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Jazz violinist Jenny Scheinman composed the songs on Here on Earth for the film Kannapolis: A Moving Portrait, a collaboration with director Finn Taylor. The movie collects archival footage taken between 1936 and 1942 across the Piedmont, short clips of ordinary, small town folks living through the Great Depression. When Scheinman first watched the raw footage, the faces onscreen felt like those from a bygone era, yet still oddly familiar. As much as America has changed from the previous century, the human condition at its core remains constant. Thus it inspired this collection of fiddle tunes that may initially seem rooted in the past, but ultimately reveal themselves to be definitively modern upon repeated listens. Scheinman based her band on a specific scene in the film where three musicians on fiddle, banjo and guitar are playing at a dance party. To recreate that dynamic in the studio, she enlisted Danny Barnes (banjo, guitar, tuba), Robbie Fulks (guitar, banjo), Bill Frisell (guitar) and Robbie Gjersoe (resonator guitar), not just for their brilliant skills and deep-rooted understanding of fiddle music, but because they brought the barn-stomping, slightly unhinged energy she was trying to conjure.