Folk – 7th Level Music

Kevin Morby releases the Salvation Choir’s version of his song, “This Is a Photograph.”

Kevin Morby and The Salvation Choir are proud to present “This Is A Photograph (The Salvation Choir Version),” a new reimagining of the title track from Morby’s acclaimed 2022 album. The Salvation Choir is a Congolese rumba choir from Congo and Tanzania based in Kevin’s hometown of Kansas City. “This Is A Photograph (The Salvation Choir Version)” is a stirring iteration of Morby’s original, and is presented alongside a new website on which others can access stems, instrumentals, tutorials and templates so they can make their own family history epics. Kevin Morby elaborates:

At some point last year, a few of you reached out with the request of getting the music to my song “This Is A Photograph” so you could make your own version and tell your own family’s history. I found this incredibly interesting and had never gotten such requests about any of my other songs before. I have decided to heed the call of those few who reached out and I have made a website

In celebration of this website, and to lead with an example, I reached out to one of my favorite bands, Kansas City’s own The Salvation Choir, to see if they would want to make their own version of ‘This Is A Photograph’ and was over the moon when they agreed. They created their own version in which they reinterpreted the music in their Congolese Rumba style and reworked the lyrics to their own story and sang in both English and Swahili to provide the listener with a window into their past.

Pelo King Wilondja, The Salvation Choir’s 15-year-old drummer, states: “We met Kevin at one of our practices. I didn’t know who he was at first but then our friend played us his music and I started really liking his songs. Now he’s in my top ten. He invited us to his concert and I was actually sweating because it was so good. Kevin asked us if we wanted to remake his song to be about our family’s history and play it in our style. It was my first time recording drums in a real studio. We loved his idea because photographs are really important to our family and we’re always playing music together. There are over 20 members in the choir and everyone has their own story. The song starts out in Africa and it ends in Kansas City where we all live now. It’s about our family’s history and how we got here.”

LISTEN TO “THIS IS A PHOTOGRAPH (THE SALVATION CHOIR VERSION)”

VISIT THISISAPHOTOGRAPH.COM

This month will also see the release of More Photographs (A Continuum), Morby’s companion piece to last year’s This Is A Photograph. Here, Morby returns to his landmark album’s bottomless themes with new wisdom, new imagination, and the winking, looping callbacks that tie his full body of work together in uniquely special ways. “With every collection of songs,” says Morby, “I feel I have to cast them out of me before moving onto the next project, and here I knew that what I had begun with This Is A Photograph was not finished. Releasing this collection is me tying a bow on that time and place in my creative life.” With a luxurious nine tracks – three re-imaginings and six brand new songs – More Photographs (A Continuum) is prequel, sequel and primer to an already rich and generous record from one of our most luminous modern songwriters. More Photographs (A Continuum) will be available on vinyl in the fall and is available to pre-order now.

LISTEN TO “THIS IS A PHOTOGRAPH II” B/W “FIVE EASY PIECES REVISITED”

PRE-ORDER MORE PHOTOGRAPHS (A CONTINUUM)

PURCHASE THIS IS A PHOTOGRAPH
“THIS IS A PHOTOGRAPH” VIDEO
“ROCK BOTTOM” VIDEO
“A RANDOM ACT OF KINDNESS” VIDEO
“BITTERSWEET, TN” VIDEO
SUBSCRIBE TO KEVIN MORBY’S SUBSTACK

KEVIN MORBY TOUR DATES (NEW DATES IN BOLD)
Fri. June 2 – Aarhus, DK @ Northside Festival
Sat. June 3 – Malmö, SW @ Plan B
Mon. June 5 – Manchester, UK @ New Century
Tue. June 6 – Bristol, UK @ SWX
Wed. June 7 – London, UK @ Roundhouse
Fri. June 9 – Gent, BE @ Vooruit
Fri. June 9 – Sun. June 11 – Hilvarenbeek, NL @ Best Kept Secret
Mon. June 12 – Zurich, CH @ Dynamo Saal
Tue. June 13 – Milan, IT @ Giardino Della Triennale
Wed. June 14 – Ferrara, IT @ Ferrara Sotto Le Stelle
Thur. June 15 – Munich, DE @ Strom
Fri. June 16 – Sun. Jun 18 – Vilnius, LI @ 8 Festival
Fri. June 16 – Dresden, DE @ Beatpol
Mon. June 19 – Warsaw, PL @ Proxima
Tue. June 20 – Poznan, PL @ Tama
Wed. June 21 – Berlin, DE @ Columbia Theater
Fri. June 23 – Vienna, AU @ Akzent
Sat. June 24 – Krakow, PL @ Kwadrat
Sun. June 25 – Budapest, HU @ Akvárium Klub
Tue. June 27 – Ljubljana, SL @ Kino Siska
Wed. June 28 – Geneva, CH @ Usine
Fri. June 30 – Paris, FR @ Days Off Festival
Sat. July 1 – Petit Couronne, FR @ Theatre de Verdure
Sun. July 2 – La Rochelle, FR @ La Sirene
Mon. July 3 – Toulouse, FR @ Le Bikini
Wed. July 5 – Lisboa, PT @ LAV
Thur. July 6 – Porto, PT @ Hard Club
Fri. July 7 – Madrid, ES @ Mad Cool Festival
Sat. July 8 – Six-Fours-les-Plages, FR @ Pointu Festival
Aug. 25- Aug. 27 – Tisbury, MA @ Beach Road Weekend
Sun. Aug. 27 – Rockville Centre, NY @ Madison Theatre at Molloy University
Wed. Sep. 27 – Auckland, NZ @ Hollywood Avondale
Thur. Sep. 28 – Wellington, NZ @ Meow
Sat. Sep. 30 – Sydney, AUS @ Factory Theatre
Sun. Oct. 1 – Sapphire Coast, AUS @ Wanderer Festival
Tue. Oct. 3 – Melbourne, AUS @ Northcote Theatre
Thur. Oct. 5 – Eltham, AUS @ Eltham Hotel
Fri. Oct. 6 – Brisbane, AUS @ Princess Theatre
Sat. Oct. 7 – Adelaide, AUS @ Summertown Studio
Sun. Oct. 8 – Perth, AUS @ The Rechabite
Sat. Dec. 2 – Riviera Maya, MX @ Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Jacob at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Charlotte Cornfield’s new single is “Gentle Like the Drugs” you’re probably doing.

