The Nugget Newspaper - News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon

Boston-based band Darlingside will be returning to Sisters March 6 for their fifth time, as the second installment of the Winter Concert Series. Darlingside first came to Sisters for the Sisters Folk Festival in 2014. Since, they've returned to play the festival again as well as the Winter Concert Series and other fundraising events. The band has become a favorite within the community, especially among younger audiences.

"We always know we are going to be going back to Sisters, it's one of those places like LA or San Francisco. We know we will always return on a tour," said bassist Dave Senft when he spoke with The Nugget.

Darlingside's sound has evolved from a five-piece folk-rock band to more of an alternative folk sound with the four existing band members. Their 2014 Sisters Folk Festival appearance was the first with the four-piece band experimenting with alternative folk sound. The band is made up of four friends who attended Williams College in Massachusetts: Dave Senft on bass, kick drum and vocals; Don Mitchell playing electric guitar, banjo, acoustic guitar and vocals; Harris Paseltiner on cello, acoustic guitar and vocals; and Auyon Mukharji on tambourine, violin, mandolin and vocals.

"That festival was our first experience in our folk rebirth, and we were really lucky to have a festival where the community and other artists really embraced us. We felt as if we were immersed in a beautiful place of warmth and spirituality in music," Senft said.

Sisters as a community and a place left a lasting impression on the entire band.

"We often get asked where our favorite places to go on the road are, and we always answer that Sisters, Oregon, is one of our favorite places because of the community and the beauty of it," he said.

The band is very well known within the Sisters community, forming relationships with members as well as high-schoolers in being involved in the Americana Song Academy.

"We've formed lasting relationships with community members and always look forward to seeing everyone," he said.

Last week, the band released a five-song EP titled, "Look Up and Fly Away." The EP follows their previous album, "Extralife," which has had massive success, taking the band to the Cambridge Folk Festival and a world tour. The EP is a collection of five songs that were pretty much written when they recorded "Extralife." Twelve of the 30 songs they had prepared made it on the full-length album. The five on the EP are more of those songs that were considered for the album.

"We had these songs for a long time in the background pretty much written, we just didn't have a place for them. We discussed the ones that stood out to us the most and revamped them and it made sense to release them on an EP," said Senft.

The songs focus around a central theme of "flying away and floating." The title track was a song that had been around for the band since 2012.

"We felt as if it was a good time to release these particular songs focused around this central theme," Senft said.

The EP is their project between full-length albums. After their EP-release tour the band plans to get back to the studio and begin the writing process for the next full-length album. They are eager to focus on new things.

"I think we are going to start shelving some of the songs we have had and really just restart and refresh with new content," said Senft.

Darlingside is going to be trying a new writing style of switching the order of lyrics to music, just adding to the refreshing of the writing process.

"We have some aspirations to also break out of the alternative folk genre and get into something different, potentially more folk-rock while still staying in our same adaptive, involved folk realm," he said.

Darlingside starts a spring tour in San Diego. Darlingside will be performing at the Sisters High School auditorium on Wednesday, March 6, at 7 p.m. as the second installment of Sisters Folk Festival's Winter Concert Series. Individual show tickets are available. For more information visit www.sistersfolkfestival.org or call the office at 541-549-4979.