Black Twig Pickers

I recently found out about The Black Twig Pickers through a forum I responded to on banjohangout.org titled new old time time bands.  Which I posted The Can Kickers.  Someone posted about Black Twig Pickers and I've been listening to them since.  To my surprise they were signed to Thrill Jockey Records.  So unexpected...

 

Banjos and fiddles, boards and bones in hand, the Black Twig Pickers dove into a living tradition of old-time music that surrounds their homes in Southwest Virginia and never looked back. Both scholars of the regional sounds and advocates of an ecstatic and highly personal approach to the music, the Twigs hold down local dance and bar gigs, play all manner of celebrations and every so often, hit the road. Along the way, Isak Howell, Nathan Bowles and Mike Gangloff kept company with some of underground America's heavyweights and haunted the doorsteps of Appalachian fiddle and banjo masters. They've played for the National Council for the Traditional Arts and for audiences overseas. And they've put out a string of acclaimed albums, including 2008's Hobo Handshake and last year's Jack Rose & the Black Twig Pickers.

Ironto Special is an album of traditional Appalachian old-time tunes (and two originals) that they've learned through study of both local old-time musicians and old-time records and field recordings. The instrumentation is all-acoustic and features some of the old-time usuals – fiddle, banjo, guitar – and some less-routinely-heard-in-today's-old-time-scene implements like washboard, bones, fiddlesticks, mouth harp and jaw harp. Plus (on one song) a one-of-a-kind baritone resonator 12-string guitar. Old-time music served, and continues to serve, a variety of functions in Appalachian life – from dance music to somber solo performance to raggier blues and everything in between. Ironto Special is an attempt to celebrate this variety in the old-time tradition through the band's process of learning and growth as they explore the music's many facets. 
                                                                                                                                  Thrill Jockey Records

Cool to see two banjo players in the band, both Mike Gangloff and Nathan Bowles play a very fine banjo among other instruments.

mike gangloff - fiddle/banjo/jawharp/vocals

nathan bowles - banjo/percussion/vocals
isak howell - guitar/mouthharp/vocals