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Vive L’Acadie

Buried deep underneath blankets of wooly southern rock, gritty songwriting and soaring odes to lost love, The Mallett Brothers are entrenched in the dense forests, majestic mountains and icy beaches of their Maine homeland. Their rock ‘n roll resides inside of a weathered and lived-in, rootsy Americana built by brothers Luke and Will Mallett and band. It’s that distinctive sound that’s helped them to share stages with both critical favorites like Drive-By Truckers, Shovels and Rope & The Felice Brothers and legends like Phish drummer and singer Jon Fishman (who will be hopping aboard the band’s spring tour this year), The Allman Brothers, and many more. Their new album, Vive L’Acadie (out June 15), is an ode to all things French-Canadian.

“Vive L’Acadie,” the title track, came out of a David Lynchian trip the band made to Fort Kent, Maine. “We were driving down the road on Main Street,” says Luke. “We turned on the radio and it was playing all these French versions of pop-country songs. It felt like we were in a different world. Later that night, an old man in a bar was yelling “Vive L’Acadie”. Turns out, that’s the Acadian battle cry! The Acadians wound up being Cajun, but they’re a French, Canadian and Irish mix of people that ended up in the woods up north. Their influence is all over Maine. Our grandfather came from Salmon River, Nova Scotia. If you go back up there, there’s a whole cemetery full of Malletts.”

Stories like these illustrate the celebratory and thought-provoking tone of the album. “Long Black Braid” is a funereal tale, darkened with an Edgar Allan Poe edge and combed over by thick Drive-By Trucker brushes, while “Timberline (High Times)” deals with working class people keeping their chin up. “My brother told me this story,” says Luke, “about how he met someone at one of our shows who fit the exact description of the person in Timberline,” referencing the line “Two tours of duty with the green berets / Now you’re all stove up in the head. Two tours of duty as a captain now you got trouble just remembering what the foreman said.” “He was a veteran who had something really bad happen to him, and was coming to terms with a return to normal life” he remembers. Despite the song’s heaviness, he stresses “it is a hopeful song,” bolstered with clean, fiery fiddle and brisk drum echoes.

Vive L’Acadie borrows the charm of a Dick Curless record, harkening to “Tombstone Every Mile,” which howls with wind sounds, spunky guitar and Curless’ trembling bass voice. Similarly, such album cuts as “Losin’ Horses” and “Good as It Gets” careen across styles, filtered through mud and grit between their teeth.

Recorded at Acadia Recording in Portland, the album came in pieces over the course of several months. By last September, they had more than enough songs to sift through, picking ten that would quickly become a vigorous exploration of the band’s heritage and cultural makeup. This is their most rugged collection yet, building off 2017’s concept album, The Falling of the Pine.

The six-piece have had multiple lineup changes and stylistic shifts over the years, occasionally drawing from founding member Luke Mallett’s high school days of being in a hardcore band, then spitting rhymes in his hip hop collective (he has a particular love of Digable Planets, Gang Starr and Wu Tang), and his brother’s proclivity for tight, blustering rock and bluegrass-tinged guitar playing. Their music stirs feelings of good times even when they are spilling out heartfelt stories and ambitious musical licks. The current lineup of Luke Mallett (vocals/guitar), Will Mallett (vocals/guitar), Nick Leen (bass), Wally Wenzel (dobro/electric guitar/vocals), Chuck Gange (drums) and Andrew Martell (fiddle/guitar/mandolin) is stronger than it has ever been. Each player injects the music with electric precision, as if the sky has been torn open and a string of lightning bolts strike the parched earth.

The Mallett Brothers Band was founded in 2009 with a slightly different lineup, owed in part to life’s gentle tides rocking people in and out of each other’s lives, but the love of the music kept them together despite all odds. As brothers, Luke and Will were exposed to the musician’s life early on by their father, who worked with Paul Stookey (of Peter, Paul and Mary) and continues to make music to this day. “He never did anything else but write and play music,” says Luke, “Because of him, I played a little bit of everything, but I didn’t pick up a guitar until I was probably 22 or 23.” Meanwhile, Will played guitar by the time he was 10, largely influenced by his father’s own talents. “I was fortunate enough to inherit some of my dad’s pipes,” says Luke. “He has a strong, really loud voice. I was never the guitar player in the family, but I feel like I can hold my own nowadays.”