Charlotte Cornfield presents her new single/video, “Gentle Like The Drugs,” from her forthcoming album, Could Have Done Anything, out this Friday, May 12 on Polyvinyl/Double Double Whammy. “Gentle Like the Drugs” draws on imagery from a spring tour in the American west. “I wrote this song after a particularly special and memorable tour opening for Pedro the Lion in the west of the US. Something strong clicked on that tour, and I was experiencing joy on the road in a way I really hadn’t before, feeling fully present and just revelling in the company of my bandmates and taking in the spectacular landscape in a way that felt like a deep breath.” Cornfield says, “I had never really been to the desert before, to Southern Utah and Arizona, and I was very moved by it. This is a drifting summer song to me, about letting grief and anxiety go and feeling light and buzzed and in love and joyful.”

You can hear it in the patient pleasure of these chords, or the way Cornfield narrates her first impressions of Arizona: “I watch the colors get real / the pink and the teal / I see a dust devil / I see an elevator.” Like riding across the desert with your friends; like smoking a joint at the end of a long day; but the song’s alternating verses orient themselves towards another sensation, too: that feeling of being home, and happy, when your lover’s not around. Not because they’re gone, but because you know they will return.

“Gentle Like The Drugs” is presented alongside a transportive video directed by Ali Vanderkruyk. Of the video, Vanderkruyk adds: “The video is a 16mm travelogue following the hand of a wanderer writing postcards to a loved one back home. Each vignette acts as vessel for the lyrics for the song, acknowledging the beauty of home while observing the unfamiliar. We see the kitsch in chosen images for a postcard, as well as the ways one can personalize an object that is available to the masses.”

WATCH CHARLOTTE CORNFIELD’S “GENTLE LIKE THE DRUGS” VIDEO

Could Have Done Anything, the follow-up to Cornfield’s break-out hit Highs in the Minuses, is a testament to this uncommon life and all its possibilities, an acknowledgment that the best musicians can turn fleeting moments into timeless songs. Throughout, Cornfield tried to channel the energy of her favorite classic records, from Tapestry to Blood On The Tracks to Car Wheels On A Gravel Road — albums where the listener is simply carried by the songs and the playing.

Whereas Cornfield’s preceding albums were made in familiar settings, with troupes of friends, this time she reached into the unknown, contacting producer Josh Kaufman (Bonny Light Horseman). The two convened in Upstate New York, first at the stained-glass-tinted Dreamland Recording Studios, then at the nearby Isokon Studio, run by engineer D. James Goodwin (Kevin Morby, Whitney) and assistant engineer Gillian Pelkonen. Four people, one album, six days; Kaufman and Cornfield (who went to school for jazz drums) played every instrument themselves, from ringing guitars to cozy piano, Hammond B3, pedal steel and synthesizers. That was the spirit of this record: connection, possibility, acceptance. “Don’t be afraid to take a left,” Kaufman would say.

After six days of recording, Cornfield went back to Canada, with a new album to mix and master. Another day-long drive; another homecoming; and one more thing, too, which would arise a little over nine months later: the singer’s first baby, who was born in mid-April. Anything can happen. Every year’s a kind of coming-of-age, and over these nine magnetic tracks, Cornfield begins yet another chapter as a mother.

