Allison de Groot & Rich Ruth

Allison de Groot is a clawhammer banjo player from Winnipeg, Canada whose work spans old-time, bluegrass, and folk traditions. A recipient of the Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and an Americana Music Association Instrumentalist of the Year nominee, she is best known for her duo with fiddler Tatiana Hargreaves, whose two albums, a self-titled debut and Hurricane Clarice, earned recognition from the IBMA, the Canadian Folk Music Awards, and the JUNOs.

Rich Ruth is the recording project of Nashville multi-instrumentalist Michael Ruth. Across three albums, most recently 2024's Water Still Flows on Third Man Records, he has built immersive instrumental music from ambient, spiritual jazz, minimalism, and synth-driven post-rock, compositions that begin in solitude with loops and drones and open outward through collaboration. He is also a third of Shrunken Elvis, the Nashville trio he shares with pedal steel guitarist Spencer Cullum and guitarist Sean Thompson, whose well-received self-titled debut arrived in 2025.

Their collaboration began with a simpler plan: Ruth would produce a solo record for de Groot. Over roughly a year in his Nashville studio, the plan dissolved. The two started composing together, and the album that emerged belongs equally to both of them, shaped as much by space and process as by melody. De Groot's banjo runs through looping and delay, acting as the pulse at the center of the arrangements, its rolling figures gathering krautrock-like momentum before giving way to Ruth's synthesizers. Patrick M'Gonigle, who also contributed to writing several of the tracks, threads his violin and string arrangements through the record, and Shrunken Elvis bandmate Spencer Cullum adds pedal steel to several tracks, widening the album's atmospheric reach. The final push to complete the album came in the form of a deadline they set for themselves: a surprise live debut of the material at Big Ears Festival.

Across eight tracks, their self-titled album maintains a tangible sense of human touch and tenderness at the center of something cosmic: de Groot's banjo grounds the music while Ruth's soaring guitars and electronics blur the boundary between the earthly and the celestial. Passages of unadorned banjo and violin, distant birdsong, and fragments of radio sit alongside vibraphone and synths, all refracted through a psychedelic, cinematic lens. The result is two distinct musical voices arriving not at a meeting point but at a new, shared sound.