A few years back, I stumbled upon Bailey Bigger’s debut album, Coyote Red, months after its release. Her tasty sound was two parts folk and one part country, with a slab of blues served on the side. Resurrection Fern, which hit the digital racks last week, plays with that recipe. The result is a flavorful dish of folk music that’s spiced with whimsy. On the album’s Bandcamp page, she writes that it’s “a collection of songs I’ve written over the last two years of personal growth and discovery while living in the rural outskirts of the Arkansas delta and the coastal marshes of South Carolina. This album covers a lot of different emotions and experiences, but mainly it’s about the way the land and its inhabitants have enchanted me on a deep level and brought me to myself over and over again.”
It opens with “William’s Spring,” a celebration of love, nature’s rebirth and the hope both engender: “Daffodils bloom into the mist/Clover floods my body with its kiss/And it feels the same as your lips.” Bigger possesses a voice that’s clear yet dusky, and—as those lyrics show—possesses a poet’s knack for words and metaphor. That said, “Nancy Jo” is more direct in its portrayal of the sacrifices made by women: “But it’s the generational cost/Of the love we give that leads us to dream.” On Instagram, she explained that it was inspired by her grandmother “and all the other women in my life whom I witness sacrificing themselves for the love they inevitably hold for those around them every day.”
“Prayer Gossip,” for its part, creates a haunting truth while merging “Mary Had a Little Lamb” with the story of Mary Magdalene. “Witches and Warlocks” isn’t about the practitioners of magic but Bigger and a pal trading stories on a porch: “The cigarettes on your breath/Are like memories to my mind/Of another place, another time/Somewhere I wish we could stay.”
“Resurrection Fern” turns the plant—yes, it’s really called that—known for returning from the dead (though, as this National Wildlife Federation page explains, it doesn’t actually die). On Instagram, after noting that she wrote it in five minutes, Bigger says, “This song is the promise of the return of light we receive every year in the longest night of the year. The death autumn brings to the land at harvest. The death we experience within ourselves over and over again before we are rebirthed into the world as someone new. And the landscapes of the southern marshes I’ve grown to love so much.”
The bluesy “White Dog” embraces the myths long associated with white dogs, which—depending on the culture—are seen as everything from harbingers of death to protectors of life. (Or, of course, it could just be about her faithful companion running loose through the woods.) “Dancing With the Devil” continues the mood with a tale centered on temptation and sin. “Moonrise,” about embracing the light found in the night sky, contains what may well be a couplet I reference for the remainder of my days: “I don’t know the years of you before my time/But I hear it when your voice echoes mine.”“Anything But Gold” is a plaintive ode that compares and contrasts her days of yore to her days of now, and how she traded country life for city life. The album comes to a close with “Resurrection Fern (Marsh Girl Version),” which pulls a different hue from the song.
All in all, it’s a tremendous outing that’s sure to resonate with any- and everyone who enjoys folk music. As I said above, Bigger has a way with words—and a voice to match.
The Old Grey Cat 