Red Sky July’s new album Misty Morning appeared back in February 2025. Laced with trademark vocal harmonies and stunning instrumentation, the release includes recent single’s Stones And Brambles and title track Misty Morning. 

As witnessed in their performance at the recent Manchester Folk Festival, the album promises a marked progression in their sound, with fresh sonic ideas redefining their blend of folk and Americana. The almost hypnotic quality and evokes feelings of natural landscapes whilst bending the rules of traditional music to the modern age, but with a trademark Fender country twang.

In the final ‘why I love’ from the band, Haley Glennie-Smith tells us why she loves Moira Smiley

THE LEADBELLY CONNECTION

I was recently researching some songs for a harmony singing project and a friend pointed me in the direction of Moira Smiley’s version of Lead Belly’s Bring Me A Little Water, Silvy – it’s a gorgeous piece of music and was my introduction to her work.  It was so exciting to then discover that she has numerous albums and projects under her belt and therefore a fabulous amount of repertoire to dive into and explore – heaven! Her voice is beautiful and versatile and shifts to fit the mood or style of music she’s performing, and she’s also a talented arranger with many of her pieces available in a range of voice parts for choirs.

Her most recent offering, The Rhizome Project, was the first full album of hers I listened to – I put it on in the car as I set off into Norwich one evening, but as the first track, Go Dig My Grave, got going I had to pull over to listen to it properly – the combination of sliding vocals over sliding strings evokes such a haunting, ethereal quality and is such a fresh take on a traditional Appalachian song – it’s beautiful. The whole album is artful collection and features collaborations with other wonderful musicians.

UNZIPPING THE HORIZON

The next album I fell in love with is her 2018 release, Unzip The Horizon… I had a similar experience in the car with another track! Bellow – the lyrics and melody are so powerful, maybe especially to a singer, but I think to anyone really “sometime, anytime you wanna bellow at the sky call on me – we’ll unzip the horizon with our voices” She recounts that the song was born from a trip to Ukraine in 2005 and of the tradition of singing songs in unison to “lift the veil between the spirit and living worlds”.  I love the image of unzipping the horizon with our voices singing together in unison… powerful stuff indeed – voices together really are more than the sum of their parts.

And so the adventure into continues!  I think her work is incredibly moving, and musically it’s deeply satisfying too. If you’ve not encountered her before I encourage you to dive in too.

Our thanks to for Shelly for the contribution to our Why I Love archive and completing the Red Sky July holy trinity.

Here’s the current line up re-working an older Red Sky July tracks – Strathconan:

Red Sky July online: Website / Facebook / Instagram / X-Twitter / Youtube

You can read more from our extensive archive of Why I Love pieces from a wide array of artists on an even wider array of subjects, here.

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