The sheer breadth of Vive L’Acadie is astonishing. It’s embedded in classic America. It’s a model T cruising along the roadway, a steam locomotive barreling down the track. It’s a stormy evening when the sun is just perched below the horizon. It represents the struggles of everyday workers who want nothing more than to find their purpose and feed their families. It’s carved from years of blood, sweat and tears and the dedication to the craft shows in spades. The album is set for release on June 15 and their spring tour launches early April.

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“Their dense, world-worn roots music is folk-rock at its finest point.” – PopMatters

“They’ve remained steadfast in delivering heartfelt songs with emotional lyricism, vivid imagery, and dynamic musical tones.” – No Depression

“A barn-burner…dagger chops…no dull notes.” – Glide Magazine

“Viva L’Acadie, the new album by The Mallett Brothers Band is a whiskey-soaked old-time Acadian hoedown and everyone’s invited. It’s also a love story to a region and a people – a fading culture caught up in the homogeneity of modern life.” – Folk Radio UK

“Fueled by rootsy America and good ol’ rock ‘n’ roll alongside their love of storytelling and imagery.” –Wide Open Country

Publicist: Rachel Hurley

“Baby Robot Media, and Rachel Hurley, in particular, were an absolute pleasure to work with. We launched the campaign with the goal of getting some national press for our latest release, and Baby Robot delivered. From creating a timeline to maximize impact, to tour support and leveraging local press on the road, to hanging out and drinking beers in Texas, Rachel and the team went above and beyond. Communication was thorough and spot-on, in-depth weekly reports kept us up to date on what was going on, and they managed to make the whole process fun. We’d thoroughly recommend Rachel and the rest of the team at Baby Robot Media for any acts hoping to get their stuff out into the world, and wouldn’t hesitate to work with them again.” – Will Mallett

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Josh King // Into the Blue

On the cover of his solo debut, Into the Blue, Josh King looks ready to toss his Stetson into the ring alongside modern outlaw-country stars like Chris Stapleton and Jamey Johnson. But when you sit down and listen, the music is as much Jon Brion as Johnny Cash. This soon-to-be father—and one-time leader of Greensboro, N.C., indie-folk rockers House of Fools—brings a craftsmanship to his songwriting that walks the line between Dawes & Willie Nelson, Tom Petty & Elliott Smith. His former group earned its keep recording for now-defunct punk/emo imprint Drive-Thru Records and performing alongside acts as varied as Robert Randolph, Leon Russell and Jimmy Eat World.

The music King has constructed on Into the Blue is deeply personal and rooted in mindfully crafted Americana and hummable guitar pop. The album was written during a rocky transitional period in his life, a desolate drug-fueled few years in the wake of his younger days touring with House of Fools. “By the end of that era, I’d given up on my music,” King says. “My favorite thing in the world is to write a song, even if it’s just for me and no one else hears it. But at that point in my life, I wasn’t even doing that—I was just partying as hard as I could.”

Take Into the Blue’s countrified “Follow Through,” for example, penned in the stark aftermath of an all-night bender. “I wrote it at a friend’s house,” King says. “Everybody had finally gone to bed, and I was alone watching the sun rise. The song is a reflection about being selfish and failing to follow through on your commitments.”

At the heart of Into the Blue is a focus on King’s internal struggle to leave his days of recklessness in the rearview. On “The Stranger,” he comes to grips with feelings of isolation once he cuts himself off from his friends at the bars and clubs he used to haunt. “These days, with social media, it’s easy to sit there and watch what’s going on with everybody,” King says. “For a while, I was getting hung up on everything I was missing out on while in this self-imposed exile at home. When you’ve lived so much of your life touring and playing in bands, and then you basically vanish from your hometown scene, it can feel like everybody has forgotten about you.”