PRE-ORDER COULD HAVE DONE ANYTHING

WATCH “CUT AND DRY” VIDEO

WATCH “YOU AND ME” VIDEO

CHARLOTTE CORNFIELD TOUR DATES
Thu. July 6 – Sun. July 9 – Winnipeg, MB @ Winnipeg Folk Fest
Fri. July 21 – Sun. July 23 – Nelsonville, OH @ Nelsonville Music Festival
Thu. Aug. 31 – Sun. Sept. 3 – Dorset, UK @ End of the Road Festival
Thu. Sept. 28 – Montreal, QC @ Rialto Rooftop – Pop Montreal

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Jaycee and Jacob at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Windhand’s Dorthia Cottrell to release solo album, “Death Folk Country,” April 21, 2023, but you can experience “Family Annihilator” now.

Dorthia Cottrell envisions her music as both a document of love and a reconciliation with death. On her new album, Death Folk Country, Cottrell wards off death through creation – the most distilled form of love. The spirit of love passed on through her words will be the ultimate reward for earthly suffering. Cottrell’s enigmatic presence guides listeners down a path of introspection – Death Folk Country‘s massive scope touches upon tales of love, loss, and so much more.

Cottrell was raised in rural King George, Virginia, a town with less than 5,000 inhabitants. Forests and tall-grass fields stretched before her. Beauty and boredom soared. That vague melancholy and memory of the American South is smudged all over Cottrell’s music. Cottrell grew up a goth, an outcast in a small town – a time and place she revisits throughout Death Folk Country.

“This album to me is about painting a picture of a place where my heart lives,” Cottrell explains. The title Death Folk Country is partly me describing a genre that fits the sound – but it’s also meant to be taken as a Naming, a coronation of the world inside me. Death Folk Country is the music and also the land where the music takes place, and the two have always been inextricable from each other.”

The album’s lead single “Family Annihilator” directly speaks to the unease and tension of Cottrell’s surroundings. “Porch lights keep the demons at bay,” she sings over crashing cymbals and a field recording of birds. “I had never played it before, I kind of brought it out of the attic,” Cottrell says of the song. Despite being over a decade old, “Family Annihilator” spoke to the moment she was in. With the threat of another four years of conservative offices in power, Cottrell thought of family back in the South who would be voting, and remembered something her grandfather, a farmer, had told her years ago: “If a crop is diseased, you have to burn the whole crop.” “‘Family Annihilator’ is a result of me wondering if the whole field must burn today, to save the flowers of tomorrow,” Cottrell says.

Listen / Watch / Playlist “Family Annihilator”

Elsewhere, the sounds of Cottrell’s childhood can be heard all over the album, and no more so than on “Harvester” and “Black Canyon” – tracks decorated with chimes and monk’s bells; what Cottrell would have heard when sat out on her front porch in King George. These are sounds of nature longing. These are sounds Cottrell associates with both her upbringing and also the world of Death Folk Country.

Cottrell’s voice, a quavering alto, fills the emptiest of canyons. Singing in echoing harmony with itself, her voice is a kind of prophecy, bringing home to the present thoughts and realizations from the future, even as Cottrell buries herself in remembrance of the past.

“I grew up deep in a Virginia Pine forest in a house built entirely by my grandpa,” Cottrell recalls. “The only type of door I knew was made of plywood and had a hook instead of a knob. We were excited to have our washing machine and dryer on the porch so we didn’t have to hang clothes up to dry in the winter. Our heat came from burning wood. If you didn’t cut the wood you didn’t get warm. If you didn’t make a specific effort for something, you went without it. And I loved it. I still love it. The smell, the air, the way it looks, the way it sounds. The way it doesn’t sound. The feeling.”

Death Folk Country takes these nostalgic ideas of “home” and confronts them with their own imperfections and darkness.

“There are things I don’t love about it too. Dark things. Misguided ideas. Fear of things not understood. An altogether monstrous and violent evil that seeps unsuspecting and aloof (seemingly) into even the most (seemingly) innocent conversation. As I grow older, the things I love and hate about it only become more and more vivid and I often think about how to keep the two worlds apart–how to separate the divine from the evil and if it’s even possible.”

Death Folk Country sees its release April 21 via Relapse Records, her first for the label and follow up to her highly acclaimed, 2015 S/T solo debut. All songs on Death Folk Country were written / played by Dorthia Cottrell and recorded / produced by Jon K. and Cottrell at SANS Studios in Richmond, Virginia.

Pre-Order / Pre-Save Death Folk Country Here

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Bailey at Another Side.]

Snow Ghosts put a “Curse” on us with their new single.

Today Snow Ghosts return with their fourth album, ‘The Fell’, due for release on February 24^th through Houndstooth.

‘The Fell’ sees the trio of Hannah Cartwright (Augustus Ghost, Masakichi), Ross Tones (Throwing Snow) and Oli Knowles (The Keep, Sex Swing) return with a collection of old folk songs that were never written – an album that conjures images of animals and ancient tales experienced within a future landscape. Ancestral marks imprint the endless terrain of ‘The Fell’ and their songlines still sing.

Today they share the album’s first single and accompanying visual, entitled “Curse” – a violent storm of wrath; a song that explores the folklore of shapeshifting women and highlights historic misogyny that still exists.

