Primitive Future III (by Breanne Taylor)

This album is not a departure for the Modern Folk, but the timely arrival into the extent of their well-honed and tediously crafted sound. Its rhythmic roundness feels like a coming of age for the group and an earthly homecoming. The remarkable album, recorded in 2023, marks 15 or so years of prolific DIY musical production on the part of multi-instrumentalist, J. Moss. In no way is it his starting point, but it’s the perfect part of his canon for the newfound listener - a memorable and evocative journey that draws from many wells of influence. The strides Moss has made in his distinctive songwriting and arrangement are on full display here, and he’d be the first to tell you about the seeds of influence that have been planted on his sound by known and outsider musicians alike - musicians and artists who Moss surrounds himself with in the here and now, at various haunts in Portland, Oregon and beyond, personalities past, and beings unknown.

The premise of the LP is simple enough, taking from its title, Primitive Future III a sort of sky-earth, today-tomorrow syllabus for tracks that range from the Link Wray Roadside Mechanic fuzz meets rain-stick-you-found-at-the-mall-in-1996 elements of “Human Heatwave Blues” to the blue nostalgia of “Dead Calm Current AM”. In weaving both salves for racing thoughts and total freakout soundscapes, the band, featuring Zach Barbery (bass, guitar), Austin Richards (guitar, shruti box, vox), Remi Lew (synthesizer, guitar, autoharp, vox), and Trevor Shorey (drums, percussion, vox) have delivered a few ways to itch your brain.

The first tracks on the album, including “Human Heatwave Blues,” could be interpreted as an initial meeting. The landing. This awakening in the dead of night is perhaps best captured in “Bear in the Huckleberries,” which has an unassuming elegance that’s packaged in a mechanical lullaby. Snug, beautiful, simple, and all wrapped up in a blanket of shruti calls. This one will protect us and them, it’s a message of good faith.

Moss’ fingerpicking stylings on “Braided Channels” evoke an entire day John Fahey spent on a lazy boy recliner. The song encapsulates the naturalness of the entire album; flowing calmy, letting the listener curl up in their hollow tree and dream about Spring. This hominess continues in the effervescent, “You’ll Have That,” featuring Jen Powers’ hammered dulcimer, which feels like a hazy reflection on grace.

On “Half a Moon,” we’ve ascended. The song is a standout. The plucky and gentle goodnight noises of the guitars ring through on this one. This track most aptly summarizes the themes of the album – foremost, the vast and miniscule distance between earth and space, our un/willingness as a species to look out and see others, and the peace in knowing you and I are just specs of dirt.

“Subdued,” unlike its title, sounds like the Primitive Future III crescendo, as it nods vehemently to the past. It is at once throwback and step forward for mankind. The track should be played while you gaze at a leaf and recognize the veins of your body.

The first time you hear Moss’ voice on Primitive Future III is on the masterful cover of “Nine Pound Hammer,” which brings us squarely back into orbit and reminds the listener that their feet will soon be firmly on the ground. The tune’s origin is traced to the work songs of Black sharecroppers and railroad workers in turn-of-the-century America. Blues legends Mississippi John Hurt and Taj Mahal are known for their versions. Here, the Modern Folk cover feels like a post-nuclear barn dance from hell. Of the times, always.

The real heart and guts of this distinctly human part of the album (the middle) is, “Baby Dollar”. It’s Chappell Roan’s ren faire and we just live in it. The song is modern, fresh, brilliant. No notes. Put it in an A24 period piece, right now. The score for a blustery cornfield embroidered on a pillow. Absolutely perfect.

Back on earth, “Brand New Canyon” is the Modern Folk’s homage to Zappa’s “Hot Rats” – keeping that species superiority alive because only a human could make somethin’ like this. It’s followed by “Ballad of Strange Gordon” which is hopeless music from a motel on the frontier. It’s gritty, windy, and long – the first 7 minute+ track on the album. A sorrowful, introspective soundtrack for when the journey is ending. The musical mound the band builds here creates a living space where little light gets in.

The landscape building carries on with “Hurt Bird,” a masterful sweet and sour bop. It’s ‘gloominess at sunset on the beach’ tone and tenor are reminiscent of XO-era Elliott Smith even though its production is nowhere near as muted or sweetsy as other tracks on the album.

