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Dec 16, 2020 By Christopher Roberts Photography by Nadja Hallstrom James Yorkston

James Yorkston is releasing a new album with James Yorkston and The Second Hand Orchestra, The Wide, Wide River, on January 22, 2021 via Domino. Now the group have shared another song from the album, “Ella Mary Leather,” via a video for the track. Watch it below.

The song is named after a Herefordshire, England-based folk song collector in the early 20th Century, but isn’t about her. Yorkston had this to say in a press release: “No, it’s not about Ella Mary Leather. I am just using her lyrical name as a mask, to protect the innocent…”

Sven Blume directed the video and had this to say: “Emma was already on her way when we found Karl-Jonas among some moving boxes. We went out in Stockholm’s December night. We stopped at the legendary Pub Diset. A place to find the past, the soul or Ella Mary Leather.”

Previously James Yorkston and The Second Hand Orchestra shared a video for the album’s first single, “Struggle.” “Struggle” was one of our Songs of the Week.

Swedish producer Karl-Jonas Winqvist is the leader and conductor of The Second Hand Orchestra. The band also features Peter Morén (Peter, Bjorn & John), Cecilia Österholm (described in a press release as “one of Sweden’s best-known nyckelharpa players”), Emma Nordenstam (piano & cello), and Ulrika Gyllenberg (violin).

Yorkston’s last solo album was 2019’s The Route to the Harmonium. At the start of 2020 he released Navarasa : Nine Emotions, a new album with Yorkston/Thorne/Khan, a trio consisting of Yorkston (guitar/nyckelharpa/vocals), Jon Thorne (double-bass/vocals), and Suhail Yusuf Khan (sarangi/vocals)

Read our My Firsts interview with James Yorkston.

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