August was a relatively quiet month for pure country music on Bandcamp, but we did get a lot of great releases in adjacent styles like bluegrass, folk, roots rock, and so on. Below, find the cream of the crop, including an old-time band from New York City, stoner twang from Los Angeles, and a reissue from a giant of indigenous Canadian music. Enjoy!
Down Hill Strugglers
Old Juniper
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
From deep within the bustling, modern metropolis of New York City comes this old-fashioned trio, which has been playing old-time music together for more than 15 years. Old Juniper is not only Down Hill Strugglers’s first album in seven years, it’s their first filled with all original songs. Here, proof abounds that the band (Walker Shepard, Jackson Lynch, and Eli Smith) are as skilled at writing vintage country-folk tunes as they are interpreting the pillars and peculiarities of traditional American music. Either way, they turn stringed instruments into time-traveling machines.
Gillian Welch
Woodland
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
Americana power couple Gillian Welch and David Rawlings nearly lost their East Nashville studio, Woodland, to a tornado in 2020. Grateful to have avoided total destruction, they named their new album after it and, appropriately, filled it full of songs fitted with relatively ornate arrangements—organ, strings, even a rhythm section. For fans of Welch and Rawlings’ austere side, the extra sounds may be jarring at first, but eventually, they fade into the big picture, built around the duo’s plaintive melodies and positively restorative vocal harmonies. Nearly three decades into their run as recording artists, Welch and Rawlings remain a port in the storm.
The Honey Dewdrops
Here In The Mountains
The Honey Dewdrops are Laura Wortman and Kagey Parrish, two singer-songwriters from Baltimore whose idiosyncratic take on folk music is both spare and suffused with feeling. On Here In The Mountains—their eighth album—the duo weaves country, old-time music, Western swing, rockabilly, gorgeous folk, and a traditional fiddle tune into a mesmerizing whole. Along the way, they trace the origin story of a friend and collaborator, drawing broader themes of hope, connection, and gratitude from between the strings.
The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys
Wanderers Like Me
Compact Disc (CD), Vinyl LP
As bluegrass music continues to evolve away from its traditional form thanks to innovators like Billy Strings and Hawktail, it’s nice to know there are still real-deal bluegrass groups out there playing real-deal bluegrass music—the kind Bill Monroe would’ve liked. Wanderers Like Me is the latest effort from East Tennessee string band The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys, who honed their chops at a place called The Ole Smoky Moonshine before hitting the road to spread the gospel of bluegrass far and wide. Their music is exactly what you want it to be: Fast, vibrant, and super-melodic, built around the forward churn of the banjo and draped in high lonesome vocal harmonies. This is bluegrass done right.
49 Winchester
Leavin’ This Holler
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD), Cassette
There were a couple of contenders for this month’s Best Country Music list that were just a bit too rock ‘n’ roll and not enough country to make the cut. Here’s the other side of that line: 49 Winchester, a band from the heart of Appalachia that definitely rocks, but it does so in a way that doesn’t obscure its deep roots in country, mountain music, Southern soul, and backwoods boogie. The band’s excellent 2022 album was about turning a hobby band into something more, and this one’s about getting out there and going for it. If the past is any indication, 49 Winchester will get there.
Kate Prascher
Shake The Dust
Vinyl LP
Kate Prascher grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, but she didn’t hear bluegrass music until she moved to New York. That discovery led her to other forms of roots music, to playing the mandolin, and to writing her own songs. You can hear that immersion on her new album Shake The Dust, a 10-track collection of tunes that deftly straddle the blurry lines between folk, bluegrass, and country music—call it Americana music, if you’d like. Prascher may have come to roots music a bit late, but she’s quickly making up for lost time.
Willie Dunn
Son Of The Sun
Originally released in 2004, Son Of The Sun is an essential collection of tracks from Canadian musician Willie Dunn, now being reissued by the legendary Light In The Attic record label. A lifelong activist fighting for Aboriginal equality, Dunn discovered country and folk music as a boy, then spent his adulthood imbuing his spirited songs with his Indigenous experience and perspective. Blessed with a deep, Johnny Cash-like voice, Dunn sings about political issues, the natural world, and everyday life with equal resonance. It’s a voice worth listening to, even all these years later.
The Tampico Bombers
Burnt Afternoons Beneath The Sheltering Sky
The names of the members of this Los Angeles band may be real, but they sound made up: Horace Zifferblatt, Pappy Rooney, Sycamore Flynn, and so on. Either way, a little mystery makes sense here, as The Tampico Bombers exist somewhere along the stoner music continuum, their faces obscured by a low-hanging cloud of funky-smellin’ smoke. What’s a little more clear is their musical lineage, which stretches back to the nexus of rambling twang and psychedelic jams, passing giants like Neil Young and the Grateful Dead along the way. There are worse ways to spend a burnt afternoon than listening to these six tracks, which amble by in a leisurely 42 minutes. Don’t worry, they’re in no hurry.
Justin Golden
Golden Country: Volume 2
Justin Golden’s debut album made our list back in the spring of 2022, thanks to its powerful blend of twangy blues and rock ‘n’ soul. Now, the Richmond, Virginia, singer-songwriter is back with the second volume of his Golden Country series, which explores the historical intersections of blues, bluegrass, and country music through covers of standards and traditional tunes. Backed by the band Devil’s Coattails, Golden sounds like he was born to sing these songs; listen hard and you can practically hear his rugged baritone digging deep into the dirt and bringing them to the surface.
