Brandon Luedtke

about this album

SAL001 April 19th, 2014 Roots, as burrowed organs and as music, occupy a complex place in the systems of life they sustain. They take in the foundations laid before, buried nutrients and barely remembered hymnals respectively; feeding the life that lies on the surface above, they act as conduit between forgotten and praised, breathing and exhumed. So it is with this self-titled EP, that the bones of century-old roots music are breathed life through a new voice, by a new guitar; learned and forged through different experiences and ideas. Featuring three original compositions and two standards arranged by Brandon, those roots are traced from their aged tips to their new blossoms; losing none of the poignancy, warmth and rusticity of the forebears in their culling, imbibing the recordings with the feeling of being distinctly of their own time while retaining the authenticity of their past. Melodies from the old guard sung from cords and perspectives of the new. The galloping "Molly & Tenbrooks", a 19th-century bluegrass song chronicling the revelry of the eponymous horseracing showdown, sets the pace, giving way to fellow traditional "Lonesome Valley"; opposite the trio of originals - the open-eyed, uptempo "Well, Nevermind", foreboding "Low Lying Hills" and "Harold D's Song", a rousing recounting of the preachings of an equal parts sermonizing and sin-confessing drifter. Completed just prior to the recording of his first full-length in Austin at the tail end of 2013, the five

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