Fresh off her standout SXSW set, Yolavisited Saturdays CBS This Morning to perform three songs off her debut solo LP Walk Through Fire.
The British singer, one of Rolling Stones recent Artists You Need to Know, and her band stunned with a mini-concert with renditions of Faraway Look, Love All Night (Work All Day) and Ride Out In The Country, all from Walk Through Fire, produced by the Black Keys Dan Auerbach.
Yola, born Yolanda Quartey, was able to refine her genre-spanning sound once she began working with Auerbach under his Easy Eye label. You want to represent sonically what you feel needs to be represented, the singer told Rolling Stone. Thats how I see music, as an aesthetic and sound that youre fighting for.
Walk Through Fire, which follows up her 2016 debut EP Orphan Offerin,chronicles Yolas personal and artistic rebirth.
For me, I love rich harmony, and so I wanted the album to sound luscious and big and grandiose, she added. But I also wanted to push out the fact that I am different, that I am other. Its important for women of color to be other, to be not blending in with an aesthetic that is ubiquitous. To be doing something that sets itself apart, and that is derived from musicians of color, but maybe from a different era, from sounds that are less common, or that feel like theyve been disappearing.
Yola is set to perform at the U.K. Americana festival Ramblin Roots Revue on April 12th before heading out on the European leg of the Walk Through Fire Tour on May 11th.