Winterlark - When Does Love Go South? (2019)

When Does Love Go South? is the debut release from Winterlark, a San Francisco Bay Area acoustic folk-jazz trio. In songs of love and loss written by Sweeney E. Schragg, Winterlark sing and play a melodic, cosmopolitan blend of saudade, American soul, string band swing, and Celtic folk balladry.

The album opens with "Fortune's Hand," the tale of a chance encounter between future lovers, and the songs offer a gimlet-eyed look at modern romance, cataloguing the discovery and attraction, the mixed signals and unrequited desires, the messy emotions and miscommunications, the disillusionment and moving on. The album's denouement leaves romance behind and comes to rest with a "Lullaby for December's Children."

Recorded live (with backing vocal overdubs) at Blue Coast Studios on two-inch tape and mixed through an analog console to DSD256, When Does Love Go South? was produced by Cookie Marenco and E. Schragg.

Sweeney E. Schragg: guitar and vocals
Kristin Olson: upright bass and vocals
Chris Haskett: drums and half-inch recording tape box
(with guest upright bassist Scott Freshour on tracks 1, 2, 6, 7)

"Off in the distance the rising moon, here the insistence of a country tune blasting the radio, asking the ages old: when does love go south like summer?" -E. Schragg