But with the help of his old House of Fools bandmate (and co-producer) Jordan Powers, King was inspired to return from his creative hiatus. “Essentially, Jordan told me to stop wallowing and start writing music again so we could record it,” King laughs. “So I did. I pulled myself together, moved into a new house with my girlfriend—who’s now my wife—and I began a new chapter in my life. I quit going out all the time, got focused and wrote this album, drawing from my experiences along the way.”

The song “Friends” reflects back on King’s mixed emotions seeing his old buddy embracing domestic life back when King was still at the bar every night. “The song is about one of my best friends in the world, Joel Kiser, who plays guitar on the album and played with me in House of Fools,” King says. “It was written around the time he told me that he and his wife were having a baby. It’s about friends settling down and me wanting to be happy for them, but being really selfishly bummed out. I didn’t realize until recording the song that it was such a huge turning point in my life—my friends were moving on. But now here I am, newly married with a kid of my own on the way. It all makes sense now.”

After two decades as a professional musician, King has finally found his voice as a songwriter; his melodic roots pop shimmering brilliantly in the Southern sun. Born in Mobile, Ala., and cutting his teeth in the Greensboro scene, with Into the Blue King delivers a hopeful meditation on getting right, forging a bold new path and following it to a sense of purpose. He’s a talented singer-songwriter in the grand North Carolina tradition that also gave us piedmont blues, Link Wray, the dB’s, Whiskeytown, Ryan Adams and Polvo.

One can only hope the lucky stars remain aligned for Josh King as he ventures into this new chapter in his career. His solo debut, Into the Blue, is out August 17.

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“He’s a talented singer-songwriter in the grand North Carolina tradition that also gave us Piedmont blues, Link Wray, the dB’s, Whiskeytown, Ryan Adams and Polvo.” – No Depression

“comes from a time of darkness when all seemed lost both personally and professionally and reflects on the unpredictable nature of life” – Americana UK

“King owns the song by its second verse, passionately imbuing his subtly gritty vocals into his work as a jangle of electric guitars, drums, and harmonies spiral throughout the remainder of the song.” – PopMatters

Publicist: Rachel Hurley

“We had high expectations for Baby Robot due to their fabulous track record, but Rachel and company exceeded them! Not only was Rachel an absolute pleasure to work with, but she also produced fabulous results and went well above and beyond her obligation. We can’t wait to continue this relationship, release after release!” Josh King and Jordan Powers

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Loren Cole // For the Sake of Being Honest

If there is one thing you can learn from Loren Cole, it’s to question everything. The singer-songwriter came of age in the digital world, but even she finds the whole social media landscape a bit exhausting. Her forthcoming debut album, For the Sake of Being Honest (out Aug. 24), serves as a reminder that what matters most is what is happening right here, right now. She’s only 22, but her mind is sharp and her songwriting is sharper. She’s shared stages with the likes of Jewel, The Accidentals, Mike Mains, Joe Hertler & the Rainbow Seekers and many others. This is only the beginning of a very promising career.

For the Sake of Being Honest is soaked in beautifully faded confessionals, songs that are reminiscent of contemporaries such as Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, and Tift Merritt; delicate folk-driven songs about what human existence means. “I had a photo shoot a while back,” Cole says, “and the photographer asked me to come up with three words to describe me and my music. I said: nostalgic, curious, and warm. A lot of the record is searching, asking for honesty from people.”

The album was produced by Henry Was, son of the pioneering musician, producer and record exec Don Was (The Rolling Stones, John Mayer, Stevie Nicks) out of his Santa Monica studio. Cole unearthed many songs she’d been sitting with for a while. Some were written during her college years, but still others found their way out of her angsty teenage days. There’s a certain innocence that seeps out of her work, a magical, twilight glow that makes her songs universal and appealing. “God Only Knows Why” opens the record with a mature, discerning tone — “God only knows why leaving leaves you right back where you started,” she muses over a jangly tambourine and guitar.

