Stefanie Drootin and Chris Senseney are music lifers, married parents of two who have been the core of the band Big Harp essentially since they met two decades ago. As a teenager in the San Fernando Valley, Drootin committed to the DIY scene early, joining bands as a bassist before she could drive and bailing on high school with only a year left in order to tour. After Senseney met Drootin on the road in 2007, they accidentally moved to California together, got married, had their first kid, and then started Big Harp. They are lifers, and lifers make it work. 

Big Harp’s fourth album, Runs to Blue, does not feel overdue. With songs of wanderlust and loss, love for your children and love for your lover, accepting one’s increasing age while also lamenting that we can never be what we once were, Runs to Blue feels right on time, like visiting Drootin and Senseney at home one evening and hearing them laugh and cry their way through stories about their past and hopes for their future. Just acoustic guitar, bass, and two voices who know one another like hand and glove, Runs to Blue is the simplest sounding Big Harp record. It is, however, the most emotionally complex, two lives long combined distilled into 10 frank and disarming songs.

Runs to Blue is a snapshot in the life of a couple whose relationship began with song and remains bound to it, no matter how long they stepped back. It sounds like folk music because it is folk music, exactly—an honest collection of experiences set to unadorned tunes you can sing and keep with you always, little reminders of the past to guide you into the unknown that’s up ahead.