Emily Ashberry has one of those voices, one of those crystalline, timeless, and Joni-esque sounds that feels as if it would sit perfectly in any roots scene from about 1961 onwards! And that same understated delicacy matches the music as it sets off through a pathway of bucolic poetics and heartfelt sentiment. Even when the band kicks in, although kicks in might be a tad dramatic, it lilts along on tumbling banjo and strummed acoustic guitars, unfussy beats and swooning fiddles that are content to merely dance in the background.
And when I read that the song is inspired by Fannie Flagg’s 1987 novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, it all makes sense, the protagonist of the song being one of those beautifully chaotic charmers, unique and unpredictable, spinning through your life like the zig-zag of the bumblebee flight, and leaving your life richer and more colorful for her having done so.
But there is a lot more going on here than just the story of forbidden romance in the Deep South; ‘The Bee Charmer’ is actually a wonderful example of a specific musical line of history, the song echoing the links between traditional bluegrass traits and a contemporary folk sound, the Old World’s roots with the New World’s continuation of that sonic story.
Who would have thought that there was so much to unpack in such a gorgeous and gorgeously deft song?
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