The folk/Americana duo Watchhouse is kicking off its latest national tour with an April 11 show at UConn’s Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts in Storrs.
The North Carolina band’s new album “Rituals” won’t be officially released until over a month after the Connecticut show, so this will be a chance to hear some of the new songs before anyone else does. “Rituals” is Watchhouse’s first album in four years. The band released six albums under the name Mandolin Orange between 2010 and 2019 before changing it to Watchhouse in 2021.
Watchhouse’s captivating neo-roots folk sound has earned millions of streams on music sites and prestigious gigs at Red Rocks, South by Southwest, the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, Newport Folk Festival and Austin City Limits.
Watchhouse is based around the married couple Emily Frantz and Andrew Marlin. Much of the new tour will be done with a full band, but Frantz said the UConn show will be “just us as a duo.”
“It’s been a while “ since Watchhouse has played a college venue, Frantz said, though of course the duo is very popular in college towns. The band’s last Connecticut show was at New Haven’s College Street Music Hall in 2022. “We do colleges every now and again,” Frantz said. “Our last tour was last summer. One thing about it is we have two kids. We travel with them and that’s OK.” But it sometimes determines where and how they perform.
Parenthood hasn’t affected the Watchhouse songwriting process. “Andrew loves to write late at night,” Frantz said. “It’s a pretty solitary situation for him.” When the basic song is finished, Frantz takes an active role in how it will sound.
“The arrangement is where I come in. Andrew is the songwriter. I hear the songs as they are progressing, not when they’re finished. It’s a natural process with the ideas forming subconsciously,” Frantz said.
“I think we’ll be playing a lot of the new songs at UConn,” she added. “There’s a lot of playing off between the guitar mandolin and fiddle.”
As for what they’re listening to themselves these days, “I primarily listen to a lot of folk music, from the ’60s on,” Frantz said. “In the last couple of years I’ve gotten more into Irish music. Andrew’s listening is more broad — it could be Pantera or Led Zeppelin.”
Watchhouse plays on April 11 at 8 p.m. at Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts, 2132 Hillside Road, Storrs. $35-$55. jorgensen.uconn.edu.