Next month sees the return of Jake Xerxes Fussell with his sophomore lp, What in the Natural World. Like its predecessor, this new offering again finds the Georgia native exploring traditional folk songs of the American south. Previously released single “Have You Ever Seen Peaches Growing on a Sweet Potato Vine?” found Fussell stretching his […]

Via Paradise of Bachelors, the self-titled debut long player from North Carolina singer and guitarist, Jake Xerxes Fussell – a lively and wholehearted gem of folk, country and bluegrass. Immersed in old world Americana, Fussell’s debut finds him accompanied by William Tyler on production and guitar, as well as Chris Scruggs on steel guitar, bass […]

“Elk River Blues” can be used as a road map to the solo music of Nathan Bowles. In 2012, as an end to his first album, A Bottle, A Buckeye, the song—written by fiddler Ernie Carpenter as an instrumental lament about the flooding of his boyhood home after U.S. Army Engineers built a dam—is wistful if a bit […]

Here it is. Our obligatory year-end review. The following is an unranked list of albums that caught, and kept, our attention in 2017. Let it blurb. – AD ____________________________________________________________________________________ Circuit Des Yeux – Reaching for Indigo: Haley Fohr’s Circuit Des Yeux project has always skirted some expansive sonic frontiers. Her singular, twangy bellow, deft finger-picking, and alien […]

In his review of Nathan Bowles’ latest LP Whole and Cloven for Aquarium Drunkard, writer Tyler Wilcox asks: “Is banjo futurism a thing? Probably not, but if it was Nathan Bowles would be leading the charge.” Wilcox makes an excellent point. Like his previous solo records have demonstrated — in addition his work with the […]