Overall, Primitive Future III is a multifaceted tour de storm. It offers something for every listener – from the hushed lullaby instrumentals of the album’s beginnings to the structured song-set of the middle and the final drippy violin bow jams and fearful cry of the coda, “I Don’t Wanna be an Abductee”. The Modern Folk take us from initial landing to exploration and colonization and return us home. It’s music to guide us from the moon to the valley and on all paths in between. - Bre Taylor, Portland, Oregon 

Primitive Future II (by Jason Woodbury)

When J. Moss looks toward the future, he can’t help but glimpse something that looks more like the past. A William Blake quote from "Proverbs of Hell” rests in the liner notes of Primitive Future II, his latest album under The Modern Folk banner: “What is now proved was once only imagin’d.” Here, Moss lets loose his cosmic imagination, conjuring from dazed daydreams Music from the Big Blink, pastoral guitar soli and drifting electric surf ragas for a coming epoch in which old growth forests reclaim human developments, a big shudder shuts online all the way off, and unnamed creatures return to roam in plain view. There has always been a streak of absurdist humor to Moss’ work as The Modern Folk, which has since 2008 served as a repository for his field recordings, Tascam sketches, far out noise, and improvised jams. But as fresh new apocalyptic conditions continue to mount, it’s hard not to wonder if he’s on to something: Is it future or is it past? At what point does it become impossible to say?

Despite its sequel status—the album picks up where 2021’s Primitive Future/Lyran Group tape on Eiderdown Records left off—PFII provides a perfect jump on point for The Modern Folk’s discography. Like its predecessor, the album is halved: the A-side finds Moss evoking Takoma school acoustic reveries; the B-side features his Modern Folk Trio Band (Remi Lew, Austin Richards, and Zach Barbery) zonked out like the Ventures lost in space, peels of reverb drenched electric guitar drifting over tic-tac bass and hypno-rhythms. Drawing inspiration from John Fahey—whose folkloric tendencies and restless creativity encompassed everything from folk-blues to scarred earth noise—and favorite artists like Alex Chilton, Jerry Garcia, and Nina Simone, Moss prioritizes feel and raw expression over technical grace. Which isn’t to say that he isn’t a gifted guitarist, as evidenced by the lull of his gentle finger-picked odes to domesticity and fungi and the expansive interplay of the album’s second side.

Originally released on the The Modern Folk’s densely populated Bandcamp page, PFII has been re-sequenced and edited for vinyl release on Charlottesville, Virginia’s WarHen Records. The album is housed in a screen-printed jacket featuring art by Modern Folk alumni C. Foster-Baril, who adorns the cover and liner notes with esoteric images: suns smiling, burning candles, coiled snakes, a boxy old computer. One inscription reads: What would you play on guitar if the power went out and you knew it was never going to come back on? Another wonders what you would play “if everything lit up and you knew it was never going to go dim?”

When we conceive of other times, be they long gone or still to come, we are imagining. But not merely imagining. Moss understands this, and his riffy, dark comedy visions of what lies ahead (and behind) center on the multiple meanings implied by most all of the words we use to describe the world around us. What we call “modern” is an assemblage built from antique sources. What is called “primitive” could be just as easily understood as “elemental.” Largely operating outside of the music industry paradigm, Moss and The Modern Folk suggest another lane to be carved, one overgrown with huckleberry and crowded with mushrooms. In these songs there are spiritual lawns to be mowed, jokes to be retold until they land, hauntings and possessions by mysterious forces nonetheless at work in our desacralized age. To echo Blake once again: “The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest.” The Modern Folk have returned with an overfilled Thirst Buster of each: drink up, good buddy. - Jason Woodbury, August 2021

Modern Folk One (by Jen Powers)

Modern Folk One is quite the apt title for this beautiful, sonic tidepool offering from Josh Moss. While it’s hardly the first album he’s released under The Modern Folk moniker, these four pieces are struck through with the same spirit of freshness that makes a daily occurrence like the sunrise so endlessly enchanting.

