Black Twig Pickers: Ironto Special
Old-time. Mountain music. The beating heart of Appalachia. There's a story in every song and there's a story behind every song. Old-time. Don't take it to mean that this music is the soundtrack to some museum piece set behind a glass enclosure to remind of us bygone days. And this isn't the music of revivalists because that would imply that the sounds of fiery fiddles and claw-hammer banjos were once forgotten or lost and they have now returned. Old-time is more than a reference to a sound so that we can neatly identify its place in a list of genres. In the hands of the Southwest Virginian trio The Black Twig Pickers old-time is as it always has been...alive, raw, and timeless...a recorded piece of a people and place whose stories are as real today as they were in all generations past.
The Black Twig Pickers are set to release their latest record, Ironto Special, on Tuesday, September 21st via Thrill Jockey Records [the Chicago-based indie label whose roster of artists includes Califone, The Fiery Furnaces, and Future Islands]. The 15-track Ironto Special was recorded entirely in first takes [with the absence of any overduds] at the Shred Shed in Ironto, Virginia throughout 2009. The Black Twig Pickers are currently in the midst of a month long tour of the UK [which includes a number of dates performing with Charlie Parr!!]. You can find a complete list of tour dates HERE. "Don't Drink Nothing But Corn" is the lead-off track from the band's upcoming release.