Mary Lattimore & Walt McClements

Mary Lattimore and Walt McClements parlayed a tour where they played some pieces together to end each show into a record deal. A longtime Big Ears favorite, Lattimore is an inquisitive harpist, routing runs of bright notes through electronics to create tidal pools of radiant sound. During the last decade, she has been key in bringing an instrument once relegated to orchestral stereotypes and notions of antiquity back into the context of experimental sound and indie rock. The same holds for McClements, a multi-instrumentalist whose borderless work with the accordion not only led him to bands like Weyes Blood and Hurray for the Riff Raff but, more recently, to rapturous and poignant solo ambient records that have scrambled notions of just how much is possible with some keys and bellows beyond, say, polka.

Both native North Carolinians living in Los Angeles, Lattimore and McClements had been friends for four years when they hit the road together in 2021. After settling deeper into shared stories and sounds on the road, they sequestered themselves in McClements’ Los Angeles apartment during a wet California December and built Rain on the Road, a five-track album that moves between rhapsody and romance, between quiet contemplation and musical transcendence. Where “The Top of Thomas Street” floats through exquisite electronics anchored by a solemn piano melody, “We Waited for the Bears to Leave” reaches multiple pinnacles where the harp and accordion seem to be exploding anew with wonder and urgency. Lattimore and McClements will both play multiple sets at Big Ears 2026 and, here, revisit some of those panoramic pieces.