Moonsville Collective has become the string band the members always wanted it to be. Five years after their last release and following a lineup change, the Southern California–bred folk band feels a renewed connection to its roots in old-time music circles, bolstered by the sharpened musical and songwriting skills that come with more experience.
“We had to recalibrate,” says Corey Adams, the band’s co-founder, songwriter, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist. Ahead of recording their new album, A Hundred Highways, Moonsville Collective, he says, “went back to writing songs on the acoustic guitar and banjo, and not visualizing such big arrangements,” like those on the series of EPs it released in 2018. “That’s kind of how we started: banjo music and mandolins and fiddles and really classic Americana, country, jug band, blues songs,” Adams continues. “We re-found ourselves by just sitting in a circle and playing music again in a way that felt really organic and natural to us.”
Adams dialed into what he wanted to say as a songwriter, and a refreshed lineup — vocalist, banjo and fiddle player, and songwriter Phillip Glenn; mandolin player and songwriter Matthew McQueen; vocalist, and dobro and guitar player “Dobro Dan” Richardson; and double bassist Seth Richardson, Dan’s son — encouraged growth. When A Hundred Highways arrives on April 12th via Rock Ridge Music, listeners will “get to know us a little better, even though we’ve been metaphorically partying in your backyard for 10 years,” Adams promises.
Moonsville Collective recorded A Hundred Highways, its fourth full-length album and first since 2015, live at Jazz Cats Studio in Long Beach, California, and produced the record as a band. “When you come see us live, we’re playing on our one little microphone,” Adams explains, and the band members’ choices in the studio mimic their live setup. “We didn’t want to hide behind anything,” he adds. “You can go down the road of hustling to make a record sound bigger than you are for the sake of success, but we’re at the phase of our lives where that’s not the most important thing that we value. We wanted this one to be really authentic and true, to reflect who we really are, what we really do.”
Today Glide is excited to offer a premiere of the title track “A Hundred Songs,” arguably the album’s most spare, honest offering, a song about the constant fight to keep true love alive. “It’s not lovey-dovey; it’s a love song written underneath a cloak of, ‘Ah, f*ck, this is really hard right now’ — which I think is more intimate and more honest,” Adams admits. “There’s more tension in it, which has greater release, we hope.” The song is a heartfelt work of Americana and bluegrass-laced folk that feels honest and truly downhome. There is a certain rustic quality that comes across in this tune that makes it connect in a warm and intimate way.
Listen to the track and read our interview with band…
What is the story behind this song? How did it come together? What is it about?
Love is this life’s greatest gift. It’s a window into the eternal – whatever that is – and it grabs us all. To hold it for a lifetime is rare. It’s gold. It’s a fire that we all wish to draw near to as we stave off the colder moments of life’s journey. Foolish as we all may be, we may not care for it well. And we lose it, or get burned, or we let it die, and we have to start over again. If we’re lucky, or smart, we maybe realize a love so true that even the smallest shine or ember of it keeps us. So we dig our heels in, we find each other again and again. And again and again. That’s true love, and I’ve been lucky enough to have had it find me. This one is about those harder seasons that, if lived in well, if suffered in well, can be refined in the heat of its own flame.
Are there any lyric lines that you really love or that really speak to you? What do you feel makes them resonate?
There aren’t many lyrics in the song in total, and the ones there were carved out very deliberately. I will add though, when I got to this point in the song, this specific line kind of hit me at my core. From verse two, “And the years go, and I can hardly count, all the times we fell in love, from all the times we just fell.” Though it may come across as something dark, there’s really a redemptive feel in there, a resiliency that continues to choose a certain thing, for me anyhow. As people choose to grow together through life, there’s always pain in the shedding of old skin. Triumphant, yet, is the joy where love begins to grow in little areas it perhaps didn’t exist prior. What a wonderful gift.
If listeners can take away one thing from having heard this song, what do you hope that is?
I believe in love, and change, and growth, and therapy. I think, these days, it’s so easy to walk away from something beautiful just because it’s hard. If it’s beautiful – and that’s really up to each person – if it really feels beautiful, I would hope this song might inspire someone to continue to bear the burden of growth and change and healing that love truly deserves.
Among the songs on the album, how does this song differ or how is it the same as others?
We have some scarce songs on the record – two of them being basically banjo and vocals only. But this one still feels the most scarce to me. Perhaps because it’s driven mostly by the acoustic guitar – and perhaps leans a bit more in the way of a country ballad, or singer-songwriter type of thing when compared to the others.
If you could use only three words to describe your music, what would they be and why?
California Goodtime Music. We penned this many years back, to capture the unique spirit of whatever it is we do. We’ve always taken little bits and pieces from all shades of traditional American music, and tried to deliver it in a way that feels unique to the culture we grew up in, to our lifestyles, and that allows us to be us. Which is, at times, a kind, simple and sincere offering, and others, a silly, suggestive or raw one. That’s all in there on the record, just as it is at our live shows.
