PHARIS & JASON ROMERO ANNOUNCE NEW LP, SHARE “LAST CALL”

Photo Credit : Rick Magnell  // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Four-time JUNO Award-winning singers, songwriters, banjo builders, and folk icons, Pharis and Jason Romero are releasing their seventh studio record. These Are The Days That Turn In To Years is a songwriter’s deep exhale, replete with stories, love, and nostalgia. It’s four years after the duo’s banjo-heavy last release, and recorded in the same eclectically restored riverside barn in Horsefly, British Columbia. With Pharis’ love of storytelling as a base for the duo’s artistic connection, the songs are lush and saturated with their lives: incidental touring, raising two kids, making banjos, and playing this music because they love it. The songs are created as much from ideas - from being on the tops of mountains and phone calls with aging loved ones to insomnia, meditation and family feuds - as they are from the joy of playing and recording with a stellar band: fiddle, bass, piano, and percussion. Two people in the thick of their lives, reveling in the music, words, and community.

Today, they are releasing the new single “Last Call”, a song Pharis began after a phone call with her dad, trying not to dwell on the thought that any call might be the last. It captures tender, funny and strange snapshots of stories from a long life, anchored by the sing-along chorus: ‘last call for old times, last call to you.’ With Jason on banjo, Pharis on guitar, Trent Freeman on fiddle, and Patrick Metzger on bass, the band’s joyful, slightly on-the-edge old-time approach playfully stretches the melody into an energetic ride through the tune.

BUY / STREAM “LAST CALL” HERE

WATCH / SHARE “LAST CALL” (LIVE PERFORMANCE VIDEO) HERE
LISTEN / SHARE “LAST CALL” HERE

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MORE ABOUT PHARIS & JASON ROMERO
Pharis and Jason Romero have a classic story. When some scratchy old records and a custom banjo led to their meeting in 2007, they quickly knew they were in for the long haul. The depth of their musical and personal relationship has grown incrementally over the years as they’ve explored old-time stringband music, how to sing like one person, and the banjo as an artform. 

On their newest record Pharis’ love for the compelling pulse of stories as songs is the base for the duo’s artistic connection. The songs are lush and saturated with their lives: phone calls with ageing loved ones, standing on top of mountains, meditation, family feuds, nostalgia for things that haven’t happened yet, sleepless nights. The lyrics capture tender, lovely and strange snapshots of life, often anchored by sing-along choruses.

These Are The Days That Turn In To Years was recorded in their eclectically restored riverside barn. John Raham (Frazey Ford, Dan Mangan, Tanya Tagaq, Ocie Elliott) engineered and mixed, marking “the fifth record that John has come to make with us in Horsefly,” says Pharis. “I can’t imagine making a record without him, Trent (Freeman) or Patrick (Metzger). The songs are created as much from ideas as they are from the joy of playing and recording with friends and stellar musicians.” 

LISTEN / SHARE “LOST LULA REDUX” HERE
BUY / STREAM “LOST LULA REDUX” HERE

The group was also joined in the studio by Clinton Davis on piano and Pharis’ sister Marin Patenaude who makes a vocal appearance on the insomnia-inspired “Last Night”. The band’s joyful, slightly on-the-edge old-time approach often playfully stretches the melody into an energetic ride through the bouncier songs, while ambient strings and ragtime piano hold some of the more introspective pieces. The duo keeps to their roots with the spare banjo blues “Left My Home”.

Pharis and Jason tour incidentally while they’re raising two kids and making banjos in their home of Horsefly, BC. They play this music because they really, truly love it, and this record is a shining development of stories, love, and nostalgia from this unique duo.

PRE-SAVE THESE ARE THE DAYS THAT TURN IN TO YEARS HERE

UPCOMING PERFORMANCES
Apr 24 - Kelowna, BC - Kelowna Folk Roots
Apr 25 - Port Moody, BC - Inlet Music Series
Jun 22 - Port Townsend, WA - Voice Works 2026

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THESE ARE THE DAYS THAT TURN IN TO YEARS TRACKLIST
01 Big Time World
02 Last Call
03 Hey Babe
04 Always Losing Track
05 Last Night
06 Left My Home
07 Cannonball
08 I Got Away From Myself
09 Everybody Wants
10 Georgie
11 These Are The Days

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PHARIS & JASON ROMERO SHARE NEW SINGLE, “LOST LULA REDUX”

JUNO AWARD WINNING DUO PHARIS AND JASON ROMERO RETURN WITH A NEW TAKE ON AN OLD FAVOURITE IN “LOST LULA REDUX”

LISTEN / SHARE “LOST LULA REDUX” HERE
BUY / STREAM “LOST LULA REDUX” HERE

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Pharis & Jason Romero’s music is a songwriter’s deep exhale, replete with stories, love, and nostalgia. With Pharis’ love of storytelling as a base for the duo’s artistic connection, their songs are lush and saturated with their lives: incidental touring, raising two kids, making banjos, and playing this music because they must. 

