Bluegrass band Big Richard makes music for the 21st century’s twisted cultural unease. Their latest album Pet, is a fierce, provocative, rejoinder to what troubles them and the world right now, which was recorded live to tape in order to capture the fervor of their live shows. “Big Richard is so much about our energetic delivery, and so I think it's been really important for us as a group to figure out how to do that for a record,” says mandolin and guitar player Bonnie Sims. “We made the album all on tape and did it all in these single-shot performances,” cellist Joy Adams adds...
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Bluegrass band Big Richard makes music for the 21st century’s twisted cultural unease. Their latest album Pet, is a fierce, provocative, rejoinder to what troubles them and the world right now, which was recorded live to tape in order to capture the fervor of their live shows. “Big Richard is so much about our energetic delivery, and so I think it's been really important for us as a group to figure out how to do that for a record,” says mandolin and guitar player Bonnie Sims. “We made the album all on tape and did it all in these single-shot performances,” cellist Joy Adams adds. “The collection of songs, we wanted to take our most hard driving, heavy hitting songs, we wanted to craft a banger set list. Like, if we had a 30-minute set, what would we put on there that says the most, and makes people feel the broadest bunch of feelings? And it was all these songs.” Adams and Sims both studied music and toured and played extensively before (and outside of) joining Big Richard, as did the other members of the band: Adams has three degrees in cello, toured with Darol Anger and Nathaniel Rateliff, and has recorded for television and film (including the Queen’s Gambit); Sims, who grew up playing music with her family, has a degree in commercial music, with a vocal specialization in yodeling, toured and recorded extensively with her husband, Taylor Sims (including a platinum-certified record); fiddler Eve Panning, who also grew up playing with her family, studied violin performance and music education, taught orchestra, and played in bluegrass bands, including touring widely with classical group Barrage; and bassist Hazel Royer started out playing music with her dad Eric Royer in the Boston, MA folk and rock music scene, and studied at the Berklee College of Music. Pet, the band’s sophomore studio album, was engineered by Mark Anderson and produced by the Big Richard members, will be released February 5, 2026 on Signature Sounds. Anchored by staples from the band’s live sets, the album includes their urgent, vociferous version of Dave Olney’s anti-capitalist anthem, “Millionaire,” and an equally-vehement rendition of the anti-gun violence treatise, “Red Fox Run,” written by Cecelia and Andy Thorn (of Leftover Salmon). Both songs are emotionally potent at shows, and the audience’s anger often palpable; feeling it together as they play is cathartic, Sims says. Big Richard opens Pet full force, with a blistering medley of Sims’ song, “It’s Gonna Fall” and the Bill Monroe fiddle tune, “Old Daingerfield”: “Our air has turned to poison and our water catches flame / You know we’re blowing out the ground under our beds in which we lay / And we’re digging holes we’ll never fill, the ground shakes to protest / But we just close our minds and eyes and ears, there ain’t no stopping progress,” Sims sings about her despair at the destruction of the natural world through fire and flood, and the fracking wells she sees springing up in Colorado. (At shows, the band also jibs at Monroe’s infamous habit of claiming credit for all songs written by his band members, by joking that Sims wrote both tunes.)
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