West Virginia University Bluegrass Band releases new album; pandemic shut down recording after one session, band has not performed together since

The first day in the studio was also their last.

“It was the Tuesday of the week before Spring Break, we were scheduled to be in the studio for a few hours,” Lehr said. “That was the night that we got the email that WVU would be temporarily online after Spring Break. That was crazy — we’re all crowded in the studio; it was very hectic.”

Realizing this was their last chance to be together in-person, the six assembled members got to work laying down the five tracks they had ready. Members of the Old-time Band later recorded backup vocals from their homes to be added to the album.

The album, “Keep Me Around,” was released Feb. 5. Lehr said she is pleased with how it has turned out and has heard positive reviews from those who have listened to it.

The song Lehr wrote is “Rhopalocera,” which is a Latin word used to classify butterflies as an insect group.

She used the monarch butterfly — the state butterfly — as an inspiration, to give the song a West Virginia link. She also wanted to write something that was less from her perspective, and more from a group feeling.

“When I wrote it, I was trying to think about the Bluegrass Band as a whole,” Lehr said.

She has a solo album coming out later this year and wanted “Rhopalocera” to be a different style with different themes.

“We’re all in college trying to figure out what to do with the rest of our lives, so I started thinking about change and how that can be stressful,” Lehr said. “I was also trying to exercise my songwriting skills at that time — I texted three of my friends and asked them to send me a random word.”

The words she got back were “butterfly,” “ripples” and “hot tea.”

“Honestly, I don’t really remember writing the song that much — I just sort of started brainstorming different ideas and pieced it together,” Lehr said. “The general idea is that life is always changing, can get really hard and when those hard times do come along, rely on your friends.”

There are currently no plans for a tour or performances to support the album due to the pandemic.

“There’s usually a little tour where we go and play public schools in West Virginia — usually elementary schools,” Lehr said. “The goal of that is advocacy, to show what WVU is doing, and to show the music of this area to the kids and give dignity to it.”

The group has been meeting via Zoom for its classroom sessions this semester.

“With singing, you have to be 12 feet apart, and that’s not conducive to the types of classrooms we have and the kind of music in general,” Lehr said. “This music is very communal in spirit, and so we haven’t met in person.”

Not meeting in person or playing together was not the way Lehr envisioned her final year with the WVU Bluegrass Band. But she looks back fondly on her four years with the band, and the recording process for their album.

“We’ve all had conversations about how cool it was to put this record together,” Lehr said. “It was a special moment for us to all be together when we got that email from WVU in the studio. We were all scared and freaked out — just to be together and making music that we all cared about was a really amazing gift.”

“Keep Me Around” can be found on Spotify, Apple Music and iTunes.