Watch Stella Borsella Cover Josh Ritter’s “Idaho” in Snowy Boise for “Neighborhoods”

Daniel Fox braves the elements to perform the track in his hometown.
Neighborhoods
Watch Stella Borsella Cover Josh Ritter’s “Idaho” in Snowy Boise for “Neighborhoods”

Daniel Fox braves the elements to perform the track in his hometown.

Words: FLOOD Staff

January 04, 2022

As of a few weeks ago, it’s now officially winter. Depending on what part of the country you reside in, that could either mean that temps have dropped a little bit or it could mean that your backyard is covered in a sheet of snow—or, as is normal these days, it could be both of those conditions on two consecutive days regardless of where you’re based. For Daniel Fox—who frequently records under the name Stella Borsella—it happened to be particularly wintery while he recently sat down to record his cover of Josh Ritter’s “Idaho” for “Neighborhoods” in—where else—his home state of Idaho.

“I’ve spent the last decade in Southern California, but I grew up in Idaho,” the songwriter shares. “When I was 16 I remember going to see Josh Ritter play a small show at The Record Exchange in Boise. After the show I waited for almost two hours to meet him so he could sign the record I had just bought. I didn’t have a record player at the time, and this was actually the first record I ever bought: So Runs the World Away. I just needed something for him to sign. 

“When it was my turn,” he continues, “we spent a long time talking about music and he started recommending all these records I’d never heard of. He had an excitement for music I hadn’t ever really seen before in my life and was one of the only people that I knew of from Idaho who was doing what I wanted to do when I grew up, and his kindness stuck with me to this day. So while I was visiting my mom for the holidays, we went down to the river and she helped film. While filming, both my mom and my fingers were frozen solid and all my stuff was soaked. The cold actually made my guitar crack on the back, but weirdly sounds better now? All things considered, it felt fitting for this song about a place I love so much.”

With his mother Theresa behind the camera, check out the chilly performance filmed in Boise below.