What makes perpetual miraculousness possible is simplicity, steady, gentle assurance, and the will to allow oneself to be astonished by the loveliness of the mundane. You awaken and turn to the window, you see the horizon the same way you’ve often seen it before, you stretch the muscles that have carried you your whole life, and you decide to take a walk down the street you’ve known for years, maybe decades, because there’s always something waiting to be witnessed along the path.

A patch of your neighbor’s grass has been squashed by a sleeping animal sometime in the night; the sun is catching the dogwood blooms at the corner in sweetly flaming bubbles of light; your best friend’s old house down the block has caught a new coat of vivid, shining paint, so effortlessly, nearly terrifyingly beguiling that you’re halfway home before you realize how many moments you’ve just relived by imagining yourself back inside those walls again.

And now, reentering your body as it is today, breathing the morning air as it is today, you can jot a few more lines in the Notebook of Common Miracles you keep handy in your mind. So many days feel just the same, and yet all of them are brand new.

“Modern Folk One” is a loving letter from father to daughter. Her heart beats strongly beneath the sheafs of melody and natural sounds that he wields, the wordless manipulations of instrumentation that fall onto each other in a meandering cycle, repetitively, satisfyingly, like the pages of a well-loved book as it’s returned to its place on the favored shelf. It is well-loved because it is familiar, reassuring, and yet it reads brilliantly differently every time. “Modern Folk One” is a loving and honest letter from father to daughter about the perpetual miraculousness of life. - Jen Powers, April 2022

Always Be Recording (by Joel Berk)

Always Be Recording could be considered the central mantra of J Moss’s entire The Modern Folk concept – at this point as much  a way of life as a borderless musical collective. The Modern Folk, as an ethos, is all encompassing and strives to present folk music as a vibrant, living thing. What is “folk music” if not music made by folks? Anything is folk music. Everything is folk music. The Modern Folk.

When you’re always documenting life, as Moss is, it’s surprisingly easy to forget about the mics and really lean in… which is exactly what The Modern Folk Trio Band, a quintet, does here. This is music for its own sake, in its purest raw form – direct from  the collective subconscious to your skulls. Always Be Recording is what happens when a group of friends and listeners get together to instinctually make sound because that’s what they do.

Over the course of two longform excursions separated by a brief, contemplative solo piece, Moss & co dive right into the deep end. No beginnings, no middles, no ends, just two glimpses into zones that feel eternal. Two peeks into the infinite, which luckily for us were documented. Always Be Recording. - Joel Berk, June 2022

Always Be Recording II (by Blackwolf John Oates)

Far be it for me to tell you what to do with your time and money, but I think you made good with both when purchasing the disc you hold in your hands. I know I felt like I made good, with my time at least, when about 9 months ago, a poorly shot snippet of video came across my timeline of some band, a bunch of scraggly dudes with cool guitars jamming in someone’s living room, and I clicked on it. Simple, droney, guitar lines wrapping around each other, congealing with some unidentifiable “sound” I couldn’t put a finger on (Later identified as a Shruti Box...thanks Josh).

A few traded Tweets later I was on Bandcamp purchasing the first of many records of the band I now know as The Modern Folk (Trio Band, Homeland Band, Ragtime Band...Pick a name). I heard guitars bouncing off each other, synths providing texture, and a steady rhythmic pulse providing a grounding for whatever These Modern Folk had in mind. I like guitars, I like synths, I LIKE THIS (!!!), but what I like most is the spirit. The spirit of a band with the onions to call itself THE MODERN FOLK and put a fucking synthesizer or a shruti box on a record, because this is music for people who relish the simple pleasure of playing. Playing with friends, playing off each other, and playing for themselves or others.

So have a seat, drop this in your CD player, and join these MODERN FOLK as they play for themselves, play for you, and play for the hell of it. - Blackwolf John Oates

Modern Folk Electronic Ensemble 3 (by Mike Horn)

In the delicate convergence of darkness and light, The Modern Folk Electronic Ensemble invites you on another otherworldly journey with his latest release, 'MFEE 3.'

MFEE unfolds this ambient masterpiece as a captivating exploration of ethereal realms. As you immerse yourself in these soundscapes, ‘MFEE 3’ becomes a vessel that carries you through a trance, following the mesmerizing vision of dust that lingers in the air.

