A banjo, three original songs and a room full of strangers in London. That’s all Rita Bliss needed to bring a little piece of Austin to England. Her ‘Live from London’ EP captures the Texas-based folk musician performing alone at the Green Note, where the distance between performer and audience is measured in feet rather than rows of arena seats. It’s the kind of setting where every lyric has somewhere to land, every note gets heard and a songwriter has nowhere to hide.
Recorded at the Green Note on February 21, 2026, the three-track EP is out now, featuring live performances of “July,” “Texarkana” and “Two Dollar Bill.” The recordings offer an intimate introduction to Bliss’s approach to songwriting, which draws on Appalachian banjo traditions, old-time music and Americana while exploring love, heartbreak and the complicated ways people connect.
The project was recorded by Oscar Cainer and mixed by Patrick Herzfeld of Signal Hill Recording, preserving the stripped-down nature of the performance.
Bliss has also prepared a live performance video of “Texarkana,” filmed during the same London appearance.
For a musician whose work depends on storytelling, performing in another country offered an opportunity to discover how those stories might connect with people who had never heard them before.
Bliss described the concert as “an unforgettable experience that really proved the universality of certain stories.”
It’s an interesting observation from an artist whose musical influences are closely associated with particular American places and traditions.
Appalachian banjo music has a history stretching across generations, shaped by African American musical traditions, rural communities and the evolving sounds of American folk music. Old-time playing emphasizes rhythmic patterns, melodic variations and a relationship between instrumental performance and storytelling that has influenced countless musicians.
Bliss draws from that tradition while writing songs rooted in her own experiences.
Her music explores queer love, relationships and the emotional complications of finding connection, bringing contemporary perspectives into a musical language with deep historical roots.
That combination gives her songwriting an appealing sense of continuity. The instruments and techniques may have long histories, but the stories belong to the person playing them.
Brad Williams, host of ‘The Bandwich Tapes’, has praised Bliss as “a fantastic musician, songwriter, and banjo player whose work blends old-time, Americana, and folk traditions with a fresh, personal twist.”
That description gets at an important part of her appeal.
Folk music has always depended on musicians finding their own voices within shared traditions. Songs travel between communities, instrumental techniques pass from one generation to another, and familiar musical forms become vehicles for new experiences.
Bliss approaches those traditions as a songwriter interested in expressing personal stories rather than simply recreating historical sounds.
And a solo live recording offers a particularly direct way to hear that approach.
Without a full band surrounding her, the emphasis falls on the relationship between voice, instrument and lyrics.
Every pause becomes part of the performance. Changes in tempo, phrasing and dynamics help shape the storytelling, and the presence of an audience introduces an element that studio recordings cannot reproduce in quite the same way.
A small venue such as the Green Note is especially suited to that kind of exchange.
The London club has established itself as a destination for folk, roots and acoustic music, hosting performers whose work benefits from attentive audiences and intimate surroundings.
For an Austin-based musician, appearing there also connects her to an international community of listeners who appreciate traditional instruments and contemporary songwriting.
The three songs on ‘Live from London’ offer a concise snapshot of Bliss as a solo performer.
“July,” “Texarkana” and “Two Dollar Bill” each carry titles that suggest a particular moment, place or image, inviting listeners into the stories behind them.
“Texarkana” is an especially evocative choice for a Texas musician performing overseas. The city, situated along the Texas-Arkansas border, has long been part of the geography of American roots music, and its name immediately suggests the landscapes and journeys that have inspired generations of songwriters.
The accompanying performance video gives listeners an opportunity to experience the song in the setting where it was recorded.
And although the EP contains only three tracks, its compact format suits the idea behind the release.
It’s a document of one performance, captured during a particular evening in a particular room.
For Bliss, that moment also arrives during an active period of recording and songwriting.
She is preparing her second studio album, a collection of ten original songs produced by Dom Fisher of Wood & Wire.
The upcoming record will feature contributions from fiddler Noah Griffin and mandolin player Billy Bright, adding instrumental voices that complement Bliss’s roots-oriented approach.
Fiddle and mandolin have long played important roles in old-time, bluegrass and Americana music, and their inclusion suggests opportunities for arrangements that expand beyond the solo format heard on ‘Live from London’.
The studio album will also continue Bliss’s collaboration with Fisher, providing another opportunity to develop her songwriting in a recorded setting.
The contrast between the two projects is part of what makes the live EP interesting.
A studio album allows musicians to explore arrangements, collaborate with other players and make deliberate production choices.
A solo concert captures something different: the way an artist presents a song when the performance unfolds in real time.
Both approaches reveal aspects of a songwriter’s personality.
And for listeners discovering Bliss through ‘Live from London’, the EP offers a useful introduction before her next full-length project.
Her music occupies a space where traditional folk instrumentation meets contemporary stories about identity, relationships and emotional vulnerability.
Those subjects can be deeply personal, but they also provide common ground between audiences who may have very different backgrounds.
That was one of Bliss’s discoveries during her London performance.
The stories she brought from Texas could find an audience thousands of miles away, in a room where listeners were encountering them through the simple combination of a voice and an instrument.
It’s a reminder of what makes intimate live music so appealing.
A song written in one place can take on a different character when performed somewhere else. The audience brings its own experiences, the performer responds to the room, and the recording preserves an encounter that will never happen in exactly the same way again.
‘Live from London’ captures one of those encounters.
And with another studio album on the way, Rita Bliss has given listeners a chance to hear her songs in their most exposed form before introducing the next collection.
Three songs, one London stage and a banjo carrying stories from Texas across the Atlantic. That’s plenty to build a memorable evening around.
Tracklist:
1. “July”
2. “Texarkana”
3. “Two Dollar Bill”