We've been busy in 2011, sending out new albums to our many media contacts and friends. Here are three artists we're currently promoting. We love their music and think they each have refreshing takes on the bluegrass traditions they love so much.
 

Kevin Brown. The County Primaries.
Bluegrass Picking, Country Twang

Singer-songwriter Kevin Brown hails from rural Eastern Washington, where the arid Columbia Basin Plateau meets the Ponderosa Pine forests of the Selkirk Mountains. His songs explore the lives and thoughts of the folks that live in this region, people who enjoy being close to the earth and living close to home. And like the rough and raw landscape, Brown’s songs have many layers underneath. For a songwriter coming into a solo career in his late 40s, Brown’s debut album is surprisingly self-assured. This may be because of his long tenure with popular Northwest bluegrass band Big Red Barn. One of the most innovative bluegrass ensembles in the region, Big Red Barn covered a wide musical landscape. Kevin continues that same roving musical restlessness with his debut album, The County Primaries. Aided by the production of renowned Northwest roots musician Ivan Rosenberg, Brown has crafted one of the most refreshing roots music recordings to come out of Washington in a long while.
 

Kevin Brown: As Quiet As Grace

 
NOTE: You can hear more of Kevin Brown's music in our Online Listening Lounge.

Michael Connolly & Miller McNay. The Mandolin Casefiles.
Dashing Twin Mandolin Melodies

With a soft touch and quick wit, two stellar mandolinists have come together for an album exploring their love of American roots music. Both Michael Connolly and Miller McNay hail from Seattle, Washington, and both cut their teeth in ace Northwest bluegrass band Captain Gravel. As two old friends, they came together one night at Michael Connolly’s Empty Sea Studios and sat down to cut an album after a few cocktails. Of course, only the best acoustic musicians could pull something like this off (and with no overdubs!), and Connolly and McNay’s virtuosity is on full display on the resulting album: The Mandolin Casefiles: It Takes Two To Mando. They spin around the heart of each tune, pulling out the core of the melody, but flirting with improvisations and harmonies that take them far afield.

Michael Connolly & Miller McNay: Little Sadie

 

Jim Faddis. One More Ride.
A Little Bit Country, A Little Bit Folk
 

There’s a reason that great country music comes from a rural life. You need earth on your hands and dust in your voice to speak this kind of truth. The Eastern plains of Washington State have rubbed just the right amount of dirt into singer-songwriter Jim Faddis’ debut solo recording, “One More Ride”. With a soft drawl born of his years growing up picking cotton in California’s dustbelt and a host of ace bluegrass pickers and fiddlers from E. Washington, Jim Faddis’ subtle songs ring with the truth of honest living. There’s been much talk recently of roots country, but Jim Faddis actually knows and lives these roots. He fronts a hot bluegrass band, Prairie Flyer, which tours frequently in the Pacific Northwest, and his voice echoes the famous high tenors of bluegrass history like Ralph Stanley or Del McCoury. But he’s got an obvious sweet spot for simple and touching country songs. Drawing on influences like Steve Earle, Guy Clark and Merle Haggard, Jim paints vivid characters plagued with regret, longing and heartbreak, and sings their stories in his haunting high tenor voice. It’s a little bit country, a little folk, a little everything in between.

Jim Faddis: Lake Charles

 

NOTE: You can hear more of Jim Faddis' music in our Online Listening Lounge.

Note: This post originally appeared in No Depression.

It was my first time at the annual Folk Alliance International Conference, and I decided my best option was to wander and explore, getting the feel for the conference and the artists. There were some amazing moments, often tucked away in the wee hours of the morning in stuffy hotel rooms as artists of many talents and traditions gathered to inspire themselves and others. Here are some of the artists and moments that I most enjoyed.

