One Track Mind

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 […]

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 […]

“Shame,” the solo album from Rachel Baiman, who is half of the roots duo, 10 String Symphony, is a reflection on the experience of being a woman in today’s America. The discussion starts on the album cover. Baiman poses as the Statue of Liberty, with a flaming fiddle as the torch. A skull and roses […]

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 […]

You might have to listen to Sera Cahoone’s album From Where I Started (released March 24th) a couple times before you take note of anything other than her voice. Cahoone’s voice is alternately airy and earthy, and is always approachable. It’s got an almost crystal clarity, then turns just a little throaty for the briefest […]

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 […]

In 1969 the three astronauts of Apollo 11 completed their mission–the first manned lunar landing. They were Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and…the other guy. “The other guy” was Michael Collins. While Armstrong and Aldrin spent almost a day on the surface of the moon, Collins orbited the moon, alone, waiting for the rendezvous with the […]

The voices of Emily Frantz and Andrew Marlin, the two members of North Carolina acoustic duo Mandolin Orange, are a study in contrasts. Frantz’s vocals are lilting, floating above the instrumentation, whereas Marlin’s are understated. He’s like the guy who tells a joke with such a deadpan delivery that you don’t realize until a beat […]

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. […]

Anthony D’Amato’s new album, Cold Snap, produced by Mike Mogis of Bright Eyes, has a harder edge than his most recent record, The Shipwreck from the Shore, and that’s especially the case for the song he chose to discuss for One Track Mind, “Blue Blooded.” The lyrics address selfishness on a global scale: I drained […]

It’s often true that “the sum is greater than the parts,” and the Asheville, North Carolina experimental folk band River Whyless is a perfect example. Their mesmerizing sound, built by seamless harmonies, soaring violin and unusual percussive elements, demonstrates the power of the collective, but so does the band’s songwriting. The song “Life Crisis,” from […]

The album art on Rayland Baxter’s second album Imaginary Man features a photograph of Baxter’s face, half of it obscured by shadow. The original plan to make the left side another face didn’t work out, so it was left empty. That side is the “imaginary man,” and it makes sense that it’s just space, because, as […]

With a songwriting career as long and prolific as Dar Williams’, it’s not surprising that she’s picked up a host of talented musical friends along the way. Some of them share songwriting and performing credits on her latest album, Emerald. “Mad River” features harmonies by The Milk Carton Kids and “Slippery Slope” is a duet […]

The first time I heard Libby Rodenbough sing “Down in the Water” was in a Mexican restaurant in Davidson, North Carolina, in August of 2014. As the fiddle player for Mipso, a rising young bluegrass-influenced band out of Chapel Hill, she sometimes sings lead on songs with the band, but, as far as I could […]

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 […]

After, the sophomore album by Aly Spaltro, known professionally as Lady Lamb, is an exuberant, surreal journey by a songwriter who acknowledges no constraints—not by song structure, and certainly not by genre. It’s not unusual to encounter the landmarks of several musical worlds in one song. (Listen to “Violet Clementine” for a mind-blowing example of […]

One minute, thirty-two seconds. That’s how long Gregory Alan Isakov’s “Fire Escape” is. Found on his second album, This Empty Northern Hemisphere, it contains about 60 words and some strummed banjo chords. You probably won’t hear it played in concert. But it’s the song he chose to talk about with me for my “One Track […]

When a distant relative casually mentioned to North Carolina songwriter Jonathan Byrd that he’d worked on an offshore oil rig for a year as a teenager, he planted the seed of a song for Jonathan. He had been thinking about writing a song about the oil industry but didn’t want to be insulting or say […]