The songs are created as much from ideas - from being on the tops of mountains and phone calls with aging loved ones to insomnia, meditation and family feuds - as they are from the joy of playing and recording with a stellar band: fiddle, bass, piano, and percussion. 

Today, they return with “Lost Lula Redux”, a song that is more than just a banjo tune; it’s a melody that has traveled far beyond its origins. This is a new approach to their track “Lost Lula” which was first released in 2013 on their sophomore album Long Gone Out West Blues.  The tune has since found its way into the repertoires of banjo players around the world.

LISTEN / SHARE “LOST LULA REDUX” HERE
BUY / STREAM “LOST LULA REDUX” HERE

Written by Jason Romero for a beloved yellow lab, “Lost Lula” carries an unlikely story. Lula was Jason’s companion before he and Pharis met. At one point she was quietly taken, flown to Vermont, and - through a series of fortunate moments and the kindness of strangers - miraculously found her way back to the newly married couple. Soon after, they moved to British Columbia, where Lula thrived in a forested landscape full of sticks to chase. When she later disappeared, weeks of searching yielded no answers. In the wake of that loss, Jason wrote “Lost Lula” as both an ode and a way to process his grief.

The tune began as a steel-strung clawhammer banjo piece and has evolved over more than a decade of performance. Pharis & Jason have played it on different banjos, in different tunings, and alongside many collaborators, while players across the banjo community have embraced the tune and made it their own.

Over the years, “Lost Lula” has quietly become part of our musical fabric - played in coffee shops, taught by teachers, and heard at weddings, funerals, graduations, and long journeys across the globe.

Now Pharis & Jason revisit the tune with “Lost Lula Redux”, recorded as they play it today. The melody remains the same, but the approach has shifted; Jason performs the piece fingerstyle on a deluxe nylon-strung banjo from the J. Romero Banjo's workshop, offering a fresh take on a modern banjo classic.

Photo Credit : Rick Magnell  // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

UPCOMING PERFORMANCES|
Apr 24 - Kelowna, BC - Kelowna Folk Roots
Apr 25 - Port Moody, BC - Inlet Music Series
Jun 22 - Port Townsend, WA - Voice Works 2026

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PHARIS & JASON ROMERO CELEBRATE LP RELEASE WITH NEW MINI-DOC

WATCH / SHARE TELL EM’ YOU WERE GOLD - BEHIND THE SCENES MINI-DOC

TELL ‘EM YOU WERE GOLD, THE NEW LP FROM JUNO AWARD WINNERS PHARIS & JASON ROMERO, OUT JUNE 17, 2022 VIA SMITHSONIAN FOLKWAYS RECORDINGS

"Their retro country-folk offerings are spry, warm and pleasing." The Globe & Mail, The Big 10 Albums of Summer 2022

If you could imagine the soundtrack for restoring an old barn by hand in British Columbia, it would sound an awful lot like ‘Souvenir’ by Pharis & Jason Romero.” Americana UK

PRE-ORDER TELL ‘EM YOU WERE GOLD HERE

Photo Credit : Patrick King // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

This Friday, Pharis and Jason Romero—whose old-time, country-folk, and early roots music has made them three-time JUNO Award and seven-time Canadian Folk Music Award winners— will share their new album, Tell ’Em You Were Gold. Today, the duo are celebrating the new LP with a sneak peak behind the scenes of the making of the album and life on their homestead in Horsefly, BC.

Also, Pharis and Jason are sharing another track from the album, “Rolling Mills”, a song originally from the singing of George Landers.

WATCH / SHARE TELL EM’ YOU WERE GOLD - BEHIND THE SCENES MINI-DOC

MORE ABOUT TELL ‘EM YOU WERE GOLD
It’s Pharis and Jason’s seventh album as a duo, and the first since 2020’s Bet on Love, which won praise from the BBC, NPR, and American Songwriter who said, “To call Bet on Love anything other than masterful would be a disservice.” 