Blind Boy Paxton: Before I saw Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton perform with hardcore traditional fiddler/banjoer/singer Frank Fairfield in Seattle, I had the same assumption that everyone else has before seeing him: “Oh god, not another white blues dude with a fake old-timey name”. Well, the truth about Paxton is ultimately much more interesting than I would have thought and goes way beyond the simple fact that he’s black, of course, and actually visually impaired (he sees, but not well and legitimately uses a cane). Like his friend, Frank Fairfield, he’s the real deal. Not a hipster who recently discovered Dock Boggs and bought a cheap banjo, nor an R&B/pop musician who got tired of the grind and decided to slum with other folk acts, but an honest-to-god, tried-and-true throwback to an earlier era. Blame this on his upbringing perhaps. Though born and raised in South Central LA, Paxton grew up in a pocket of first-generation rural-Southerners from Northern Louisiana, a community so insular that he speaks with a rich Southern accent to this day. Equally adept on the banjo as on the guitar, he has an omnivorous taste for early Americana, with a repertoire that includes pop songs from the 1920s, ancient Celtic ballads, ragtime picking, and deep country blues. It’s the same kind of repertoire most of the early songsters had in the South, a repertoire that was obscured or hidden by white song collectors eager to find the exotic and forbidden sounds of the blues, but uncomfortable with a Black man singing a country song or a white man like Hobart Smith ripping out a killer country blues song.

Paxton sings with a softly muted voice that I can only imagine comes from the hundreds of 78s that he’s listened to and collected. I thought that this was a hallmark of a new generation of uber-traditional folkie youth (Paxton, Fairfield, Pokey Lafarge, The Dust Busters are all examples), who have changed their voices to sound like the distorted vocals on 78 records, but hearing veteran folk revivalist Andy Cohen (a good friend of Paxton) sing, I realized that the folk revival was also founded by musicians so passionate about the eerie sounds of vocally distorted recordings, or semi-isolated communities, that they began to mimic, and then develop this sound. We'll definitely be posting more on Blind Boy Paxton in the future (we're hoping he'll put out an album sometime this year or next), but for now you can enjoy this video from our new favorite blog, American Standard Time.

BLIND BOY PAXTON - Banjo Lesson from More Dust Than Digital on Vimeo.
 

The Honey Dewdrops: This husband-wife duo cut quite the swath through the Folk Alliance Conference. Aside from looking like professional folk music models, they also swept from jam session to jam session, picking out old-timey tunes with other artists and generally charming everyone. I have great respect for musicians who jam. It shows not only that they are technically good enough to be able to improvise or change their style to match another band, but also how much they respect the music. Kagey Parrish and partner Laura Wortman hail from Charlottesville, Virginia and have more than a passing knowledge of Appalachian folk traditions. So they can tear it up in an old-timey jam, but they can also write new songs that sound as if they'd fit in with any mountain music picking party in the backcountry.

I'd already heard plenty about this duo before Folk Alliance, as their album was at the top of the Folk-DJ charts for a few months, but they totally blew me away on stage. Pitch-perfect glorious harmonies, rock-solid runs on guitar/mandolin, affable stage charisma; they were quite the package. But I fell in love with their songs, which have a timeless quality to them, a quality that I feel makes folk music so compelling. The songs are stripped of artifice and built of honest feelings and pure love. Consummate performers, The Honey Dewdrops held me spellbound throughout their set and easily transcended the homey folksinger cliche that was otherwise prevalent

The Honey Dewdrops -- Nobody In This World

Rhiannon Giddens & Sonic New York: The prize for bravest band at Folk Alliance has to go to the new band from Rhiannon Giddens (of the Carolina Chocolate Drops). Sonic New York was formerly the side project of international circus composer Sxip Shirey, guitarist for the Luminescent Orchestrii (with whom CCD just recorded a well-received EP). Sxip, beatboxer Adam Matta (now an official member of CCD's new lineup) and a bassist (not sure who!) made up the band with Rhiannon Giddens at Folk Alliance. The band doesn't have a website yet, and just released a demo CD that Tim Duffy of Music Maker was handing out for free. But damn if they didn't have some of the craziest sounds and ideas of any band there! The core of the group, Rhiannon and Sxip, clearly have wildly eclectic tastes in music, ranging from Gaelic lilting traditions to far-out avant-folk guitar compositions. The band was borderline schizophrenic, with Adam Matta's precision beatboxing rampaging along with Rhiannon's Celtic mouth music (her husband's from Limerick, Ireland, so she's been learning Gaelic, or Irish), and Rhiannon holding forth with a contra dance fiddle tune and hip-hop beats. I was able to pin down the more obscure folk music references, including a bold cover of Irish band Kila's infamously complex songs from the pen of Ronan O Snodaigh, but missed the pop culture references. I think there was a funk song thrown in, some definitely saucy blues numbers. Dang, this band is the absolute definition of "mash-up". I'm not sure everything meshed perfectly on stage (this was their first live performance), but the band was taking so many leaps of faith, that you had to give them credit for their bravery. And they've clearly got the musical knowledge and ability to pull this off, where many lesser bands would fail. Rhiannon Giddens & Sonic New York is a band to watch, and they proved this in Memphis.

