Lonnie Holley

This Friday, Lonnie Holley will release his new album, Oh Me Oh My, on Jagjaguwar. Following the previously shared collaborations with Michael Stipe and Moor Mother, Holley presents his new single/video, “Kindness Will Follow Your Tears” (with Bon Iver). Vast and serene, “Kindness Will Follow Your Tears” was produced by Jacknife Lee (The Cure, REM, Modest Mouse), and sees Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon lending his musical prowess on vocals, drums, and guitar. Atop lush instrumentation, Holley’s voice serves as the track’s guiding light: “Angels was all around me // drying my tears away // You can still hear my mother and my grandmother // Them saying // Saying hush little baby // Hush little baby // Don’t you cry.”

Tomorrow, Holley will celebrate his album release with an album playback and conversation with John Fenn of the American Folklife Center. More information is available here and attendees can RSVP here.

And on Friday, the day of Oh Me Oh My’s release, Holley will donate a piece of art to the office of newly appointed Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Holley’s donation will be highlighted in a reception hosted by Justice Jackson on the same day.

Oh Me Oh My is an achievement in the refinement of Holley’s impressionistic, stream-of-consciousness lyrics. Both elegant and ferocious, it sharpens the work contained on Holley’s 2018 Jagjaguwar debut, MITH. Oh Me Oh My is both stirring in one moment and a balm the next. It details histories both global and personal, and taps collaborators like Moor Mother, Michael Stipe, Sharon Van Etten, Justin Vernon of Bon Iver and more to give Holley’s message flight, and to reaffirm Holley as a galvanizing, iconoclastic force across the music community.

Surrounding the release of Oh Me Oh My, Lonnie Holley is being featured in an exhibition currently showing at the National Gallery of Art, and will be featured in an upcoming exhibition at The Royal Academy of Art in London (opening March 14th). He will have the inaugural exhibition at UTA Artist Space in Atlanta which opens on March 23rd. Holley’s show at the Museum of Contemporary Art/ North Miami will open May 10th, following his stint curating a show at Blum & Poe Gallery in LA (opening April 28th). Holley will also serve as an artist-in-residence at the 10th Anniversary Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tennessee, as well as working with the new class of OneBeat fellows at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida this April. Lonnie is also one of the main voices in the acclaimed podcast by Josie Duffy Rice, Unreformed: The Story of the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children.