the everybodyfields

Embracing a blend of traditional country’s high lonesome atmosphere and the raw emotional drive of modern alt-country, the acoustic-driven Everybodyfields formed in Johnson City, TN, around the core partnership of vocalists and multi-instrumentalists Jill Andrews and Sam Quinn. The pair characterized their material as “harmony-driven songs about leaving, losing and home,” a partnership that originated in 1999 when both nineteen-year-olds worked together at a summer camp in Walland, TN. Their mutual attraction to the mournful textures of classic country prompted early songwriting sessions, yet after returning to Johnson City they initially went separate ways until Quinn spotted Andrews onstage alongside Dobro specialist David Richey and requested admission to the project. Andrews and Richey consented, establishing the original configuration of the Everybodyfields. Over the ensuing years the roster stayed flexible, sometimes reduced to the Andrews-Quinn duo, occasionally expanded to a trio with Richey, and at other times swelled to five performers.

The band’s first recording, Half-Way There: Electricity & the South, surfaced in 2004 on their self-operated Captain Mexico imprint. Their follow-up, Plague of Dreams, also appeared via Captain Mexico in autumn 2005; the next year Richey departed to focus on bluegrass. Andrews and Quinn then incorporated guitarist-keyboardist Josh Oliver and pedal-steel player Tom Pryor, a refreshed lineup that drew interest from Ramseur Records—the independent label riding momentum from the Avett Brothers, frequent stage partners of Andrews and Quinn. Ramseur issued the group’s third and most expansive effort, Nothing Is Okay, during summer 2007. Two years afterward the members declared their dissolution, after which both Jill Andrews and Sam Quinn embarked on solo endeavors.