The Grahams, ‘Blow Wind Blow’ [Exclusive Premiere]

Americana duo the Grahams will soon be releasing their newest record, Glory Bound, and they're sharing an exclusive premiere of one of its tracks, "Blow Wind Blow," with readers of The Boot.

Alyssa and Doug Graham have been friends since she was seven and he was nine -- and through the years, they changed from friends to a couple to husband and wife, as well as a musical duo. Needless to say, the couple's life experiences and memories effortlessly weave in and out of songs like "Blow Wind Blow."

"[It's] another song about family, memory and legacies that we wrote with our childhood friend BMC, with whom we share a certain collective memory and legacy," the Grahams tell The Boot. "However, it is also a song about moving through a landscape at once haunted and banal. In a strange way for us, our songs are indeed our only legacy, and as such, we need to tell our stories.

"For those that may recognize," they add, "the line from King Lear appropriated in the chorus shamelessly tries to borrow a little grandeur from the bard."

After recording their 2013 album, Riverman's Daughter, the couple kept Woody Guthrie in their earbuds and soon decided, after listening to "Farmer Labor Train," to write a song about trains. That's how "Glory Bound" -- the album's title track -- came into existence, and then, the Grahams decided to ride the trains "in honor of Guthrie, Lead Belly and other old folk legends who used the train system to bring voices together. We had to go to Oklahoma, obviously, because Woody was our mentor," Alyssa Graham says.

So, the Brooklyn- and Nashville-based duo's Glory Bound isn't their only project on the horizon; they also are involved with a documentary directed by North Mississippi Allstars member Cody Dickinson called Rattle the Hocks. It focuses on live recording and the relationship between the railroad and American roots music.

"The river was the original way that people got around and moved through the country. And moved music around the country. The rivers are the arteries," Doug Graham explains. "And now, here we are on trains, the next means of motion — the veins of America that brought people and music and cultures together. So that had to be the next progression for us.”

Glory Bound and Rattle the Hocks are both due out May 19. The album is available for pre-order on iTunes.

Listen to the Grahams, "Blow Wind Blow":