Posts by Jody Mace

What do you get when you put a steel pannist in a room with a saxophone player? Or with an accordion player? Or with a rapper, a hammered dulcimer player, a spoken word artist, or a darbuka player? In the case of Jonathan Scales’ video duet series, Scales & Friend, you get an exploration of […]

North Carolina band Time Sawyer is having a whole lot of fun, and it shows on their seventh studio album, Mountain Howdy (out 9/13). The synergy between the five members is palpable, from the commanding rhythm section of Court Wynter on bass and Jordan Nelson on drums, to Luke Mears’ playful and intuitive guitar solos, to Houston […]

In Tales of America, his stunning full-length debut album, J.S. Ondara holds a mirror to the promise of his adopted country. His voice, at the same time resonant and fragile, is front and center in the spare arrangement, and the effect is haunting and shattering as he explores the paradox of today’s America from an […]

25-year-old North Carolina songwriter Dane Page grew up wanting to be a lead guitarist. He had no interest in singing or writing songs until about halfway through college when he fell into a rabbit hole of classic literature. Hemingway led to Twain, who led to Steinbeck and to Vonnegut. Spending time surrounded by words, and […]

Gregory Alan Isakov’s fourth full-length studio album might be a very different album if he wasn’t also a full-time farmer. On his Colorado farm he grows salad greens for chefs, including arugula and mizuna lettuce, as well as cucumbers, carrots, beets and turnips. On a back field he grows heirloom corn seed and a bean […]

On PILLAR composer and steel pannist Jonathan Scales mines his emotional landscape to create eight songs that are as honest and evocative as they are intricate and complex. With his band, the Jonathan Scales Fourchestra (consisting of himself, bass player E’lon Jordan-Dunlap, and drummer Maison Guidry), along with a host of stellar guest artists including […]

Edges Run, Mipso’s fourth full-length album, takes the North Carolina band far from their roots, both geographically and sonically. The quartet (Joseph Terrell on guitar, Jacob Sharp on mandolin, Wood Robinson on bass, Libby Rodenbough on fiddle, all on vocals) formed when the band members were all students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel […]

What do you get when you take a string band and move them into a log cabin in Kentucky for a week and a half to record an album? Probably not what you think. Kentucky Native, the new release from innovative cellist, vocalist and songwriter Ben Sollee, does delve into bluegrass music but it layers […]

In their self-produced first full-length album, Straw in the Wind, Southern rockers The Steel Woods employ dark Biblical and rural imagery to set the scene for battles between good and evil, in the most primal of conflicts. The musical terrain is just as gritty. The songs live where the rougher side of country tangles with […]

Run Skeleton Run, David Childers’ sixth solo album (Ramseur Records, March 5th), starts off with the title track, a raucous warning to a discontented skeleton that refuses to rest in peace, and it ends with “Goodbye to Growing Old,” a declaration of his acceptance of the passage of years. In between, Childers sings about the […]

It was midnight the first time Charlotte-based folk/rock band Time Sawyer stepped through the gates of Echo Mountain Studios. They had been invited by engineer Jim Georgeson to tour the studio after performing at IBMA Bluegrass First Class in February of 2015. The studio, a repurposed old brick church on the edge of downtown Asheville, […]

North Carolina’s Sinners & Saints released their second full-length album, On The Other Side, on March 10th. Although Sinners & Saints consists of two members, Perry Fowler and Mark Baran, whose harmonies are front and center, don’t think of them as an acoustic duo. With Baran on the upright bass, Fowler adding color with the […]

Virginia native Caroline Spence’s 2015 debut full-length album, Somehow, introduced listeners to one of the purest, clearest soprano voices to be heard in or out of Nashville. But that remarkable voice is just the beginning of the story. Her straightforward, honest songwriting has won top honors at Kerrville Folk Festival and from American Songwriter Magazine. […]

Every year indie folk singer/songwriter Gregory Alan Isakov does what he calls “this hippie thing” with his manager. They write down a list of things that would be really cool if they happened. He always loved orchestral music, so one of those “pipe dreams” was to perform with a symphony. Turns out it wasn’t that […]

Get to know this overachieving little festival You can be excused for not knowing (yet) about Reevestock, which takes place in the small town of Elkin, North Carolina, population 4,001, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It’s a grass-roots festival, run by volunteers, with proceeds going toward a scholarship fund for local students. […]

Knoxville’s Cereus Bright plays infectious, high-energy folk music that’s receiving increased attention, especially after recent slots opening for high-profile artists like Sturgill Simpson, Jackie Greene and The Lone Bellow. The band’s five-song EP “Happier Than Me” demonstrates the emotional and sonic range of their music, from contemplative to raucous. The most interesting and complex song […]

MerleFest, which took place April 23-26, wrapped up its 28th year of bringing “Traditional Plus” music to Wilkesboro, North Carolina. The festival started in 1988 as a tribute to the memory of Merle Watson, the son of music legend Doc Watson. Its focus is on bluegrass and old-time music from the Appalachian tradition, as well […]

Five Things to Know About Merlefest 2015 Merlefest, a highlight of North Carolina’s spring festival season, which takes place April 23-26 on the campus of Wilkes Community College, bills itself as “Traditional Plus.” So alongside the old-time and bluegrass bands, festival-goers can also expect to see the musicians who are taking those roots and growing […]

The album Seth Avett and Jessica Lea Mayfield Sing Elliott Smith grew from the admiration Avett and Mayfield share for the songs of Elliott Smith. A three-year project, it was recorded in their spare time, partly in both of their homes. Perhaps it was the homegrown and personal nature of the project that inspired the […]

[rating=8.00] “Quirky” is a word that has often been used to describe the North Carolina-based chamber/pop band, Bombadil. But their fifth studio release, Hold On (Ramseur Records), doesn’t include the kind of characters who have inhabited their previous releases. There are no circus animals like “Oto the Bear” from Tarpits and Canyonlands or a philosophizing […]