“Father Time,” another deceivingly sunny mid-tempo, sees her take a breather to observe time’s fleeting tick-tock as she personifies time as love, youth, and the earth. “Blue” serves as a dedication to her mother, who has stood by her through thick and thin, and “Brand New,” inspired by one day’s laundry, compares a well-worn old shirt to how people change. Through each intimate and earnest meditation, she remains connected to herself and rooted in truth.

Naming the album For the Sake of Being Honest made total sense. “I came up with the album title before we started recording anything,” Cole says. “I had originally written it down in my phone as a potential song title. Honesty is important to me, especially in the midst of social media and having a public presence. Everyone gives you the highlight reel online. It’s not reflective of what real life is. If you want to feel self-conscious, go open up Instagram. You can get down on yourself really quickly.”

That observation sparked the album’s main thread lines of “self-work,” as Cole puts it, and an aching need to make necessary changes. “I don’t see many people having discussions about really looking at yourself – a practice that I believe has a significant impact on the world we create for ourselves and others. I have a bit of an obsession over asking the right questions,” Cole says. “The songs seemed to fit really well with all these ideas, hence the title of the album.”

While Cole handles much of the guitar playing, she turned to a band of reputable student musicians to help her out. You’ll find Henry Was on drums, Paul Cornish and Michael Arrom on keys, Logan Kane and Sol Was on bass, Sam Yun on guitar, and multi-instrumentalist Jack DeMeo, who you’ll hear on guitar, mandolin, harmonica, and many other instruments. Brian Malouf (Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Dave Matthews Band) manned the mixing board, balancing out her feathered vocals with a bit of polish while maintaining a uniquely textured sound.

“The first time I heard For the Sake of Being Honest in its entirety was our last night in the studio,” Cole says. “It was 4 a.m., Henry and I were sitting in front of the computer for what must’ve been our fifteenth hour of the day. We lined all the songs up and listened to the whole thing with rough mixes in one sitting. I had this realization where I really saw the possibilities of the music, and felt like I actually did have something to say as an artist. It gave me the confidence to go for it and explore what would happen.”

She recently graduated from the popular music program at the University of Southern California but grew up in Essexville, a small town outside of Bay City, Michigan. Cole spent many summers out on the lake. She spent her last two years of high school at Interlochen Center for the Arts, where she came to fully understand what being an artist meant. “It really opened my eyes to the possibility of having a career in music,” Cole says. “My dad used to give this analogy of a pack of mules that were all hooked together and going in one direction. He used to say, ‘If you’re one of the mules walking in the middle, it’s really hard to turn right.’ I always thought of myself as one of those middle-pack mules that somehow broke out.”

Loren Cole is young, but wise beyond her years. For the Sake of Being Honest is a mighty collection of truth, steeped in life-affirming epiphanies that only come from living with eyes sincerely open. Her shrewd and engaging examinations of relationships and coming-of-age are culled through detaching herself from a world of narcissism and toxicity. Her talents are captivating, and if this is her beginning, she’s got a long career peeking up over the horizon.

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“Her style is unique, her vocal crystal clear, and her songwriting is hopeful in the best way.” – Ear to the Ground Music

“A singular voice…a musical universe of softness, beauty and femininity.” – Music For Your Heart

“Breezy lyrics…exuberant performance…would be perfectly at home on NPR and country radio — a big burst of emotion with thoughtful crafting.” – No Depression

Publicist: Rachel Hurley

“I was really cautious when I decided to seek out PR. I knew I wanted the service but had heard a lot of stories from friends who had poured out their savings with no return. Baby Robot breaks that stereotype.  Rachel Hurley consistently kept me up to date throughout and had my back on all things press-related. The energy of candidness, transparency and support that Baby Robot puts first made for a grateful addition to my album release.” – Loren Cole

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Heart Hunters // “Smokin Potpourri” (Dec 6th)

Atlanta’s Best Folk Band of 2018, Heart Hunters, is back with a new politically leaning single called “Smokin’ Potpourri” that decries the “unwokeness” of current musical acts that live on the charts. Anyone that has followed their social media posts for the past couple of years won’t be surprised by the content of the song, as they spend more time discussing the downfall of the current administration and the dower outlook of the global climate crisis, than pressing people to come to their shows. It’s an upbeat ditty that gently pokes fun at the whiskey bro culture that is often featured at the top music outlets. 

