’s voice aches like sour grapes, as she perceives her own world fading from view. She yearns for the days of her childhood and erects a rustic framework that’s equally enveloping. Her family’s house, constructed by her grandparents, nestles in the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina. There, she can escape from the hustle and bustle of the modern world and re-root herself to the earth.

“It’s in a very small, rural town, and my brother and I grew up going to that mountain house with our parents every summer and many falls in our childhood, and we still take annual trips there,” Shulman tells B-Sides & Badlands. “So, I was also thinking a little bit about that house and about my family’s relationship to it. I was envisioning a pair of siblings as the main characters in the song.”

Through the song’s reedy production, as though stirring cornfields and long, slender grass, Shulman transmits a stunning story about the passage of time and how fleeting human existence is. She stays planted in life’s relentless storm, yet there’s a supple sorrow dripping off her lips. “Old Farm House” lingers in the air long after the song’s final lines – it’s so picturesque even city listeners will surely be able to find themselves wrapped in its imagery.

“Old Farm House” samples Shulman’s upcoming Heart on a Wire record, dropping everywhere on September 20.

Watch the “Old Farm House” music video below.

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