Vocalist Hannah Cartwright comments: “Curse reflects the folkloric trope of witch to hare metamorphosis. It is the furious revenge of the hunted hare, exacted upon her tormentor.”

“Curse” on YouTube:https://youtu.be/lFEhbD_H8a0
Other ‘The Fell’ links:https://hth.lnk.to/thefell

A seed of an idea was planted in 2015 during a conversation between vocalist Hannah Cartwright and fellow founder Ross Tones about his home in Weardale. The trio, completed by Oli Knowles, have had three releases since that time, giving the album time to slowly grow its roots deep into their creative subconscious.

“The concept of The Fell as a living thing was there from the beginning” explains Ross. “That imagery provided the overarching environment” Hannah continues, “which then left us encompassed by human, floral, faunal, mythological, folkloric and magical elements to explore as and when we approached each piece. It was a chance to completely immerse ourselves in another world, its history and perception through other inhabitants.”

‘The Fell’ is also a liminal or ‘thin’ place. Bog land preserves organic remains, like time capsules, a quality that made it a special place to prehistoric people. These relics serve as starting points for new stories and songs. Folk tales talk of the metamorphosis of animals into people and back again which talks to a deep rooted ambiguity of where people begin and the land ends.

“The moorland fell looks beautiful, wild and desolate.” Ross continues. “From certain places you can look in all directions and see no obvious signs of humanity. Yet it’s a completely man made landscape. We used it as a multilayered metaphor, containing stories of the interaction between humans and nature which express themselves in folklore.”

The arrangement too is multilayered in its approach. 2019’s colossal ‘A Quiet Ritual’ contained a score for a full orchestra and the ancient Carnyx. ‘The Fell’s’ instrumental arsenal consists of esraj, dulcimer, daf and bodhrán drums, violin, guitars, and a variety of synthesisers. Whilst equally vast, immersive and other-worldly, these tools are used to create intimate, personal stories. Sharing a mutual influence of the shadowy elements of folklore and the heavier side of experimental noise, a disparate array of reference points and this extensive collection of instruments combines to form Snow Ghosts’ bewitching and often intoxicating sound.

On ‘The Fell’, they return for a captivating new album where ancient folk motifs intermingle with dark electronics, violins and primordial imagery to create an album of vast contrasts – heavy, yet flowing; electronic yet organic; modern yet steeped in nature and history.

‘The Fell’ will be released on February 24th via Houndstooth. Pre-order/pre-save links here.

‘The Fell’ track list:
1. Given
2. Hearths
3. Filaments
4. Curse – Visualiser
5. Buried
6. Hawthorn
7. Avine
8. Prophecies
9. Home
10. Magpie
11. Vixen
12. Taken

Links:
http://www.snowghosts.net
https://www.facebook.com/SnowGhosts
https://twitter.com/Snow_Ghosts
https://www.instagram.com/snowghostsband/?hl=en

Keep your mind open.

[Don’t forget to subscribe before you go.]

[Thanks to Kate at Stereo Sanctity.]

Fenne Lily’s “Lights Light Up” is a bright look at the apprehensive world of new love.

Today, UK-born and now New York-based artist Fenne Lily announces Big Picture, her new album out April 14th on Dead Oceans, and presents its lead single/video, “Lights Light Up.” She also announces a month-plus North American co-headline tour with Christian Lee Hutson, as well as a UK and EU run, on sale this Friday, January 20th at 10am local time. A gorgeous and gripping portrait of Fenne’s last two years, Big Picture was pieced together in an effort to self-soothe and offers a brilliant catharsis. Tracked live in co-producer Brad Cook’s North Carolina studio, the album delineates the phases of love and becomes a map of comfort vs. claustrophobia. “Writing this album was my attempt at bringing some kind of order to the disaster that was 2020,” Fenne states. “By documenting the most vulnerable parts of that time, I felt like I reclaimed some kind of autonomy.”

This collision of repose and harsh reality is laid bare in Big Picture’s lead single “Lights Light Up,” a prophetic and insightful account of love at its temporary best. Written partially as a conversation, it tracks the tender details of a burgeoning relationship and recognizes the transitory nature of any shared thing; the bittersweet truth that you can only walk hand in hand with someone as long as you’re going in the same direction. With delicately interwoven guitar lines, propulsive rhythm and a chorus that offers the feeling of a voicemail left by someone from your past, it feels at once deeply personal and universal (“and you said so do you ever wanna leave here / and I said well that depends on the day / and you said oh do you even wanna be here / and I said well that depends on the way”)

“I’d never really written about love in the present tense before this, but even though I was still in love and not thinking about the end, there was something else going on subconsciously that led to a song about moving on before the moving on had begun,” comments Fenne. “When it came time to record, the band and I had been playing it live for a while and it’d become something joyful and positive, but when I started recording vocals, the lyrics made me cry. By that point the song was over a year old and I thought those wounds had healed but I guess it hurt to admit I’d been letting go of something while still trying to hold on.” The song’s accompanying video, shot throughout Brooklyn, was directed by Haoyan of America.

