A powerfully gifted musician and a scholar of Black American music, Jake Blount speaks ardently about the African roots of the banjo and the subtle, yet profound ways African Americans have shaped and defined the amorphous categories of roots music and Americana. His 2020 album Spider Tales (named one of the year’s best albums by NPR and The New Yorker, earned a perfect 5-star review from The Guardian) highlighted the Black and Indigenous histories of popular American folk tunes, as well as revived songs unjustly forgotten in the whitewashing of the canon. Jake Blount’s new album, The New Faith, is a towering achievement of dystopian Afrofuturism and his first album for Smithsonian Folkways (released September 23, 2022). The New Faith is spiritual music, filled with hope for salvation and righteous anger in equal measure. The album manifests our worst fears on the shores of an island in Maine, where Blount enacts an imagined religious ceremony performed by Black refugees after the collapse of global civilization due to catastrophic climate change. Jake Blount’s music is rooted in care and confrontation. On stage, each song he and his band play is chosen for a reason – because it highlights important elements about the stories we tell ourselves of our shared history and our endlessly complicated present moment. The more we learn about where we’ve been, the better equipped we are to face the future.

Fog Holler is a bluegrass band with an edge. What gives the band that edge is a topic of hot debate. For some, it’s musicianship – these bluegrass cats shred. For others, it’s the songwriting, traditional in style but topical in substance. Sometimes, they undeniably snare people with the squad factor – folks see 4 grown adults in matching monochrome, and they get curious. The secret, according to Fog Holler, is simply that they write and play bluegrass in 2023, with similar intention but very different context from the genre’s originators. Inspired by a range of influences from The Stanley Brothers to Buck Owens to Meshuggah, Fog Holler breathes fresh life into well worn forms like the murder ballad and the power waltz. Described by two-time Grammy Award Winner Cathy Fink as “The next generation of the many shades of grass”, Fog Holler’s captivating tunes and coordinated outfits are quickly enthralling longtime bluegrass fans and newcomers alike.