Heart Hunters’ Drew de Man founded his first band, No River City, in 2001 and spent the next several years making records, touring the country and sharing bills with artists such as Iron & Wine, Calexico and Alejandro Escovedo. After a decade away from the spotlight, his new project Heart Hunters—a duo with his wife, singer/songwriter Brianna Blackbird—builds on the moody indie/alt-country sound de Man explored with No River City, updating them for a new era with their Peter Case produced debut LP American Eclipse. The record’s alternately haunting and wistful folk songs find De Man and Blackbird engaging in potent social and spiritual commentary, clinging to silver linings while wrestling with an increasingly turbulent country. But while the subject matter is often heavy, the duo’s hook-laden melodicism offers all the balance the record needs. 

Blackbird and de Man met while studying music therapy in Portland, OR, and they soon began writing and recording together, releasing a couple of EPs and a full-length in 2015 (under the moniker Pretend Sweethearts). The duo played cafes, bars, and clubs on the West Coast, also bringing their music to homeless shelters, youth detention centers, prisons and rehab facilities along the way. Their wanderlust—and desire to find affordable housing—led them deep into South America, to a mountain village in Bolivia. While there, Blackbird and de Man had their son while immersing themselves in songwriting and Andean culture. Living beyond U.S. borders proved an enlightening experience for the couple, imbuing their eventual return Stateside with a new sense of purpose.

Having grown up in Georgia, the soundtrack to de Man’s childhood was comprised largely of country, blues, bluegrass and Southern rock, but he was also eventually inspired by a pair of odd bedfellows—the Grateful Dead and punk rock. De Man’s father—a poet with a penchant for quoting ancient mystical texts around the campfire—was also a big influence. At age 10, Drew’s mother gave him his first guitar, and he hasn’t stopped playing since. 

Blackbird was raised in Oregon and spent many a rainy day getting lost in Celtic-folk cassettes. The daughter of a music teacher, she was raised on folk, classic rock and Beethoven, sang in several choirs and studied voice, piano, and guitar. She went on to major in performance and social activism at Naropa College in Boulder, Colo., before moving to Brooklyn, where started writing songs. Two years ago, she added upright bass to her repertoire after learning some fundamentals from Joe Stevens of Coyote Grace.

 Heart Hunters are currently restoring an old house just south of Atlanta, and have a small farm where they are working on cultivating a large garden while tending to two goats and three chickens. They make music, teach music, remodel houses, show up for marches, work as session players, and somehow still find time to raise two kids. 

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“Might sound delicate on first listen, but it packs a heavy punch.” – No Depression

“[Brianna] Blackbird’s harmonies lift arguably sad lyrics, while [Drew] de Man drives the melody forward.” – The Boot

“Dreamy pickings, hazy harmonies and sweeping violins … exceptional.” – Cowboys & Indians

Publicist: Rachel Hurley

“Rachel is great to work with. She’s got the perspective it takes to look at the landscape, suss out the opportunities and get ’em in the bag for you. Also, she’s disarmingly friendly and wryly funny. She got us a lot of positive attention and helped us get many miles beyond where we were. It’s always easy to get in touch and you know when you’re talking, she’s listening. So when she’s talking, you should listen.” – Drew De Man

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CHARLIE SMYTH // THE WAY I FEEL

A veteran of the ’90s Chicago & Seattle punk scenes, Charlie Smyth’s sound has evolved over time, meandering like a tattered feather on the Southern breeze and settling somewhere beneath the ever-widening shadow of modern Americana. Grand, loose and vibrant, the Nashville-based troubadour’s new solo debut, The Way I Feel, is dusted with strings, mariachi horns and wistful blankets of steel guitar, its loose-lugnut drums propelling the whole beautiful jalopy of a record forward as if the wheels could come off at any minute. The record is a breathtaking statement of creative purpose, imbuing its too-often safe and by-the-numbers genre with an undeniable sense of musical adventure.