Watch Fenne Lily’s “Lights Light Up” Video

Though its creation took place amid personal and global turmoil, the ruminative yet candid Big Picture is Fenne’s most cohesive, resolute work to date, both lyrically and sonically. “This isn’t a sad album — it’s about as uplifting as my way of doing things will allow,” she says. “These songs explore worry and doubt and letting go, but those themes are framed brightly.” With confidence and quiet strength, each track provides insight into Fenne’s ever-changing view of love and, ultimately, its redefinition — love as a process, not something to be lost and found.

Notably, these 10 songs are Fenne’s first and only to have been written over the course of a relationship; 2018’s On Hold and 2020’s BREACH both confront the pain of retrospection, saying goodbye to a love that’s gone. Big Picture does the exact opposite — rooted firmly in the present, it traces the narrative of two people trying their hardest not to implode, together.

After writing Big Picture in the solitude of her Bristol flat, Fenne consciously aimed to make the recording process her most collaborative thus far. Co-producing with Brad Cook (Waxahatchee, Kevin Morby, Snail Mail) at his Durham studio, Fenne’s core intention was to make something that sonically reflected the kind of compact space the songs were written in; something warm, honest and comforting. Alongside Fenne’s touring band, the album features Christian Lee Hutson (guitar), Katy Kirby (vocals), and was mixed by Melina Duterte of Jay Som.

Big Picture’s cover art, constructed on a miniature scale by the artist Thomas Doyle, shows the collapse of a home confined within a bell jar and features several inch-high models of Fenne in various places throughout. This physical representation of a self-contained disaster is a reminder that we are small in the grand scheme of things which, for Fenne, is a relief: “We only really know the one world we find ourselves in at any given time” Fenne expands. “It’s only when that world changes or collapses that we realize there are other narratives available — that we’ve known only one of many possible ways to exist.”

Pre-order Big Picture

Big Picture Tracklist:
1. Map of Japan
2. Dawncolored Horse
3. Lights Light Up
4. 2+2
5. Superglued
6. Henry
7. Pick
8. In My Own Time
9. Red Deer Day
10. Half Finished

Fenne Lily Tour Dates:
Sat. Apr. 15 – Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club
Sun. Apr. 16 – Dublin, IE @ Workman’s Club
Tue. Apr. 18 – Glasgow, UK @ St Luke’s
Wed. Apr. 19 – Manchester, UK @ YES
Thu. Apr. 20 – London, UK @ Islington Assembly Hall
Fri. Apr. 21 – Bristol, UK @ Trinity
Sun. Apr. 23 – Brighton, UK @ Patterns
Mon. Apr. 24 – Brussels, BE @ AB Club
Tue. Apr. 25 – Amsterdam, NL @ Bitterzoet
Thu. Apr. 27 – Hamburg, DE @ Nochtspeicher
Fri. Apr. 28 – Copenhagen, DK @ VEGA Ideal Bar
Sat. Apr. 29 – Berlin, DE @ Frannz
Mon. May 1 – Munich, DE @ Ampere
Tue. May 2 – Cologne, DE @ Stadtgarten
Wed. May 3 – Paris, FR @ FMR
Thu. May 11 – Santa Ana, CA @ Constellation Room *
Fri. May 12 – Felton, CA @ Felton Music Hall *
Sat. May 13 – San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall *
Mon. May 15 – Seattle, WA @ Neumos *
Tue. May 16 – Portland, Oregon @ Aladdin Theater *
Wed. May 17 – Vancouver, BC @ Hollywood Theatre *
Fri. May 19 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court *
Sat. May 20 – Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theater *
Mon. May 22 – Lawrence, KS @ The Bottleneck *
Tue. May 23 – Minneapolis, MN @ Fine Line *
Wed. May 24- Milwaukee, WI @ Back Room at Colectivo Coffee *
Thu. May 25 – Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall *
Fri. May 26 – Kalamazoo, MI @ Bell’s Eccentric Cafe *
Sat. May 27 – Toronto, ON @ The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern *
Tue. May 30 – Portsmouth, NH @ 3S Artspace *
Wed. May 31 – Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair *
Fri. Jun. 2 – Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg *
Sat. Jun. 3 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer *
Sun. Jun. 4 – Washington, DC @ Black Cat *
Mon. Jun. 5 – Durham, NC @ Motorco Music Hall *
Tue. Jun. 6 – Atlanta, GA @ Terminal West *
Wed. Jun. 7 – Nashville, TN @ The Basement East *
Fri. Jun. 9 – Fayetteville, AR @ George’s Majestic Lounge *
Sat. Jun. 10 – Fort Worth, TX @ Tulips *
Sun. Jun. 11 – Austin, TX @ The Parish *
Tue. Jun. 13 – Santa Fe, NM @ Meow Wolf *
Thu. Jun. 15 – Phoenix, AZ @ Rebel Lounge *
Fri. Jun. 16 – West Hollywood, CA @ Troubadour *

* = co-headline with Christian Lee Hutson

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Jessica at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Medicine Singers fly high with “Hawk Song” from their new album.

