| FEAST V | PHOTOS | PAST YEARS |
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North American artist Josephine Foster (b. 1974): singer, multi-instrumentalist, song composer. Known to breathe new life into archaic forms, embodying the cultural archaeology of Harry Smith’s old weird America, she has lent her warbling mezzo-soprano and interpretive wit to nearly two decades of self-produced recordings. As Jarry said, anachronism, the crossing of different times, produces eternity, and anachronic is an apt arch-adjective to describe Foster’s singular songbook, one that began in the Mountain West (where at age 15 she had her first gig delivering hymns at a log cabin church). Her uncanny timbre imparts a paradoxically rustic glamour, despite a certain stage shyness. In her 20’s, submerged into Chicago’s fringe rock and free jazz periphery, frayed vestiges of her abandoned operatic aspirations wore away; she then crossed the Atlantic for over a decade, grounding herself in the earthen glaze of rural Spain. A glitter of Nashville recording residencies helped shape her prolific output, solo and band album releases, leading a variety of ensembles on the road around the world and in the studio. Foster draws from spiritual wells beyond limits of space and time, her performances mesmeric. An oneiric voice which entwines with her own swelling guitar, piano, harp and autoharp gestures, folk-art songs spun in surprising musical design, are often playfully unravelled. And while she favors the piano or organ, she will probably play whatever guitar is handed to her.
Born to a musical family, Kath moved through an early life absorbed and in love with the 60s sea change of musical expression, into a development of her own singular voice that would age to cast a wide net of influence. Her prolific relationship with Loren Mazzacane Connors in the 80s produced a body of work held sacrosanct by generations of avant-folk luminaries. In 2007 Chapter Music released a tribute album to her songs from that time recorded by Bill Callahan, Meg Baird, Mark Kozelek and others, and her song “Come Here” was featured memorably in Richard Linklater’s 1995 film “Before Sunrise”, in a scene which Ethan Hawke claims was “my favorite scene I ever filmed”. Two lovers listen hanging on the edge of a kiss, tense and present for a moment just out of reach. Although performing this strange and yearning body of work at the time made her nervous and withdrawn, she continued to write and perform quietly all the while. She developed happy careers in music therapy for children and horse training, learning new forms of connection that channeled back into her music and healed her relationship with performing. In recent years she has toured regionally from her home in Connecticut and has been invited several times to tour internationally, honing her current musical partnerships with David Shapiro (guitar, vocals) and Flow Ness (percussion, vocals). While she has been encouraged to release new music for her new generation of fans, “Bye Bye These Days” is the first to document her current band’s sound, which harkens back to the avant leanings of her work with Mazzacane, but the tension now is joyful and expert. This is the sound of a practiced life, learned in all stages of love and loss, and resolute to keep going, like a locomotive deep into the night.
Mustang Island, the third album from Austin-based band Little Mazarn, is a gentle force. Waves of grief crest like surf on the Texas coast. Wild horses break through long-shuttered gates, only to come back around. Lead songwriter, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist Lindsey Verrill (she/her) joins bandmates Jeff Johnston (he/him) and Carolina Chauffe (they/them). The ten-song collection continues work with Dear Life Records. A full-throated romp through the capabilities of community-minded songcraft, Mustang Island is both naturalistic and futuristic, completely recasting Little Mazarn’s origins in primitive folk. Instead, the band reaches towards sonic experimentation and spacious expansion. Lindsey’s heart-opening vocals and Jeff’s singing saw, both trademarks of the project, mix with unexpected bombastic drums, dissonant synthesizers, and a chorus of orchestral oddities. This mid-career ode dances confidently in the creative liberties granted by decades in the game – more dazzlingly lively, and honestly somber, than ever before. The band’s crossroads branch across prominent Southern outsider music: On cello, Lindsey has recorded with Patty Griffin and Dana Falconberry. Jeff has played in Bill Callahan’s band, as well as with Li’l Cap'n Travis and Orange Mothers. Carolina is known for their prolific solo project hemlock. Little Mazarn has also collaborated with Lomelda to release their last EP, Honey Island General Store (2023), following past LPs Texas River Song (2022) and Io (2019).
Magic Tuber Stringband, from North Carolina, are Courtney Werner, Evan Morgan, and Mike DeVito. The trio are at the forefront of artists inhabiting the rich, living musical traditions of the Appalachian region, not as preservationists, but as fluent speakers shaping the forms with their inventive new ideas. The music, contemporary in nature, shares a through line with its history in both technique and in inspiration.
Joseph Allred is a Tennessee-based guitarist, singer, multi-instrumental composer, and visual artist with deep roots in the Upper Cumberland region of Tennessee and Kentucky. Their guitar playing draws from diverse musical styles including Appalachian folk, bluegrass, blues, flamenco, and classical guitar, as well as from folk iconoclasts John Fahey and Robbie Basho, figures of the 20th century avant-garde like Albert Ayler, Derek Bailey and Henry Flynt, and the musical traditions of India, Iran, and the Arab world. They have released music on Feeding Tube Records, Worried Songs, Scissor Tail Editions, AKTI, Island House, Blue Hole Recordings, Garden Portal, Reverb Worship/Future Grave, and their own Meliphonic Records imprint.
Mike Gangloff is a founder of the long-running improv drone unit Pelt and of quarter-century-and-counting old-time rowdies Black Twig Pickers. His fiddling with those bands and others, as well as recent solo recordings and tours in the USA and overseas, blends improvisation, original melodic composition, and a deep grounding in traditional Appalachian music. As Solar Hex, Kaily Schenker mixes solo cello improvisation with keening vocal laments accompanied by harmonium. She and Mike perform frequently as a duo and in larger ensembles around their homes in Virginia, and have toured nationally as part of Universal Light with Jesse Sheppard. Kaily has also performed on Mike’s most recent solo releases on VHF Records.
Weirs is a collective of North Carolina musicians who interpolate traditional ballads and hymns through their love of free improvisation, drone, tape music, and deep listening. Through this work they seek not to simply preserve these old songs but use them as a shared lexicon for sonic exploration and the development of new musics rooted in collaboration and collective creation.
Vernal Scuzz is a free-form band from Alabama, USA. Wild mixtures of improvisation, themes, songs and tape experiments played by Jasper Lee, Mika Carpenter, James Elliott, & Walker Yancey on bass, zithers, euphonium, electronics, tapes, drums & words. They pursue an evolving sound informed by cut-ups, noise, avant-folk, and punk. Members of the group have played in Silica Gel, Worst Spills, and collaborated with Johnny Coley, Joel Nelson, Sister Sniffle, Turner Williams Jr. and others. Vernal Scuzz emerge like a wet hot electric creature hissing in the night on their first release. Somewhere between proto-punk and primeval ceremony, the music is a highly charged rhythmic vehicle for navigating the murk of media litter. Crackles of noise meld with zither and brass tones....sounds that build an atmosphere and then burst suddenly into song. Jasper and Mika's voices coo and screech in equal doses. A recurring theme is the transmission of ideas through technological & linguistic means. Lyrics are made from cut-up sources like football game transcripts, tracts, lawnmower manuals, and somehow come out beautifully. Vernal Scuzz's first recording presents the group’s idiosyncratic concepts through a visceral playing style that is unpredictable and raw.
Peter Horses is a Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter and sometimes a band. Oddball folk music and goofball rock about full-time losers, the clinically unlucky, and shaking your fist at a clear, blue sky.