Influenced by his work as a painter and visual artist, Smyth has a unique way of looking at and describing the world around him, his lyrics unfolding in vivid, earthy brush strokes. “The air tastes like chewed-up pencils / Old beat-up utensils, tossed on the desk like forks in the road / Busted forks in the road / Glittering in the sunshine,” he sings on “Buddy”. The Way I Feel is indeed dripping with sunshine—and plenty of wonder, too, the songs anchored by Smyth’s wizened baritone, which clings by a frayed thread to the quivering harmonies of his wife and frequent collaborator Kalee Smyth. Together, they sound like a gorgeously mismatched pair of classic-country crooners, Dolly singing with Willie or Kristofferson instead of Porter Wagoner, Emmylou with Leonard Cohen or Lee Hazlewood instead of Gram Parsons.

It was Kalee who encouraged Smyth and his freshly wrangled band—Eric Penticoff on piano, bassist Jeff Moon, drummer Adam Mormolstein, multi-instrumentalist Andy Gibson, horn player Jamison Sevits, and one-time George Jones fiddle player Billy Contreras—to record the songs that would become The Way I Feel. “A lot of my friends are great musicians, but they’re high-priced hired guns who stay busy doing sessions and touring for a living,” Smyth says. “I wanted a band I wouldn’t have to pay to play with me, so I began looking for people who wanted to make music just for fun. The structure at the time was, ‘I’m writing songs and playing rhythm guitar. I’m not going to tell you guys what to do. If that sounds fun to you, let’s do it.’ Giving everyone that kind of freedom lit a fire under the band—the energy with that approach was really contagious.”

The Way I Feel kicks off with a decidedly more downhome (if faithfully joyous) cover of Neil Diamond’s Robbie Robertson-produced song “Beautiful Noise,” the original’s synths and accordion swapped out for resplendent, organic brass. It’s one of a handful of satisfyingly constructed covers chosen by Smyth for the album. Featured alongside imaginative originals like “Daggers,” “Country Girl” and “Faithfully” are distinctive renditions of Ray Price’s Slim Willett-penned “Don’t Let the Stars Get In Your Eyes”, the album’s quasi-title cut, “That’s the Way I Feel,” co-written by country greats George Jones and Roger Miller, and another “Possum” cut, “The Cold Hard Truth”, written by Jamie O’Hara. Smyth discovered these songs on budget-vinyl he found at Seattle’s Lifelong Thrift. “Other than ‘The Star Spangled Banner,’ the covers on The Way I Feel came from records I picked up at the same place for a quarter each,” he says. “I’ve noticed that on a lot of my favorite singer/songwriter albums, they throw in covers, which is really cool, especially when you don’t realize at first that it’s a cover. With Gram Parsons, I thought ‘Cash on the Barrelhead’ from Grievous Angel was his song, but then I found out it was The Louvin Brothers.’”

Charlie Smyth first picked up a guitar in his late teens while an art student at the University of Illinois, immersing himself in the robust punk and post-hardcore scenes of Chicago, where he played in several bands before leaving the city at age 22, bound for newly christened grunge mecca Seattle. There, Smyth formed experimental rock band Laundry, who recorded with renowned producer-engineers Barrett Jones (Nirvana, Melvins, Jesus Lizard, Pearl Jam, Whiskeytown) and Kearney Barton (Young Fresh Fellows, The Sonics). Laundry was poised to break, opening shows for Morphine, The Fugees and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and catching the eye of Lou Reed’s ex-wife Sylvia, who managed the band and produced the video for their single “Golden West,” directed by Andy Warhol associate Jon Behrens.

“Sylvia felt she could help us more if we were in New York,” Smyth says. “Our drummer Jake McCarter stayed behind—he was more interested in going to school for Occupational Therapy—but [singer/upright-bassist] Scot Cortese and I made the move. I was there first, and by the time Scot arrived, I just didn’t feel like doing the rock-band thing anymore. Looking back, Sylvia was great for us, but because of who she was, she was plugged into the major-label world. Let’s put it this way—the fancier the people I was meeting, the less I liked them. I got very disillusioned with the whole thing.”

