Andrew Marlin and Emily Frantz formed Mandolin Orange in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 2009 and built a career on acoustic restraint: mandolin, fiddle, guitar, banjo, and two closely harmonized voices. This episode follows their self-released albums Quiet Little Room and Haste Make / Hard Hearted Stranger, the 2013 signing with Yep Roc Records, and a relentless run through Telluride, Newport, MerleFest, South by Southwest, and Edmonton that turned casual listeners into patrons.

The payoff arrived with Tides of a Teardrop in 2019, which sold 7,500 copies out of the gate, topped the Heatseekers chart, and reached number 164 on the Billboard 200, followed by a CBS This Morning appearance. Then the pandemic silenced everything. Marlin recorded two instrumental albums, Witching Hour and Fable and Fire, and in April 2021, nine albums in, the du ...