Trail of Flowers (Deluxe) (Rounder, 2025)

Sierra Ferrell is the Queen of Americana, having picked up multiple awards at their 2024 Americana awards show, but one has to question whether this Deluxe Edition of "Trail of Flowers" is really necessary. It's not as if it's in need of remastering, and it only includes two new songs, neither of which is truly new.

The first new song is Ferrell's slowed down take on the bluegrass standard "Don't Let Your Deal Go Down," imbued by her fiddle, Seth Taylor's banjo and oohing background vocals. The other is a reworking of her swaying ballad "The Garden," that first appeared on the soundtrack for "The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes." This lilting arrangement was bolstered with pedal steel, piano, strings and more.

Of course, those that missed it the first time, can revel in the album's best songs like "American Dreaming" which speaks to the sacrifices the touring musician makes, eventually realizing that more important things like friendships, love and health are too often put on hold. In the relatively simple but bright "Lighthouse," she features her nimble guitar picking while Oliver Bates Craven adds fiddle and teeming harmony vocals. While these two tracks arguably garnered most of the attention on the initial release, The Billy Contreras string imbued "Wish You Well" might well be the best example of her songwriting, delivering a mature outlook on breakup with verses like these, "I could let it go and live to fight another day/It's enough to know that you'll be saddled with the same/And you'll have to live with what you did and face yourself/Though you've hurt me, I still wish you well."

And there are her staples, the country, old-timey flavored "Why Haven't You Loved Me Yet" featuring Chris Scruggs' weeping lap steel and "Dollar Bill Bar," a song that seems to tell a basically simple story, but, like so many of the tracks here, speaks to the having one's antenna's up to avoid heartbreak.

As good as these songs are, they lack the contagious energy and endearing charm that Ferrell brings to her live shows. Catch her if you can.