HURRAY FOR THE RIFF RAFF

Wayfaring New Orleans indie-roots gang finds new routes with album six.

n January, Hurray For The Riff Raff played Carnegie Hall, while in February leader Alynda Lee Segarra sang Hank Williams and Woody Guthrie covers with Lucinda Williams on seaborne Americana festival the Cayamo Cruise. “It’s been a memorable year,” understates the Bronx-born Segarra. She’s hoping for further adventures with the group’s next record, The Navigator. It’s two years on from the acclaimed Small Town Heroes, where vintage country-folk tropes were given contemporary protest focus via her time-worn yet compassionate voice. But work on the new music began even earlier. “I wrote the song that initially inspired the concept of the album before Small Town Heroes was out,” the vocalist/guitarist continues. “So I was well prepared and ready to get in the studio.” After recording most of the songs at a studio in Marin County in California, the musicians decamped to Electric Lady Studios in New York. The working day ran on average from 10am to midnight. Playing are what Segarra calls her “great team of spiritual warriors”. Producing is Paul Butler, who’s worked on albums by Devendra Banhart and Michael Kiwanuka, and played in eclectic Isle Of Wighters The Bees. Segarra reveals that the new songs represent a break from the indie folk of Small Town Heroes, and that her recent

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