Today, Medicine Singers release their self-titled debut album on Stone Tapes/ Joyful Noise, and present the video for “Hawk Song.” Medicine Singers is a genre-smashing kaleidoscope of sound firmly rooted in the intense physical power of the powwow drum, and is the inaugural release on the new Joyful Noise imprint, Stone Tapes. “Hawk Song,” written by band member Ray Two Hawks Watson, is a modern powwow favorite which infuses the Eastern Algonquin tradition with a rock edge. “The guitar turned it into a rock song,” says bandleader Daryl Black Eagle Jamieson. “The two styles mesh together so well, it’s like a fireball taking off, and you can see it in the audience when we play it live.” With hand-held footage of the band performing “Hawk Song,” the accompanying music video – directed by Roy and Gigi Ben Artzi – captures a propulsivity that extends across Medicine Singers’ 10 tracks.

Watch Medicine Singers’ “Hawk Song” Video

The creation of Stone Tapes was inspired in part by Jamieson’s work as an artist and activist, and to make a space for traditional musicians to collaborate with other experimental artists. One dollar from each Stone Tapes album sale will go toward a charity of the artist’s choice. For Medicine Singers, the funds will go to Jamieson’s organization Pocasset Pocanoket Land Trust. “We’re buying back all the land from the original Pocasset purchase – that the colonists took from us. What we are trying to do is preserve the pristine land…Keep it from being built on…Bring it back to our people to have a place to go. Because here in the Northeast most of the land has been taken and built upon, and it’s so expensive that Indian people cannot even afford it,” said Jamieson.

Medicine Singers expands on years of collaboration following a spontaneous 2017 performance by Eastern Algonquin powwow group Eastern Medicine Singers and Monotonix guitarist Yonatan Gat. Bridging multiple dimensions of sound, Medicine Singers expanded into a remarkable supergroup that also includes ambient music pioneer Laraaji, Thor Harris and Christopher Pravdica of Swans, no wave icon Ikue Mori, and rising jazz trumpet star jaimie branch, who also painted the album cover. Alongside producer Ryan Olson (of Gayngs), Medicine Singers’ debut album combines traditional powwow music with elements of psychedelic punk, spiritual jazz, and electronics in a stunning blend.

“I look at it like this, everybody is my brother and sister, no matter where they come from,” Jamieson reflects. “If their culture or music is different, I want to learn about it, and I want to play with them. I think it’s our responsibility as artists to show the world that life is not about war and hate. Life is about music, peace, and culture. We need to communicate with people of different cultures and backgrounds. We need to show people how we can work together and make something beautiful.”

Watch The “Daybreak” Lyric Video

Watch The “Sunrise (Rumble)” Video

Listen to “Sanctuary”

Purchase Medicine Singers

Keep your mind open.

[Fly over to the subscription box while you’re here.]

[Thanks to Yuri at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Review: Pastor Champion – I Just Want to Be a Good Man

Pastor Champion, who left us for the Kingdom of Heaven just as his music was being discovered, was a man of many hats: Pastor, former gang member, touring guitarist, brother, and probably many others we’ll never learn about unless secret diaries or obscure notes are found.

We do know that he preached and played for the 37th Street Baptist Church in Oakland, California. We also know that his one and only album, I Just Want to Be a Good Man, was recorded with musicians who’d never played with him before then, and it was recorded in just two nights at his church. We also know that it’s a stunning record of gospel, blues, and soul that, if there’s any justice in this valley of tears, will win a Grammy for Best Gospel Album.

Champion pleads with people to come back to the church and Christ on “I Know That You’ve Been Wounded (Church Hurt)” – a song for those who have been disappointed, hurt (physically, mentally, and / or spiritually), or crushed by the church, religion, and families and friends practicing their faith in hurtful ways. “Keep on, God will make it work,” Champion sings over simple chords that almost sound like he’s playing a ukulele.

“He’ll Make a Way (Trust in the Lord)” further emphasizes the theme of relying on faith, and the power of Champion’s faith is evident from the first notes he sings in it. The nearly seven-minute “Talk to God” has Champion grooving with these church musicians he’s barely met, and all of them slide right into his groove with the ease that comes so naturally to accomplished gospel musicians.

“Only what you do for Christ will last,” Champion sings on “In the name of Jesus (Everytime)” – a reminder to put the Creator in the lead and trust His guidance. Hearing Champion teach his impromptu band how to play “To Be Used, by You (I Just Want to Be a Good Man)” is fun to hear, and the rest of the track is lovely (and a warm-up for the closing track).

“Who Do Men Say I Am?” has Champion singing a conversation between Christ and His disciples (from the sixteenth chapter of Matthew). “Storm of Life (Stand by Me)” has Champion crying out to God about troubles that plague him at work, at home, at church, and practically everywhere else – including his worry that he might not be ready for death. “In the Service of the Lord” has some of Champion’s most passionate vocals, and that’s saying something when you consider how much he professes his face throughout the record.