Rhiannon Giddens & Sonic New York: Hen in the Fox House

Valerie June: My good friend, Erin Dochartaigh, recommended Valerie June to me, and I'm glad she did! Valerie June has a totally unique take on American roots music, and a perspective so refreshingly different that it's no wonder she gets a bit tired of all the genre classifications that folkies keep foisting on her. During her set at Folk Alliance, she confessed "I'm not a blues musician. I'm not a folk musician and I'm not a country musician. I just play what I feel."But she is a blues musician, she is a folk musician, and she is a country musician. Valerie June clearly loves American folk music, and if we could open our minds a bit more and accept that music was meant to inspire rather than define, then she'd fit in fine with all these genres. It's not that she's copying or even drawing inspiration from these traditions, but rather that she's tapping into the rough simplicity of the music. Lyrics that say what they mean. Guitar chords that clatter across the floor. A cracked, fragile voice that speaks to a softer side of the blues. There's no mojo working here, this is the front porch picking of Mississipi John Hurt, music that drew people in, wrapped them in love and carried them home, rather than shoving them all over a sweaty dance floor.

But whatever the case, I find her music completely intriguing and don't pretend to really understand what she's doing. I just love her beautiful voice, her weird restructuring of folk music tropes, and her sweet Southern drawl.
 

Valerie June: Raindance

Buy Valerie June's Album

Jubal's Kin: These young siblings from Florida tap into similar sounds as Sarah Jarosz, another old-timey wunderkind. They take inspiration from Southern old-time music, covering chestnuts like "Train on the Island", or "Raleigh & Spencer", but approach the music with an unhurried pace and a reverence for the silent core of the songs. They slow down traditional barn-burning songs so that the wonderful voices of brother/sister Roger and Gailanne Amundsen can shine through. Roger's voice has a bit of an edge, while Gailanne's voice is soothing. Both singers have just enough cracks in the vocals to be as intimate as any indie-folk band, and some of the song choices reflect their tastes outside of old-time music. They do a wonderful cover of The Decemberists' "Eli, The Barrow Boy", and their cover of Patty Griffin's "The Rowing Song" was mesmerizing during their live show.

This is a band to watch closely, as their refreshingly honest and innovative recuts of classic old-time/urban folk songs and excellent musical talents will take them far. Now you can say you knew them when...

Jubal's Kin -- Train on the Island/Hunting the Buffalo

David Myles: I have a rocky relationship with singer-songwriters. It's easy for artists who write their own songs to fall into a self-referential void, either by allowing either their ego or their righteousness over a particular issue to overcome their music. This leads to a disconnect between the artist and the audience, and this disconnect leads to annoyance. It's not the earnestness of a typical singer-songwriter that wears an audience down, it's the lack of connection. So I sometimes forget how powerful a singer-songwriter can be if they have as much talent as a performer as they do as a songwriter. New Brunswick singer-songwriter David Myles proved this to me.

I had no idea who he was when I stumbled in to his set in the East Coast (of Canada) Music Association room (actually, all the artists they booked turned out to be amazing). He dressed to the nines in a suit and tie (he joked that he had convinced his dad to let him become a musician over a lawyer by promising to dress for success every day), was skinny as a rail, and completely charming. He told stories, cracked jokes, smiled up a storm and made us all feel like performing was his favorite thing in the whole world. It was the kind of performance that gives you the kind of goofy smile that you
feel slightly embarassed about, but are totally unable to wipe off your face.