After a brief stint flexing his No Wave chops with James Chance & The Contortions, Smyth left New York for a brief sojourn playing free jazz in Melbourne, Australia. Eventually, he returned to the Pacific Northwest, settling in Portland, Ore., where the longtime sideman/guitarist started working on his own songs. This newfound awakening as a writer set Smyth on a fresh journey that found him bouncing between Seattle, Chicago, and Berlin as part of several groups. He recorded a single with the late Nikki Sudden and rented a pad with Leroy Bach and Mikael Jorgensen of Wilco before finally meeting his wife Kalee and relocating to Nashville where the two formed country-folk duo The Western Shore, releasing the album Thunderstorm in 2014.

The Way I Feel (out July 13) marks yet another promising new chapter for Smyth. “I feel like the collage of sounds and genres you hear on this album are reflective of my own personal history,” he says. “I’ve lived in many different cities over the course of my life, I’ve never stayed in one place for too long, I’ve played all different kinds of music in all kinds of bands. The Way I Feel is my first full-fledged album as a writer—it really captures the specific kind of energy I wanted for a solo LP. Making this record was unlike anything I’ve experienced before.”

“Rich, vibrant…rollicking world of sound.” – PopMatters

“Charlie Smyth’s rugged vocals and dark storytelling have evolved into bluesy Americana tunes with a traditional country twang.” – Cowboys & Indians

“Earns George Jones comparisons the honest way.” – Wide Open Country

“Smyth has cut a range of musical chops in the past – from punk/grunge through free jazz.” – Americana UK

“An album that encompasses much of what he has been through to get here while also perhaps a connection with a simpler time and music. ” – Lonesome Highways

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Ben Fisher // Does the Land Remember Me?

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has rarely been addressed in American music. But on Ben Fisher’s latest release, the Damien Jurado-produced Does the Land Remember Me?, the Seattle-based folk artist—who spent three years living in Israel—dives headfirst into an entire concept album on the subject, a bloodcurdling and somber meditation that humanizes those on both sides of the divide. Fisher’s metaphorical and literal interpretations are wreathed together in a binding, barbed-wire circle as he tackles a complex and heavy narrative. His skill as a songwriter and storyteller is a big part of what drew the interest of producer Jurado, and it has landed him gigs over the years on bills with groundbreaking artists such as Courtney Marie Andrews, Aaron Lee Tasjan, Animal Collective, The Head and the Heart, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings and countless others.

His voice equal parts frayed and sinewy, Fisher spurns complacency with tremendous urgency on Does the Land Remember Me?, his second full-length. He takes great care in his storytelling, especially on standout track “1948,” an evocative duet with Noah Gundersen that features Fisher singing from the perspective of a Jewish child and Gundersen from the perspective of an Arab child at the outset of the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, known by Israelis as the War of Independence and in Palestinian society as the Nakba (catastrophe). “Are you scared of the men, Papa / They don’t want us here / Are you scared of the men, Papa / They’ve been here for years / Are you scared all of this will go,” Fisher sings over a plaintive fingerpicked guitar.

Fisher acts primarily as the record’s narrator, drawing from the three years he spent living in “No Man’s Land,” smack between predominantly Arab East and predominantly Jewish West Jerusalem. But the roots of the album date back to a 2014 excursion to Tokyo. It was there that Does the Land Remember Me?’s opening track “The Shell Lottery”—a musical history lesson on the 1909 founding of Tel Aviv—hit Fisher like a lightning bolt. “I started thinking about the scope of Sufjan Stevens’ records Illinois and Michigan,” he says. “It dawned on me that there was something to this song, and that there could be more.”

Does the Land Remember Me?— scheduled for a September 7 release—is a bleak but honest portrait of the Israeli and Palestinian people, who have been locked in a cycle of violence for the better part of the last century. “One of the biggest issues is that people are no longer interested in what happens there,” Fisher says. “It’s gone on for so long, the peace process is so gridlocked and there have been so many people killed. The world has become numb to it.”