The album closes with the title track, expanding on the earlier version of it with, somehow, even more soul and longing. “Tell me, tell me, tell me, Jesus, what do you want me to do?” Champion sings.

He’s doing things we can’t even fathom now, but at least we have this record as a light in gloomy times.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Sam at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Seth Walker drops the truth with his new single “The Future Ain’t What It Used to Be.”

Seth Walker has announced his eleventh album, I Hope I Know, will be released May 20 on Royal Potato Family. It’s the North Carolina-based singer/songwriter’s third studio collaboration with producer Jano Rix. Each song on the ten track collection shines with what many have come to love about Walker and his soulful Americana: diverse influences, contemplative lyrics, that signature blue tone on the guitar, and movement both geographic and spiritual. The album’s first single, “The Future Ain’t What It Used To Be” is out today (listen/share). Walker will support the album with a U.S. tour beginning in May.

I Hope I Know might best be described as Walker’s ’round-midnight album. Written in the midst of a breakup, relocating from his home in Nashville, TN to Asheville, NC, and the enduring mental struggles of the pandemic, it’s a beautiful reckoning with heartbreak, moving across states and coming to terms with the uncertainty of the future. Its tempos are slower and tonality darker than on previous work. In Walker’s words, he had to just “sit with it.” The music’s creation embodied trying and failing without forcing anything: not time, not the songwriting or its grooves, not a sense of control, not even his own healing. He credits the practice of “search and surrender,” a quest for new meaning in things he may never fully understand.

“This last year and a half has personally cracked me open. In many ways, for the first time, I’m observing myself and how I relate to the music, how I sit with the feeling, the emotion, my shadow and light,” explains Walker. “I have always been in this place of action, and finally, when all this happened, I found myself in a place of relinquishing—an active state of inaction.”

The first sessions for I Hope I Know began in 2019, but it wouldn’t be until the second half of 2020 when Walker would truly dive into the writing and recording process. Oliver Wood—Jano Rix’s bandmate in The Wood Brothers—cowrote three of the songs, as did Walker’s longtime songwriting partner Gary Nicholson, while Jarrod Dickenson also contributed to one song. Among the album’s highlights are “Why Do I Cry Anymore,” which asks unanswerable questions about recovering from heartbreak, ultimately coming to the conclusion that love is still worth it. “Remember Me” haunts with old jazz and blues, a falsetto vocal, arco acoustic bass and dusty drums. The title track came from the “Ho’oponopono Prayer,” a Hawaiian poem about forgiveness and reconciliation that his mother sent him, which translates as “I am sorry. Forgive me. Thank you. I love you.” Special guest Allison Russell adds vocal harmonies.

Three cover songs featured on the recording offer something familiar to hold onto—a tinge of nostalgia, minus the impulse to cling to the past. The Bobby Charles‘ song “Tennessee Blues” perfectly speaks to Walker moving from Nashville into the mountains of Asheville as he tried to “figure out what just happened, post break up.” Van Morrison‘s “Warm Love” is the perfect respite and breather. Bob Dylan‘s “Buckets of Rain” came spontaneously like a dream; Seth woke up one morning with the song in his head and quickly captured this rendition.

The follow up to Walker’s 2019 album, Are You Open?—which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard Blues Album Chart—I Hope I Know is a distinct statement from the previous ten recordings in Walker’s discography. In its totality, the songs create a deep, but relatable journey, offering a beacon of light and ultimately safe haven, centered around the most precious of all gifts—Hope.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Kevin at Royal Potato Family.]

Joe Rainey announces debut album, due May 20th, with powerful first single – “no chants.”

Pow Wow singer Joe Rainey announces his debut album, Niineta, out May 20th on 37d03d (the label founded by Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, and Bryce and Aaron Dessner of the National), and shares the first single/video, “no chants.” On Niineta, Rainey demonstrates his command of the Pow Wow style, descending from Indigenous singing that’s been heard across the waters of what is now called Minnesota for centuries, and accompanied by cinematic, bass-heavy production from Minneapolis producer Andrew Broder. Depending on the song or the pattern, his voice can celebrate or console, welcome or intimidate, wake you up with a start or lull your babies to sleep. Each note conveys a clear message, no matter the inflection: We’re still here. We were here before you were, and we never left.

Rainey grew up a Red Lake Ojibwe in Minneapolis, a city with one of the largest and proudest Native American populations in the country. The Red Lake Reservation sits five hours to the North, a sovereign state unto itself, but Rainey grew up down in what Northerners call “The Cities,” in his mom’s house on historic Milwaukee Avenue on Minneapolis’ South Side. He was raised less than a mile away from Franklin Avenue, the post-Reorganization Act urban nexus of local Native American life, a community centered in the Little Earth housing projects and the Minneapolis American Indian Center. The neighborhood still serves as a home for both the housed and the un-housed, and the don’t-even-wanna-be-housed Native. It is the birthplace of the American Indian Movement (AIM), the pioneering grassroots civil rights organization founded to combat the colonizing forces of police brutality. Rainey came of age in the heart of this community, but always felt like he was living in a liminal space—not that he was uncomfortable with that. “Growing up, knowing that you weren’t from the Rez, but you were repping them, was kind of weird,” he says. “But I liked that.”