He was kind enough to pass along some CDs to me, and listening after the show, I was impressed that the same performance intensity that so wowed me at his concert was also present on the album. He's an earnest singer-songwriter in the absolute best sense of the word: he earnestly wants to share his music with you, and after listening or catching him live, you'll be grateful that he did.

David Myles: When It Comes My Turn

PS: I should say that a major key to David Myles's performance was his crazy awesome guitarist, Alan Jeffries.

Bua: Now, it's widely known that Celtic music and Americana can never mix. But I'm going out on a limb here to add the Irish trad band Bua to my list of highlights for No Depression. You can't understand what Americana means if you don't understand how Irish music influenced America, and nowhere was this influence more powerful than in Chicago. The key character at the center of this influence was Chief Francis O'Neill, Chicago's chief of police at the turn of the century. A former sailor and world traveler, O'Neill kept his ties to Ireland strong by recruiting his police officers from the ranks of unemployed Irish immigrant musicians. Word was that you if you wanted a job on the force, you had to go into O'Neill's office to play some tunes with him before you were considered for the job. O'Neill was also a tireless collector and transcribor of traditional Irish music, pulling from his sources on the force to track down and write up new tunes. He published a number of seminal tune books that continue to influence musicians both in American and back in Ireland (and now across the world). And outside of his work with Irish musicians, he also cleaned up Chicago's rampant corruption and graft and became quite the folk hero.

Bua draw from the rough-and-tumble world of American Irish music. Tunes played in smoky dancehalls rather than fancy concert halls, tunes taken from dusty books rather than YouTube videos, a world largely forgotten in today's overly polished Irish music world where the high-gloss of mega-tours like Celtic Women have largely blinded the public to the power of Irish trad. Lead singer Brian Hart has a soft, beautiful voice with a slight American accent that grounds the music on our continent. He's studied the old style of singing in Ireland's remote Connemara region, and sings in Irish Gaelic as well as English. He also brings Irish sean-nos dance to the band. Sean-nos dancing is a rare tradition that's quite removed from the prancy-prancing Irish stepdancing most people recognize in Riverdance. It's closer to the floor and closely matches the rhythms of the tunes. Along with fiddle, flute and guitar, Bua have enough twang to represent the Celtic side of Americana, but keep their ties to the Old World strong.

Bua: An Spealadoír

Frank Solivan & Dirty Kitchen: I know Frank Solivan's music well, since Hearth Music worked a publicity campaign for his new album. His beautifully polished bluegrass music is played with technical precision and virtuosity. His music is quite stunning and I was looking forward to seeing him play in person. But his performance with Dirty Kitchen took me completely by surprise with its raw energy. He played like a man possessed, shredding his mandolin runs and blazing through red-hot fiddle solos. I tweeted at the time that Frank and Dirty Kitchen should be giving a workshops on performing as a band. They were impossibly tight together, and could turn on a dime. They matched Frank's lead perfectly and played just as hard as he did. It was a remarkable acoustic performance, made all the more intimate by the small hotel room that was Trade Root Music's private showcase space. There's a red-hot core of barely tamed wildness in the heart of bluegrass music, something we tend to forget in this day-and-age of overly sanitized and "safe" bluegrass bands.

Frank Solivan & Dirty Kitchen helped me remember why I love bluegrass: the pure adrenaline of lightning-fast picking and wickedly complex arrangements. Alan Lomax famously called bluegrass "folk music on overdrive" and after Frank Solivan's performance, I'd have to whole-heartedly agree.

Frank Solivan & Dirty Kitchen: Tarred & Feathered

Fish & Bird. Left Brain Blues
2009. Fiddle Head Records.

I met Taylor Ashton of Victoria BC's folk-rock band Fish & Bird at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes a few years ago in Port Townsend. He was jamming one on one on banjo with Caspian of Blackbird Raum, a borderline anarchist of a fiddler, and they were ripping through a bunch of creepy old fiddle tunes from the deep backwoods of Appalachia. I joined them and had one of the most raucous old-time jams, racing in and out of tunes, whoopin’ and hollerin’ and crashing around the room. I share this story with you to highlight why I respect his band, Fish & Bird: because I know that he respects the roots of the music he’s playing and that shows in their music.