Once again, J. Moss delves deep into his bottomless sonic toolbox, crafting perhaps his most cohesive ambient record to date. 'MFEE 3' seamlessly blends star-shaped textures with just the right amount of noise and electronica, creating a melodious landscape inclusive of every Pantone color used sparingly. The Modern Folk Electronic Ensemble delivers a lucid dream, maintaining its enchanting grip from the opening notes to the ethereal closing echoes. Each track serves as a post-mortem reflection, contemplating past decisions made and embracing the subtle bliss of a clean slate for those yet to come.

As the inaugural release in the Island House Recordings digital series, 'MFEE 3' stands as a testament to the quality of releases in the Island House arsenal but also to a promising side of what’s on deck from J. Moss, who 'Always Be Recording.'

J. Moss takes us on a true listener's journey from the top, with standouts ranging from “more water,” which offers a cross between “Kid A” and a non-destructive disintegration loop, to tracks like “organ solo” acting as a mind-cleanser at the midway point. "chorus of urizen" maintains an ear-to-stereo energy to ensure you’re not missing the secret to a healthy life through spoken whispers, while “harsh cars” makes us ponder what a finished product of Jeff Buckley's 'Back in N.Y.C.' would have been from his posthumous album, “Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk.”

'MFEE 3' is an electronic excursion that defies expectations. Despite the year being in its infancy, this album is poised to linger in the soul of anyone who dares to explore, ultimately placing it on many best-of lists come the end of 2024. - Mike Horn

Serf Punk (by J.M. Hart)

Now and then a record comes along that can help you through those uphill days like a stout stick or a trusty friend. You can put it on and press forward, reassured that you’re not alone in this fight. As a fan of the vast catalog of The Modern Folk, I anticipated enjoying this latest album but didn’t know I’d be leaning on it. If asked to explain The Modern Folk or the many variations thereof, I would be relieved to be able to introduce J Moss, the man behind the moniker. Folk music is the sound of the people and J is certainly one of us, a Virginia native, gone, like so many, to the West, but with the Blue Ridge- its hills, dales, hardships, and rhythms- embedded in his work. But this is MODERN Folk and J often leans into the Modern with his electrical bands and synthesizers while still making music of the people. 

Here, J presents The Modern Folk as a vehicle for what he describes as a “singer-songwriter album”. Intimately familiar with the format, I leapt at the chance to listen and was struck, once again, by the weight of J’s vision. No punches are pulled in these songs. No notes are wasted. Aside from three brief interlude tracks that serve as curtains to each of the album’s acts, and the ethereal saxophone/guitar duet, “Rural Street”, there are no extended ride-outs, freak-outs, or jams. This is not to say there isn’t lovely music here. Pedal steel, electric guitars, keyboards, saxophone, and fiddle deliver instrumental goodness adjoining the vivid truths in each song. Sonically, the songs set themselves apart, alternating between fingerpicked and strummed acoustic guitars or gone electric and either roiling with overdrive or grooving with a bit of twang. The album opens with a splash of electric guitar and a backbeat, deftly bent into an Appalachian holler that might have fit nicely on Beck’s “One Foot In The Grave”. 

Wry lyrics abound, weaving tales of doom, resignation, and the practical conflicts of American life. “I’m Sick But I’m Working Anyhow” is crushingly real, plaintively expressing the workers’ plight with a lovely accompaniment. The album is called “Serf Punk” after all. Each tune shimmers with its own energy and wit but, taken as a whole, the album is a ride into a dark hollow of America that is inescapable even while everyone pretends not to notice. Most of us plain folk have a wheel or two in one of these ruts. With a little effort and some good tunes like these to fuel our hearts, we just might make it over the next ridge. - J.M. Hart

*** This post is by guest author Moses Alexander***

“The car is on fire and there’s no driver at the wheel…”

     That's a hard truth metaphor for hard times. In our post 9/11 and (at the time of writing, hopefully) post-Trump world, very few lyrics or sound bites have felt more prescient than that one from Godspeed You! Black Emperor's “The Dead Flag Blues" from 1997. 25+ years later and things are eroding at a rapidly accelerating rate. The Modern Folk similarly sounds the alarm about the world we live in.

