Southern Charm

With fuzz guitars and lap steel, Rebecca and Megan Lovell cast a spell on Blood Harmony, Larkin Poe's new album of blues-infused rock and roll.

- JIM BEAUGEZ

THERE ARE EARLY wake-up calls, and then there are mornings you’re too jet lagged to sleep a wink, anyway. Add an airline losing your guitars and you have the first day of Larkin Poe’s European tour in advance of their new, sixth album, Blood Harmony (Tricki-Woo).

After landing in Hamburg, Germany, from a transatlantic flight, following a run of gigs in Canada, sisters Rebecca and Megan Lovell discovered their guitars didn’t arrive with them. They made an attempt to sleep but returned to the airport early in the morning and spent the next three hours “shaking the airport down from tip to tail,” Rebecca says, so they could play on German TV before the gig on the evening of our interview.

Fortunately — and perhaps ingeniously — the Lovells knew their gear was somewhere in the airport because the electronic trackers they stuck inside their guitar cases led them there. Finally, past an empty terminal, they found a warehouse full of luggage, and around another wall, their lost guitars.

“We actually did a social media post yesterday to have some backups,” Rebecca says. “And — god bless all of the incredible supportive people in our network — we had a lap steel and some guitars lined up if we didn’t get our things back.”

As anyone who has followed Larkin Poe knows, the Lovells bring that same determination to creating their blues-heavy southern rock, producing their albums and releasing them on their own label. But after the meticulously crafted songs on 2020’s Self Made Man, they were determined to make Blood Harmony sound like their live performances.