They're Calling Me Home is a 2021 album by Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi released on Nonesuch Records, recorded October 5–11, 2020, at Hellfire Studios—a converted stone barn in the Irish countryside—while the pair were stranded in Dublin by the COVID-19 pandemic. Giddens (vocals, minstrel banjo, gourd banjo, viola, octave viola) and Turrisi (accordion, cello banjo, chitarra battente, frame drum, tantan, tombak, calabash) recorded live to tape face to face in the room. Guests Niwel Tsumbu (nylon-string guitar) and Emer Mayock (Irish flute, uilleann pipes) appear on select tracks. The album meditates on mortality, longing, and the pull of home, with repertoire spanning Appalachian balladry, early Italian madrigal, and African American spiritual—a reflection of the pandemic's particular quality of displacement.
Tracklist
- 1 Calling Me Home (with Francesco Turrisi) 3:50
- 2 Avalon (with Francesco Turrisi) 3:55
- 3 Si Dolce è'l Tormento (with Francesco Turrisi) 3:57
- 4 I Shall Not Be Moved alt version 4:58
- 5 Black as Crow (with Francesco Turrisi) 5:23
- 6 O Death (with Francesco Turrisi) 3:14
- 7 Niwel Goes to Town (with Francesco Turrisi) 3:23
- 8 When I Was in My Prime (with Francesco Turrisi) 4:06
- 9 Waterbound Source Recording 3:57
- 10 Bully for You (with Francesco Turrisi) 2:40
- 11 Nenna Nenna (with Francesco Turrisi) 2:38
- 12 Amazing Grace alt version 2:57