     When we think of "folk" we often think of compositions that are “anonymous” or “of the people” or that, at the very least, speak to the souls of the everyday person. Music that seeks to understand the travails of the common man and to comfort him. We also identify it with a style of sorts...people strumming acoustic guitars with clever and/or political lyrics. That's certainly part of its history too, but the thread that connects The Modern Folk back to Woody Guthrie and even those that came before him is less about down home strumming and more about operating the machinery that kills fascism.

     It doesn't matter if you have a guitar or a synthesizer or a mash-up of spoken word over field recordings of seagulls and waves rolling in. It's not what you possess. It's your intent. We're talking about creating a world without COOL GUY BULLSHIT. We're talking about ushering in a FUTURE WITHOUT CAPITAL. We're talking about recognizing that BORDERS ARE VIOLENCE. The world is waking up to the fact that CAPITALISM IS THE MOST DESTRUCTIVE RELIGION. Until we wake up to all of this and decide to take action against it, we're stuck in a sort of DEATH CULT BLUES.

     And if that all sounds bleak, well, just have a look around, things are bad right now man. Real bad. Minimum wage hasn't gone up since 2009, but the richest people's wealth increased by tens or hundreds of billions during the pandemic. Our politicians and judges are often purchased by the highest bidders, who tend to be malevolent sycophant ideologues with no souls and somehow even less brains. Elon and Zuck, two of the richest men in the world, technocrats who've rooked us all into turning ourselves into content farmers for their enrichment, are currently discussing physically fighting one another with the bout to be aired on their respective platforms enriching themselves further in the end. COOL GUY BULLSHIT turns into rich guy bullshit.

     We're all circling the bowl of this idiocracy in one way or another, but where does this leave us, the modern folk? You can despair. That's certainly an option. You can cave to nihilism. You can participate in the cruelty, but that just makes you, a temporarily embarrassed millionaire, the worst kind of traitor. Reject despair. Reject nihilism. Reject cruelty.

     l once had a labor organizer ask me what political party I aligned with and I've never felt at ease with putting myself entirely in a neat little box like that. I looked at him and said, "I align with love.” You can say that’s corny or whatever, but love and sincerity is the only way forward and Josh Moss has love and sincerity in spades. I think that’s all that we, the modern folk, can do these days to make the world into the one we want it to become. The one it has the potential to become. There will still be hard times and malevolent forces to fight against, but you can be guided by love. Love your family. Love your neighbor. Love your community. WHAT YOU HAVE DOESN’T MATTER. Who you ARE does matter.

- Moses Alexander, Alabama, 2023

Twelve favorite guitarists - those I’ve listened to most and who have influenced me the most in my approach towards expressing myself through guitar

Jerry Garcia

Sonny Sharrock

Neil Young

John Fahey

Link Wray

Tom Verlaine

Maybelle Carter

Robert Quine

Alex Chilton

D Boon

Elizabeth Cotten

Robbie Robertson

Not ranked, no artist listed twice. There are not many extremely recent albums because to make the list, it generally has to be one I have lived with for a long time.

Television - Marquee Moon

Alex Chilton - Like Flies on Sherbert

Charles Mingus - The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady

Sonny Sharrock - Black Woman

Neil Young - On The Beach

Captain Beefheart - Trout Mask Replica

Grateful Dead - Europe 72

Bob Dylan - John Wesley Harding

Jerry Garcia - Shady Grove

Harry Smith - The Anthology of American Folk Music

Portishead - Dummy

The Smiths - The Queen Is Dead

Nina Simone - To Love Somebody

Wu Tang Clan - Enter The Wu Tang (36 Chambers)