Fish & Bird don’t play old-time music, and they don’t play straight up folk music. I’m not entirely sure what they play. If pressed, I’d have to say gothic stringband was the best descriptor I could put together for them. They’re clearly pulling from lots of different sources, but that’s to be expected from bands today. What I like about Fish & Bird is the freshness of the music, the feeling that they earnestly love what they’re doing and aren’t afraid to rock the fuck out to prove it. Taylor’s banjo playing has a nice edge, swaying between choppy strums and rough clawhammer picking. Fiddler Adam Iredale-Gray is the second half of Fish & Bird (not sure if he’s the fish or the bird) and contributes great backing fiddle lines and a nice stew of influences, from Irish tunes to old-time droning. But for me, the star of the album is Taylor’s voice, at turns deep and growly, or high and floating gently. His voice cracks ever so slightly, adding a touch of intimacy to the music. The band’s arrangements are also a joy to listen to, and are much more complex than most folk rock bands I’ve heard recently.

On Left Brain Blues, the duo of Fish & Bird have fleshed out to a larger band, joined by Oliver Swain on bass (watch the blog for an upcoming review of Oliver’s amazing new album) and a host of other British Columbia roots musicians. As it turns out, they’re about to release a new album in Spring 2011 and are touring with this full lineup (minus Oliver Swain), so we’ll look forward to that release. Left Brain Blues isn’t the perfect album, and some tracks on the CD aren’t as strong as others, but Fish & Bird have got great energy and great vision for a softer, darker Americana roots sound. The two strongest tracks, “Burst into Flower” and “Mark My Grave” are outstanding and I’m sure you’ll find your own gems in the music of Fish & Bird.

 
Fish & Bird: Burst Into Flower


Fish & Bird: Mark My Grave

 

We're proud to announce that we're working with three new stellar artists to promote their CDs via our VIP Mailing Campaign. Hit us up if you're a media contact (radio/print/online) and would like a copy of any or all of these CDs. And send this blog along to your friends so they can get a taste of this great music.

Hanneke Cassel: For Reasons Unseen
2009. self-released.

There’s a brand new folk music movement afoot in Boston, Massachusetts, and fiddle prodigy Hanneke Cassel is at the forefront. This movement blends fiery fiddling from Celtic and American traditions with a rich knowledge of improvisation and an almost classical sensibility. In Hanneke, this new perspective on folk music has found an outgoing and charismatic spokesperson.

On her latest CD, For Reasons Unseen, Hanneke Cassel has invited an all-star cast of powerhouse folk musicians, most of whom are household names on the American folk scene: Alasdair Fraser, Natalie Haas, Casey Driessen, Crooked Still members/alumni Rushad Eggleston (cello), Brittany Haas (fiddle), and Corey Dimario (bass); The McKassons, guitarist Keith Murphy and ace fiddlers Lissa Schneckenburger, Laura Cortese and Kimber Ludicker. With a guest list like this, you can expect string arrangements as lush and promising as an acre of rainforest, but the real surprise of the album is how Hanneke’s fiddle soars over the canopy of all these guest musicians. It’s a distinctly American approach to Scottish traditions, but also a testament to a new generation of tradition-bearers who have grown up in a world of global possibility and international music-making.

LISTEN TO: "Leila's Birthday"

  

Leon Rosselson & Robb Johnson: The Liberty Tree
2010. Trade Root Music.

Eclectic and political British songwriters Leon Rosselson and Robb Johnson have teamed up on this project to examine the controversial writings of American patriot Thomas Paine in the light of today's world. Interweaving spoken word interpretations of Paine's writing with hard-biting songs inspired by Paine's ideas but taken from today's headlines, this double-CD casts a brand-new light on the American philosopher Teddy Roosevelt once called a "filthy little atheist".

