Ralph Hill — Live at Lavender Country

"Plato posits that our souls are eternal and that the trauma of birth obscures our memories of a previous existence. According to his theory of anamnesis, the soul possesses knowledge from before birth, but this knowledge is forgotten through the physical experience of entering the body. So far, Ralph Hill is the strongest piece of evidence I have encountered to support this idea. ‘Old soul’ is too much of a cliché to describe the young boy, aged beyond his years.

Starting in 2019, I planted about 50 lavender plants on the vacant corner lot across the street from my house in East Davison Village, Detroit. In those days, Ralph spent his weeknights with his grandmother Jan in the house next door while he attended the nearby elementary school. Later that same summer, a neighbor left his PA system out in an adjacent lot after spending the day grilling and playing music. That evening, I heard a familiar voice booming through the microphone. As the week went on and the speakers lay neglected by their owner, Ralph held a days-long revival through the summer nights.

In the following years, our lavender patch expanded down the block. Ralph remained a fixture within it, performing on a stage of wooden pallets which grew year by year into a catawampus assemblage of a pulpit. Jonny Campolo, having befriended Ralph while staying as my house guest in the last cold winter weeks of the pre-COVID era, soon filled the role of church organist, and somehow an audience just seemed to materialize before them, seated in a semicircle of plastic patio chairs collected from a nearby field.

In 2023, with the help of Benjamin Briggance and Morgan Brown, we recorded live during what became our annual Lavender Fest. The following autumn, with his mother and grandmother by his side, we recorded Ralph again in Ben's home studio with Jonny on keys.

Each year I anticipate some dissipation of the spirit that binds this occasion. Often what seems like the beginning of a new era is actually its high-water mark. Ralph began this pursuit as a child and he is not a child anymore. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child — but Ralph never really seemed to do that. I suppose there weren't a lot of childish things for him to put away. While I do my best to hold no expectation (because expectation is the source of all heartache), each year I am pleasantly surprised to find Ralph returning to his stage, maturing in his craft, reaching ever higher in his abilities as an orator.

Like lavender, Ralph Hill is a perennial."

— Jeffrey Tranchell

Live at Lavender Country arrives earthside via Soap Library in vinyl, cassette, and digital formats on Friday, June 26, 2026. A sprig of lavender, harvested from the very field where Ralph first began orating, accompanies each piece of physical media. 

Photos by WC Bevans