Spider Tales

June 11, 2020 10:04 AM

Jake Blount is a fiddle and banjo player whose new album Spider Tales is "[N]amed for Anansi—the great trickster of Akan mythology," and "features fourteen carefully chosen tracks drawn from Blount’s extensive research of Black and Indigenous mountain music. The result is an unprecedented testament to the voices paradoxically obscured yet profoundly ingrained into the Appalachian tradition." Tracks from the album include Goodbye, Honey, You Call That Gone (with Nic Gareiss), Roustabout (with Tatiana Hargreaves), Brown Skin Baby, a gender-swapped version of Where Did You Sleep Last Night, Old-Timey Grey Eagle, and Beyond This Wall. Jake Blount (writing for No Depression): Across Generations, The Healing Power of the Banjo.

American Songwriter: Jake Blount Discusses, Makes Inspired Black Roots Music

Jake Blount on YouTube: “America’s First Music: An Introduction to Appalachian Old-Time”

Blount's previous projects include Tui, a collaboration with Libby Weitenauer, and The Moose Whisperers.

No Depression: As Tui, Jake Blount and Libby Weitnauer Showcase the Diversity in Stringband Music’s Story

Blount will be performing as part of the lineup for Porch Pride: A Bluegrass Pride Queer-antine Festival, which runs from June 27 to June 28.

posted by mandolin conspiracy (3 comments total)

This is fantastic, thank you. As we get closer to the event, I think the Porch Pride fest might warrant its own FPP.

For anyone who is interested in this sort of historical reclamation work in bluegrass and old-time music, Rhiannon Giddens' keynote address at the 2017 IBMA convention (previously) and indeed all of Giddens' work is required reading/listening.
posted by Pickman's Next Top Model at 11:11 AM on June 11, 2020 [1 favorite]

Excellent post, outstanding collection of tunes. The ubiquity of old-time music is what I miss the most now that I'm no longer in North Carolina.
posted by biogeo at 12:56 PM on June 11, 2020

I was hideously remiss in failing to mention Jake Blount's Twitter handle in the post. It's @forked_queer. If you're not familiar with it "Forked Deer" is a fiddle tune.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:27 PM on June 14, 2020