Leon Rosselson has been at the forefront of songwriting in Britain for 50 years. His songs range from the lyrical to the satirical, from the personal to the political, from the humorous to the poignant. His song The World Turned Upside Down has been recorded & popularised by, amongst others, Dick Gaughan and Billy Bragg, and has been sung at demonstrations in Britain and the U.S.

Robb Johnson is now widely recognised as one of the finest songwriters working in the UK today. His songs feature in the repertoires of a wide variety of musicians, and he enjoys a similarly diverse spectrum of critical acclaim.

LISTEN TO "We All Said Stop the War"

Nils Olof Söderbäck & Peter Michaelsen: Kvarnresan
2010. Soulfelt Music.
 

Welcome to rural Sweden, around 150 years ago, where the tradition of twin fiddling entwined in intricate harmonies was still the predominant form of music, and the rhythms of the countryside propelled the fiddling.

Nils Olof Söderbäck and Peter Michaelsen learned this music from fiddlers steeped in these traditions. It was a different age, but it has things to say about our own age, and Olof and Peter deliberately emulate this old sound. As Olof says, “This is not University Music!” Olof and Peter like to preserve some of the rough character, the folkiness of their original models. The tunes on Kvarnresan were all recorded straight through, in Olof’s barn in rural Oregon.

Swedish fiddler Nils Olof Söderbäck is one of the Pacific Northwest's musical treasures. Born in 1954 in Flen, Södermanland, Olof grew up on the family farm, working with the dairy cows and forests that provided their income. At age 17 he gave himself over to the traditional folk music of Sweden. Now Olof lives in Talent, Oregon, where he teaches Swedish fiddling and explores his other musical interests: Balkan and Indian music. He's an eclectic musician, at home in a great number of different traditions, but when he settles into the groove of Swedish fiddling, his true mastery of this music is evident.
 

LISTEN TO "Kvarnresan"

Welcome to another regular feature on the Hearth Music Blog: Your New Favorite Artist.  This is where we present one of our favorite artists in the hopes that you'll fall in love with them as well.

 Scott H Biram

In a world of white guys with mustaches singing the "blues," Scott H Biram might at first seem like another slavish imitator. But when you get a listen to his mashed-up country blues/hillbilly singing, you realize that he just might have been born in the wrong century. Like the bluesmen of yore, who copped their songs from radio, 78s, and other singers, Biram has absorbed the songs and spirit of the American South and spits it back to us with all the intensity and rage from whence this music was born.

Don't believe us? Check out Biram channeling Howlin' Wolf on the anthemic Spoonful:

Or have a listen to Biram's take on Blind Willie Johnson's disturbing religious "i-told-you-so" parable Titanic:


While so many blues aficianados are spending their time arguing about whether or not so-and-so bluesman belongs to the Piedmont guitar tradition, Biram skips the intellectual discourse and jumps straight to kicking ass.  Born and raised in Texas, he shares the same love for early country blues and hillbilly music that most musicians in the South, black and white, shared in the 1920s.  And he's not afraid to throw in a yodel or two, a fine aspect of country music that's been largely neglected by the alt-country hipsters. 

Get yer hillbilly on with Biram's bizarre rendition of the classic old-time song, Single Girl:


But Biram's strength is unquestionably in touring and performing. He tours incessantly, playing punk clubs, country bars, and hipster lounges alike. Every Scott H Biram show is like a one-man, junk blues tent revival, full of Southern aggression and Biram's trademark vintage microphone drawl.  Check out this video of his live show:
  

Now Biram's signed to "insurgent country" record label Bloodshot Records and touring with mostly original material. 'Course his original songs still pay homage to the great roots music of the 20th century, but with a pretty strong dose of 21st century attitude. Here's a sick cut from his new album, Something's Wrong/Lost Forever:

Hard Time: Scott H Biram

 

We hope you enjoyed Scott H Biram's music! Go see him when he comes to your town, and yell out a request for an old blues song.  Could be that he blasts into an old Blind Willie McTell number, tapping into the everyman's rage that birthed country and blues in the first place.  Or could be you get your ass kicked for interrupting him!

Special thanks to our little buddy, Michael Chandler, for his extended loan of some early Scott H Biram CDs. We swear we'll give them back soon!