Big Richard – Pet
The Colorado bluegrass quartet, Big Richard has announced their label debut Pet will be released on February 6, 2026.
Big Richard makes music for the 21st century’s twisted cultural unease. Pet, their sophomore album and debut for Signature Sounds is a fierce, provocative, rejoinder to what troubles them and the world right now and was recorded live to tape in order to capture the fervor of their live shows.
“Big Richard is so much about our energetic delivery, and so I think it’s been really important for us as a group to figure out how to do that for a record,” says mandolin and guitar player Bonnie Sims. “We made the album all on tape and did it all in these single-shot performances,” cellist Joy Adams adds. “The collection of songs, we wanted to take our most hard driving, heavy hitting songs, we wanted to craft a banger set list. Like, if we had a 30-minute set, what would we put on there that says the most, and makes people feel the broadest bunch of feelings? And it was all these songs.”
Label president Jim Olsen says about the band’s signing, “We’re so pleased to welcome the fiery Colorado-based stringband Big Richard to the Signature Sounds roster. I first encountered the band at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in 2023 and was knocked out by their spirited performance that encompasses traditional repertoire and edgy, ground-breaking originals. Signature Sounds has a history of introducing great, uncommon acoustic bands such as Crooked Still, AJ Lee & Blue Summit, Joy Kills Sorrow and others. Big Richard continues that tradition.”
Today, Big Richard is sharing Pet’s first single and album opener, “It’s Gonna Fall/Old Daingerfield”, a song that warns about the lack of permanence in all the material things humans create: “Our air has turned to poison and our water catches flame / You know we’re blowing out the ground under our beds in which we lay / And we’re digging holes we’ll never fill, the ground shakes to protest / But we just close our minds and eyes and ears, there ain’t no stopping progress,” Bonnie Sims sings about her despair at the destruction of the natural world through fire and flood, and the fracking wells she sees springing up in Colorado.
“A lot of the time in our sets, we like to follow a heavy-hitting song with an instrumental that meets that energy,” fiddler Eve Panning says of tacking “Old Daingerfield” onto the end of “It’s Gonna Fall.” “It feels good to reflect on something for a moment, or keep going with it, and keep that energy somewhere.”
Unapologetically outrageous and provocative, the band’s name is a wink to the ‘big dick’ energy Big Richard is reclaiming from male bluegrass bands. They’re intent on making audiences laugh and feel a little uncomfortable, for the sake of making them think, as well. To that end, the album’s cover portrays the band dressed in deranged clown outfits and crouching on railroad tracks in front of an oil refinery.
“Make the World Go Away,” concludes the album, and often their live show, too. At concerts, the band’s four members descend from the stage, and play the song clustered together in a clearing in the crowd, a final act of gathering after an intense show.
“Our live performances are so raw and so gritty, and I think that our sound never really flourished in that digital landscape.” Adams says. “[Recording live to tape] we were all in the same room together, very close together, with a lot of mic bleed, etc. And the energy was insane. It felt so good to record this way. Even on the first day, we were like ‘wow, this sounds like our band.’ And to do something that’s very real and gritty and has little mistakes in it just feels alive and human.”
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