Lil Uzi Vert - Eternal Atake

Minutemen - Double Nickels On The Dime

Nirvana - Nevermind

Big Star - 3rd/Sister Lovers

CAN - Ege Bamyasi

Kraftwerk - Radioactivity

Amy Winehouse - Back To Black

The Strokes - Is This It

Albert Ayler - Vibrations/Ghosts

Pharaoh Sanders - Tauhid

Don Cherry - Symphony For Improvisors

Dusty Springfield - Dusty In Memphis

The Clash - London Calling

The Velvet Underground - S/T

The Band - S/T

Ramones - S/T

Richard Hell & The Voidoids - Blank Generation

Nas - It Was Written

Future - The Wizrd

Migos - Culture II

John Fahey - The Voice Of The Turtle

The Beatles - The White Album

The Kinks - Muswell Hillbillies

Joe Meek & The Blue Men - I Hear A New World

Brian Eno - Another Green World

Black Sabbath - Paranoid

The Who - Who's Next

The Breeders - Last Splash

Guided By Voices - Alien Lanes

Fleetwood Mac - Tusk

Bob Marley & The Wailers - Burnin'

The Harder They Come OST

Angelo Badalamenti - Twin Peaks Score

T. Rex - The Slider

Harry Nilsson - Aerial Ballet

Thin Lizzy - Bad Reputation

Link Wray - S/T (1971)

Townes Van Zandt - Flyin' Shoes

John Prine - S/T

Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin III

My Bloody Valentine - Loveless

Misfits - Collection

Black Tambourine - Complete Recordings

The Cure - Head On The Door

Karen Dalton - In My Own Time

Leonard Cohen - Songs From A Room

Buddy Holly - The "Chirping" Crickets

Steely Dan - Aja

Funkadelic - Maggot Brain

Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

The Vaselines - Enter The Vaselines

Mississippi John Hurt - Avalon Blues: The Complete 1928 Okeh Recordings

Robert Johnson - The Complete Recordings

Bob Dylan & The Band  - The Basement Tapes (1975)

David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust

John Coltrane - A Love Supreme

Benji Hughes - A Love Extreme

Miles Davis - Bitches Brew

Tangerine Dream - Phaedra

Massive Attack/Mad Professor - No Protection

Lee "Scratch" Perry - Roast Fish, Collie Weed & Corn Bread

Leadbelly - Bourgeois Blues

Louis Armstrong - The Definitive Collection

Fripp & Eno - No Pussyfooting

The Byrds - Sweetheart Of The Rodeo

The Ronettes - Presenting The Fabulous Ronettes

The Seeds - S/T

Sid Selvidge - In The Cold Of The Morning

Butthole Surfers - Rembrandt Pussyhorse

Black Flag - Damaged

Alexander "Skip" Spence - Oar

Beck - One Foot In The Grave

Dead Moon - Dead Moon Night

Peter Tosh - Legalize It

The Stooges - Raw Power

The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds

The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers

Bill Fox - Shelter From The Smoke

Fugazi - 13 Songs

Rites Of Spring - S/T

David Holland - Conference Of The Birds

The Holy Modal Rounders - Stampfel & Weber

Creedence Clearwater Revival - Willy & The Poor Boys

David Bromberg - Demon In Disguise

Richard & Linda Thompson - I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight

The Everly Brothers - Songs Our Daddy Taught Us

John Cale - Fear

Art Pepper - Smack Up

Ornette Coleman - At The "Golden Circle" Stockholm

Randy Newman - Sail Away

JJ Cale - Naturally

The Pet Shop Boys - Please

Hank Williams - Hank Williams Gold

The Staple Singers - Swing Low

Blind Al Wilson - Blind Owl Wilson

Nick Lowe - The Jesus Of Cool

Elvis Costello - This Year’s Model

The Pogues - Rum, Sodomy And The Lash

The Jesus Lizard - Goat

Pixies - Doolittle

Van Morrison - Astral Weeks

Gillian Welch - Soul Journey

Max Romeo & The Upsetters - War Ina Babylon

The Mice - Scooter

The Fugees - The Score

Tom Waits - Rain Dogs

Terry Riley - A Rainbow In Curved Air

Ned Lagin - Sea Stones

Bill Monroe - Greatest Hits

Travis Scott - ASTROWORLD

Moby - Play

Pure Moods Compilation

DJ Screw - Sentimental Value

J Dilla - Donuts

Milford Graves - Bäbi

My friends and I started our first band sophomore year of high school, playing Ramones songs in a room above one of our parent's garage. About a year later, we drove from Harrisonburg, VA to Norfolk, VA to take my boarding school classmate Rob up on his offer of an old Tascam Portastudio and some weed. This road trip ended up having a number of terrifying detours, both geographic and psychedelic - we made it back to the garage with the Portastudio, but not the weed.  I recorded our demo and when I mixed it down and held the cassette in my hand, I knew that this was something I was going to keep doing for the rest of my life. We had created a piece of my favorite type of art, and the feeling of that power was addictive.

