Carling Berkhout’s first exposure to music was through the storied inroads of The Beatles, playing songs backward in her childhood friend’s rabbit-themed bedroom that the two believed was haunted. Raised in rural Vermont, her father, a folkie songster who lived and worked in LA in the 1960s, and her mother, a symphonic cellist, imparted the musical threads she continues to unravel.

In high school, Berkhout found the banjo and began developing a singular voice in the clawhammer tradition. Just two years after discovering the instrument, she formed the duo Carling & Will with collaborator William Seeders Mosheim.

Exploring her voice as a solo artist, Berkhout’s debut album, Omens, reflects a studied approach to songcraft. Made with collaborator Sam Clement in a small studio on the New York line, Omens came together over the period of two years. With the additional help of mixing engineer Paul Kolderie (Pixies, Radiohead, and Dinosaur Jr.), its sonic world exists somewhere between a bedroom rock affair and the dynamic balance of a David Rawlings & Gillian Welch record. On “Ghost of You,” one is reminded of poet-musicians like Lou Reed and Patti Smith, while “Night Sweats” marries the rhythmic pulse of mountain music to the flowing contours of early Fleetwood Mac. Opening the door to an even wider doorway of listeners, Carling is off to the races yet again in her characteristic way of glueing together what she loves with the daring of someone who has nothing left to lose.

Berkhout’s short stories and essays have appeared in Hobart, Fretboard Journal, Quail Bell Magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Porridge Magazine.