Tell ’Em You Were Gold was written and recorded in an old barn on the couple’s homestead in Horsefly, British Columbia. The barn had long been run down, and between building banjos, adventuring outdoors, and loving up their two kids, Pharis and Jason restored the building themselves, milling their own spruce, hoisting beams, and rebuilding a roof originally covered in tin printing plates. “The music made on this record was made in the spirit of that working transformation and in the spirit of the history that old barn contains,” they write in the album’s liner notes. And while the intimacy of the old building does make its way onto the record in the form of crackling stoves and tapping feet, the sense of ease that glows from the album’s center gives it the warmth of a hearth in a cold BC winter. Like many albums recorded in the past couple of years, Tell ʼEm You Were Gold is an at-home record, one where the performers’ sense of being at home with one another is obvious in their effortless interplay.

WATCH / SHARE “CANNOT CHANGE IT ALL” HERE

WATCH / SHARE “OLD BILL’S TUNE” HERE

BUY / STREAM “CANNOT CHANGE IT ALL” + “OLD BILL’S TUNE” HERE

Making things by hand comes naturally to the pair: Jason has long been a highly regarded banjo-maker whose designs expand the instrument’s expressive range while respecting both its mechanical history and the music it’s frequently been used to make. When setting out to write and record Tell ʼEm You Were Gold, the duo created something where the depth and brilliance of Jason's banjos would shine on each song, where each of the instrument’s distinct personalities could be showcased through the repertoire. Jason plays seven different banjos on the album, and Pharis plays one gourd banjo guitar—all handmade by Jason in his shop. Each banjo on this record started with an idea of a sound, a feeling, or an aesthetic, and each one makes Jason play and feel a different way. They were even given names reflecting their individual character and identity: Papillon, Big Blue, Clara, Birdie, Mother, Bella, Gourdo, and The Beast.

WATCH / SHARE “SOUVENIR” HERE

BUY / STREAM “SOUVENIR” & “PALE MORNING” HERE

Nearly half of Tell ’Em You Were Gold’s 16 songs are in the public domain, but the duo make sure to note whose versions have informed their own. The duo’s take on “Train on the Island” takes inspiration from the work of Tom Sauber and Mark Graham, among others, but Jason’s delicate touch—he plays three-finger style with no picks on the song—makes his virtuosity feel gentle and companionable, and contributes to the track’s incredible warmth. On opener “Souvenir”, he lays back, following the lead of Pharis’ guitar, allowing her rhythms to pull him forward as she sings about time well spent. Jason fluidly moves between various banjo styles, displaying mastery of clawhammer and three-finger picking styles and various alternate tunings. 

Pharis’ lyrics shine with wisdom that’s hard won and love that’s kindly offered. “We’re always older than yesterday, but I don’t change and you won’t stay,” she sings in “Sour Queen”. The song is a showcase for her voice, too: She pushes it higher, nearly breaking it into a yodel while Jason chases the melody downward behind her. Pharis grew up in rural British Columbia singing in her family’s folk-country band, playing in the creek, and falling for ’60s folk revival and bluegrass records, and throughout Tell ’Em You Were Gold, she sings with a sweetness that never feels like affectation. Her voice is clear, bright, and informed by the sadness of a song like “Black Guard Mary” without succumbing to it. In “Cannot Change It All”, she sings an ode to the possibility of a better world with an open-eyed view of just how difficult that world will be to achieve; she carries that knowledge in her tone, never expressing it with words, but in the shadow of heartbreak that flickers through the song. 

But what shines through Tell ’Em You Were Gold the brightest is the sense of joy that Pharis and Jason have playing with one another and with their friends. They’re joined by fiddlers Grace Forrest and Trent Freeman, pedal steel player Marc Jenkins, bassist Patrick Metzger, and John Reischman on mandolin. You can hear it in the way Jenkins’ pedal steel slides like liquid among the wiry picking of “The Dose”, or in the contented exhales of “SS Radiant”, a sweet solo banjo meditation dedicated to the duo’s son Sy. Even “Been All Around This World”, a rambling song Pharis and Jason each sang before they met and sing together here, feels quiet, at rest, like it’s arrived—like they’ve been around the world, but they’re here now, and there’s no place they’d rather be than at home together.

PRE-ORDER TELL ‘EM YOU WERE GOLD HERE

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TELL ‘EM YOU WERE GOLD TRACKLIST
01 Souvenir
02 Cold Shout
03 Rolling Mills
04 Sour Queen
05 Pale Morning
06 Trains On The Island
07 Lady On The Green
08 Cannot Change It All
09 The Dose
10 SS Radiant
11 Been All Around This World
12 Black Guard Mary
13 Going To Town
14 Going Across The Sea
15 Five Mils From Town
16 Old Bill’s Tune

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