As my friends and I grew up and kept playing music together in various styles and configurations, my love of this practice deepened while the gaps between our other responsibilities became increasingly shallow. Every time we managed to track another recording, the result was something I cherished. While I'm not sure any of us ever labored under the illusion that making music would be a career, I was saddled with the fact that for me it was a compulsion - but the demands of life were making it harder and harder to accomplish as a traditional band. It started to become a solo endeavor. I set up my microphones, laptop and tape machines in the corner of whatever rented room, apartment or hotel I happened to be living in. If the walls were thin, I plucked and whispered, if I had the chance, I turned up, screamed and banged together whatever loud things I could find. Around this time, the music publishing website Bandcamp appeared, which gave me a place to put these things I had been making so that others, however few, might see them. Without the collective identity provided by a band, though, I wasn't sure what all this music was.

The work of Alan Lomax has been an inspiration to me since before I knew who he was - "The Folk Songs of North America", his Library of Congress field recordings, and his status as a guiding light for Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music (a constant companion) were things I found out about later. I first felt his touch as kid listening to Bob Dylan imitate his subjects, or to Woody Guthrie albums I didn't even know he recorded. Even in my first attempts to learn musical instruments, I had some vague sense that I wanted to be a link in this chain. Absorbing the diversity of sounds that Alan Lomax captured over the course of his career, vernacular sounds from all over the world that through his ethnomusicological lens were seen as important cultural works, I realized that what united these Folk musicians was not sound, style or subject matter, but circumstance. Folk music is music made by folks, in the gaps between the obligations of a typical life. This made me feel that because of my circumstances, I was indeed a link in the chain - whether I was singing "Nine Pound Hammer" or making synthesizer music, and whether or not I had an audience or a band, had nothing to do with it. Folk.

The era of technology and global communication we find ourselves in has downsides so numerous and obvious it's boring to mention, much less enumerate them - but it is a facilitator of Folk Music. It allows those of us who must relegate their artistic practice to the spaces between the other demands of life make the most of those spaces. An album and its artwork can be produced and widely distributed with nothing but a cell phone. Artists can collaborate with no regard for geography. Anyone can do this - and my idea is that they should. We all could and would still make music without these ubiquitous tools that enable our reach, scope, and abilities to produce and collaborate - but in our modern circumstance, folks have the power to document themselves, bypassing the Alan Lomax figures that were so necessary in the past to extract the art and music from the free spaces in our lives. Modern.

Thank you for reading, thank you for listening to the Modern Folk

Original album art for "Old Four-Track Tapes" by C Foster-Baril

A01 – Essie & Lynlee – my brother and my cousin both had baby daughters at around the same time. This tune is for them, to welcome them into the world, and to welcome the listener into this album.

A02 – Apple Season – this song is about that period where summer starts to become fall, the leaves are bright yellow and orange, the air is blue and sharp, and apples are at their best.

A03 – Bad Traffic – like most of the playing on side A of this record, this song was at least partially inspired by the one-of-a-kind recording “Blind Willie” by Sonny Sharrock, from his album Black Woman. Despite the inspiration, my lived experience does not lead to a “Blind Willie”… it leads to bad traffic.

A04 – Grocery Store – before the pandemic, when this song was recorded, grocery shopping was one of my favorite things to do. This tune is a celebration of grocery stores and grocery shopping.

A05 – Why Bother – I believe John Fahey talked at various times about channeling his emotions, including deep depression, into his stately, mysterious guitar playing. This song is unlike a Fahey song… instead of a booming, nearly neo-classical formal composition this is a meandering improvisation… but the intent is the same, to exorcise depression through guitar playing.