As he searches for the right words, Fisher scours his conscience in search of hope—a hope that people will be moved and inspired to action through the record. “Passivity is much worse than taking a stand, even if I don’t particularly agree with that stand,” he says. “Young Americans, in particular, need to help moderate America’s influence on Israel.”

In an attempt to shed further light on the conflict, Fisher doesn’t shy away from the sheer brutality experienced by the Middle East and its people.“They Must Have Been So Scared” is one of the album’s glistening gems, but it’s also the most grim and heart-wrenching. In three verses, the ballad peels back the layers of three tragic stories. “The summer of 2014 was a particularly bloody and terrible time in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip,” Fisher says. Verse one of the song unspools the tale of a Palestinian family in Gaza who are killed by an Israeli airstrike; verse two exposes the kidnap and murder of three Israeli boys by Palestinian terrorists; and verse three tells the narrative of a Palestinian boy burned alive by a group of Jewish terrorists. Fisher later frames the hook, “They must have been so scared / Must have felt death chill the air / How could you leave them there?” around his atheist beliefs, offering up a bitter prayer “to a god I don’t believe in for all these insane deaths that happened that summer,” he says with a disarming matter-of-factness.

It’s not all conflict songs though; the second half of the record sees Fisher singing about Israeli folk heroes like astronaut Ilan Ramon and singer-songwriter Meir Ariel. “For Petr and Ilan” tells the story of Ramon’s doomed trip into space aboard the Columbia. He took with him copies of a drawing done by a young Czechoslovak boy named Petr Ginz, who was murdered in Auschwitz. With a style and lyrical form that pays homage to the American folk canon, Fisher sings, “The astronaut wore a flag patch on his arm / The little boy wore a yellow star / Got taken away in a cattle car / The astronaut wore a flag patch on his arm”

Born to a bacon-eating Jewish family and eventually majoring in Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Washington, Fisher’s sudden obsession with Israel led him to leave his family for the first time, traversing thousands of miles across oceans and time zones. “It got to the point where I was baking pita and reading [Israeli newspaper] Haaretz in the mornings,” he says. “It’s much easier to be obsessed with something when you’re surrounded by it.” Not long after graduating from college, he packed up his entire life and moved to the ancient city, where spent his time bartending, and writing, reporting and traveling for The Jerusalem Post.

?In “Brave New World,” one of the few songs drawing on Fisher’s personal experiences, he sings about the foreignness of the Holy City: “Everyone I’ve ever known lives far across a sea / My brave new world can be old and cold but you struck a chord in me.”

His return to the U.S. in the summer of 2017 propelled him to finish Does the Land Remember Me?, the album spilling forth with an elusive humanity too often mangled by the evening news and the purgatorial bickering of social-media feeds. The title song, a melodic piano-anchored affair, presents the story of a Palestinian expelled from his home during the 1948 war. Minutes later, on the wretchedly radiant “Yallah to Abdullah,” Fisher peers through the eyes of an Israeli soldier during the same war, underscoring the album’s goals of humanity and understanding.

He later etches an equally affecting moment with “Abraham’s Song,” the track with the shortest run-time on the record but perhaps the most involved backstory. “This was the hardest song for me to write because I disagree so wholeheartedly with their mindset and political agenda,” says Fisher about writing from the perspective of a Jewish settler in the West Bank. “I wanted to portray this person in a sympathetic, human light,” he continues. “I tried to paint the narrative of the settler movement, which started as an arguably innocent thing, and evolved into something sinister, ugly, dangerous and evil.”

Fisher strikes a fitting balance between emotion and reality on Does the Land Remember Me?. By allowing himself to inhabit these real-life characters, he makes possible a deeper understanding of the dire state of this tiny strip of land and its people. And his experiences only seem to aid his desire for mercy, eerily feeding into each stark moment with enthralling insight. Does the Land Remember Me? is a career-making record, timely and crucial.

“As he searches for the right words, Fisher scours his conscience in search of hope—a hope that people will be moved and inspired to action through the record.” – No Depression