Rainey became interested in Pow Wow singing as a child—at the age of five, he started recording Pow Wow singing groups with his GE tape recorder, and his mom enrolled him in a dancing and singing practice with the Little Earth Juniors soon thereafter. As a pre-teen he began hanging out around The Boyz (a legendary Minneapolis drum group) at a house some of them stayed at in the Little Earth projects. By the time he was a teenager he had found enough courage to help start The Boyz Juniors, his first drum group, before going on to sing with Big Cedar, Wolf Spirit, Raining Thunder, Iron Boy, and eventually, Midnite Express, a new drum group featuring some of The Boyz themselves. Rainey was always just as much of a fan as he was a participant—when he wasn’t at his own drum, he was recording other drums, then studying the tapes when he got home, admiring and cataloging the different singing styles, whether it was Northern Cree, Cozad or Eyabay.

On Niineta, Rainey finds himself in between cultures again. This time collaborating with Andrew Broder, who brought his multi-instrumentalist, turntablist sensibility to the project. The two of them first met backstage at Justin Vernon’s hometown Eaux Claires music festival before encountering each other more frequently through Vernon and Aaron and Bryce Dessner’s 37d03d collective—both contributing to the last Bon Iver album before broaching the possibility of working together sometime in the future. “At first I didn’t know what I could add to Joe’s incredible recordings,” Broder says. “But eventually I came to understand everything is rooted in the drum—even the songs on our record that have no drum, they’re still rooted in the drum.” So each song started with Broder’s beats, the two of them experimenting with various sounds and tempos, before bringing in other 37d03d collaborators to orchestrate and recontextualize the ancient Pow Wow sound in strange, new in-between places. The album pulls from Rainey’s vast sample folder of Pow Wow recordings, layering and remixing slices of his life of singing in venues across the upper Midwest and Canada.

Rainey got his title, Niineta, from his drum brother Michael Migizi Sullivan, who suggested a short version of the Ojibwe term meaning, “just me.” But he’s using the term only in the sense that he’s taking sole responsibility for its content. Rainey is protective of Pow Wow culture—which was outlawed by the United States government for a generation, defiantly maintained in secret by Native elders he deeply respects—while trying to figure out exactly where he fits into it and how he can fuck with it on his own terms. He uses the analogy of working the hotel room door at a Pow Wow. “You can think of this like, hey man, if all these people are going to be fucking knocking and I’m the one answering the door, you’re going to realize that I’m not the only one in this motherfucker. There’s tons of people in here. So if I’m answering that door, I want to be like, hey, yeah, come on in. There’s fucking tons of us in here. It ain’t just me.”
Watch/Stream “no chants”

Pre-order Niineta

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[Thanks to Patrick at Pitch Perfect PR.]

Review: Jake Xerxes Fussell – Good and Green Again

My taste in folk music, not unlike doom metal, is hit or miss. There has to be a certain combination of elements for me to enjoy an album in either genre. I’m not sure if I could tell you what all those elements are, but I can tell you that one of the most crucial is that the artist or band, while being good at their craft, doesn’t try too hard. They don’t force anything.

Jake Xerxes Fussell is such an artist. His guitar playing and vocals are simple, haunting, and the work of an expert craftsman – and none of it is forced. None of it is for show. It simply is, and his new album Good and Green Again continues his string of top-notch folk music that instantly transports you to different times and places that resonate with lessons needed in modern time.

“Love Farewell” is the sound of the sun rising or setting, depending on your mood when you hear it. It can be a song of moving forward after the loss of love or realizing a love is ending. “Carriebelle” adds solemn horns to a solemn song about the perils of booze and heartbreak. The horns continue their lonely cries on “Breast of Glass,” in which Fussell sings about wishing how he could keep a memory inside him forever – all the while knowing his hold on it would be fragile.

“Frolic,” “What Did the Hen Duck Say to the Drake?”, and “In Florida” are three lovely instrumentals on the album, something I hadn’t heard from Fussell before this record, and they’re all great additions. Fussell is great at writing, playing, and singing songs about the plight of the working class (or finding obscure songs about the subject and reinterpreting them in a new way), and “Rolling Mills Are Burning Down” is one such track. He sings about workers watching their jobs being reduced to ashes, knowing their way of life and means of earning bread are gone.

“The Golden Willow Tree” is a nine-minute-long tale of a scuttled ship, betrayal, and the loss of wealth and glory. The album ends with “Washington,” Fussell’s tribute / satirical salute to the first President of the U.S. and the way we, as Americans, tend to deify the Founding Fathers.

It’s another lovely record from Fussell with strength in its subtlety.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Sam at Pitch Perfect PR.]