A06 – Candy Man – I think I watched the movie Candy Man (1992) around the time I recorded this, which is an amazing movie… but I might’ve just been thinking of the folk tradition of the Candy Man, from earliest recorded examples like MS John Hurt to post-modern takes like the Grateful Dead, to Van Halen, who call him the Ice Cream Man.

A07 – Mowing the Lawn – like grocery shopping, mowing the lawn is one of those domestic chores I really enjoy… the pandemic didn’t put a damper on this one, but my lawnmower did recently die.

A08 – A Joke That Wasn’t Funny – this song is about the feeling you have when you know you are telling a joke out of desperation, and it turns out to be an insufficient poultice for the wounds at hand.

A09 – One Hitter – a song about smoking a bit of weed out of a one hitter, what can I say? But there is a progression to the themes here, and the mind opening qualities of the One Hitter might help with the journey ahead.

A10 – Oyster Mushroom – This song is about venturing out into the damp and mysterious mid-autumn woods that surround Wy’east (known in the language of colonizers as Mount Hood) to gather edible mushrooms. When I am in the woods the earth itself sounds to me like a synthesizer suggesting infinite melodies, with the percussion of raindrops and pinecones cascading from the needles and limbs of swaying Douglas Firs. Touching the organic duff that blankets the ground is like touching the keys and pads of a never-ending instrument that is constantly playing itself, and I am at once playing along and being played.

A11 – Lost Dog – Anxiety mounts, the feeling when an integral part of you, your family, is missing. Alive, but you don’t know where, or how they are. The throat swells, the world shrinks.

A12 – I’m Scared – Fear rises and descends at once until it meets itself. Panic scatters the senses across the horizon, comfort only exists in repeating old patterns until they wear deep grooves in reality.

B01 – Club Sequence – In this scene, the protagonist has wandered alone into a dark and pulsing nightclub, their senses and sensibilities assaulted by flashing lights, pounding music, beckoning fingers, occult symbols, and gyrating bodies. They are afloat in the crowd like a leaf in a boiling rapid, their agency diminishing as the scene envelops them. They are handed drinks, pills, powders; told secrets; their future, their past. They are hypnotized by the scene and its denizens.

B02 – Downtown Sequence – The protagonist stumbles out of the nightclub into the dark alley, their skin contracting in the cold night air of outside. Their breath condenses in lurid plumes. They stumble through the trashed-out alley into the grit and glory of downtown. Cones of light provide the stages for dramas of sin. Marquees beckon the viewer into untold realms of experience. Re-arranged faces leer out from dingy alcoves, begging for money, drugs, other things. The protagonist’s disorientation becomes inverted, but no less severe.

B03 – Chase Sequence – At once the protagonist must gather themselves, put the world into focus… underworld characters from the nightclub are giving chase. The protagonist must’ve seen something that was not meant to be seen. They turn and they run, every fiber of muscle engaged in this flight for survival. The lights of downtown begin to fade, but the clatter of footfalls from the pursuers do not. The protagonist leaps over a rail and rolls down a heavily vegetated hill, thorns and briars ripping at their clothes and skin. They come to rest in a dark grove, they seem to have lost the thugs that were chasing them. The trees hum with a sinister energy.

B04 – Haunting Sequence – The protagonist lies still in the dirt as images and suggestions from the grove begin to enter their mind… a primal world, beings that are not quite people, not quite animals, that are at one with their surroundings, blending with vegetation, melting and flowing across boulder fields like springwater. On the back of their eyelids the protagonist sees these beings gathered in a circle howling in unison in an indescribably beautiful and menacing song. The tops of the trees bend to touch the earth in rhythm with their screams and the clouds swirl in the sky. This happened here, in this grove.

B05 – Possession Sequence – The swirling clouds begin to descend into a fine point above the protagonist’s open mouth, filling his chest with a vapor that carries the song of the terrible beings. The pulsing and swirling grow in intensity and speed until it is one impossibly fast sensation, blasting the song through every inch of the protagonist’s capillaries. Their back arches, their fists clench and their toes reach, the sound blasts, and then instantly, it ends. After a few minutes, the protagonist gets up, and starts walking in the direction of Downtown.