It is pushing 90 degrees inside the barn at Green River Festival, but Splendid Torch doesn’t seem to mind. Four friends from New England, Sean, Lily, Josh, and Karl, are mid-set, sweat-soaked and grinning. They have the kind of on-stage chemistry that only comes from dozens, if not hundreds of gigs together. Sean and Lily go back further than the band itself: a decade ago they were two-fifths of Mama’s Marmalade, an Americana band that spent ten years building a reputation as a band that, as Bluegrass Today once put it, kept “adding new ingredients to the Americana batter.”
When founding member Mitch Bordage stepped away from life on the road, the remaining members kept the torch going, so to speak. They went through an overlapping transition that, as drummer Karl describes it, blurred the line between one band ending and another beginning. “I came in as a hired hand to help produce the first album,” he said. “I played drums, we worked on it, and that was how I killed Mama’s Marmalade. I’m the killer.” It was clearly a joke, and the band laughed along, but it points at something real about their new era: transitioning into Splendid Torch wasn’t a clean rebrand. It was a band that changed shape while the tape was still rolling.
That album, ICON, came out earlier this year, and it’s the reason Splendid Torch is touring right now, the reason they were on the Green River bill this weekend. It’s a warm and fun record, full of “smooth country-road melodies” and the kind of “rich and vibrant” string work that’s earned comparisons to Big Thief and the Punch Brothers. Sitting with the band after their set, though, it was pretty clear that ICON, despite only coming out a little over a month ago, is the chapter they’re already a few pages past. The record they’re actually itching to talk about doesn’t have a release date yet.
Inheriting a Sound, Then Outgrowing It
Before getting to what’s next, it’s worth understanding how Splendid Torch arrived at ICON in the first place. Because for a band built from a decade-old friendship, “starting fresh” is a relative term. “You kind of go through a period where the spirit of the old thing is still there, and it really influences you,” Sean (guitar) explained. “It’s an awkward stage in some ways, but that influence is the lead-in to whatever new energy you have.” Lily (guitar, vocals, fiddle) framed it more plainly: having the privilege of playing with someone for a long time builds a kind of telepathy, and the trick isn’t to shed that, it’s to let your bandmates’ instincts shape how you play, even as the music itself moves somewhere new.
Bassist Josh and drummer/producer Karl joined later, both arriving through the Western Mass bluegrass scene. Josh from a chance meeting at a bluegrass jam in Sunderland during the tail end of the pandemic, the other recruited mid-album when the band needed a producer and a friend suggested he jump in. Neither came in as a “bluegrass hire,” something that defines the genre a bit. And the bluegrass label seems something the band is eager to move beyond. “Indie country Americana,” Karl offered, half-joking, before the whole band seemed to land on the idea that the sound isn’t really a genre decision at all, it’s just what happens when your songwriting inspirations cross so many genres and each are absorbed into your music. Paul Simon, Paul McCartney, Joni Mitchell, Connie Converse, Roger Miller, John Hartford. Those songwriters do have a common thread though. As Lily put it, they’re the kind of songwriters who never gave a damn about writing something more commercial, and just kept “hacking away” at the internal voice that tells you to.
A House With Ghosts In It
That instinct, chasing the song, not the genre, is exactly what’s driving the new record, which the band is currently finishing overdubs on, with a fall release targeted. And while they openly admitted that on ICON they were still figuring out their sound, they feel they’ve really honed in on it with this new album, which they were very excited to talk about.
They recorded it live, mostly in three days, in a house in Massachusetts that’s been in Lily’s family since the 1700s or 1800s. It’s also a house that the entire band seems convinced is fully haunted. Beyond the ghosts already sitting in on sessions with them, the recording being in an old home required them to get a bit creative with their setups. Karl rigged a drum-absorption setup out of old packing blankets draped over a ladder. Sean spent a few sessions tucked behind a soundproofing divider with a headphone cable just barely long enough to reach, wrapped around a TV. It was not, by his own admission, the most comfortable studio experience of his career. “But it also was far from the worst.”
What they got back, by all accounts, surprised even them. “I didn’t expect it to sound so cool,” Karl said. “If you put a little effort in and put some mics up in a house, it’s gonna sound like it’s kind of a cheat code.” There’s something almost old-fashioned about the philosophy: record like tape is expensive, like you don’t get unlimited takes, like the take has to be the definitive version of itself because everyone has to nail it together, in the room, at the same time.
“When something is imperfect and definitive,” Karl said, “it’s transcendent. That’s what we’re going for.”
The album’s themes lean into that same haunted-house energy without ever tipping into gimmick. It contains songs about losing people, about not having a home anymore and not knowing where to go. And the band swears the house itself is part of the record, joking (mostly) about a ghost who spent the sessions tapping his foot in the corner. Whether or not you buy the ghost story, the bigger idea underneath it holds up. This is a band that spent a decade learning to read each other in real time and finally found a recording process built entirely around that instinct, rather than around polish.
Still Home at Green River
Whatever genre tag eventually sticks, or doesn’t, Splendid Torch clearly has a soft spot for Green River specifically. “We all really love Green River Festival,” Sean said. “It’s always a treat when we get to dance here.” And it showed. Even in a sweltering barn at 5pm on a Friday, with all the chemistry of a band that’s been finishing each other’s sentences, musically and otherwise, for the better part of fifteen years.
Asked to name a dream festival lineup, alive or dead, no rules, the answers ranged from sincere to gleefully absurd: Telluride, with Emmylou Harris as a co-headliner (“I’ll be complete inside”); a fictional festival in Mallorca called Sun Seeker, headlined by Bob Dylan and The Band in full Last Waltz mode; Willie Nelson, on the logic that any festival with his name at the top is a festival in good hands; and Wolf Trap, the wooden amphitheater outside D.C., with The Band’s Levon Helm and Rick Danko anchoring the bill, what Josh calls “my pinnacle rhythm section.” It’s a fitting set of answers for a band that’s spent its whole existence somewhere between bluegrass tradition and whatever comes next.
ICON is out now. Splendid Torch’s follow-up album is expected this fall.
Nathan Smith is a Providence-based music photographer and journalist focusing on capturing the special moments and unfiltered magic of live performances. Whether he’s shooting established artists at sold-out TD Garden shows or documenting the rise of emerging local bands, his goal is the same: to pull viewers directly into the heart of the moment.
His writing spotlights rising artists and local scenes, with a focus on telling the stories that often get overlooked. A lifelong music fan and musician himself, Nathan approaches interviews and portraits as conversations rather than transactions, building trust with artists so their genuine personalities can shine through. Whether he’s backstage, in the photo pit, or at home in front of the keyboard, he brings the same curiosity and care to every assignment.
Outside of his press work with Juice Box Press, Nathan works regularly as a photographer with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, as well as numerous bands in the Boston and Providence area. Nathan also plays violin with a local orchestra, follows Celtics basketball almost religiously, and is an avid fantasy reader.