Lone Prairie, by Down Hill Strugglers

Lone Prairie

by Down Hill Strugglers

supported by

lcmac Looking forward to seeing the DHS at BOTMC in September.
Favorite track: Sally Anne.

more...

	/

Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Purchasable with gift card

$9 USD or more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Includes unlimited streaming of Lone Prairie via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

ships out within 7 days

Purchasable with gift card

$15 USD or more
AV Club

Join now to receive all the new music Jalopy Records releases, including this album and 42 back-catalog items, delivered instantly to you via the Bandcamp app for iOS and Android. You’ll also get access to supporter-only exclusives. Learn more.

Join Now $10 USD/month or more

	1.	Last Shot Got Him 02:38
	2.	Casey Jones 03:31
	3.	Lone Prairie 03:49
	4.	John Henry 03:51
	5.	Texas Quickstep 02:09
	6.	St James Infirmary 02:48
	7.	Seneca Square Dance 02:43
	8.	Come See Me Sometime 02:50
	9.	Goodbye Booze 03:07
	10.	Going Back to Mexico 02:38
	11.	Stones Rag 01:59
	12.	Sally Anne 02:30
	13.	Three Way Medely 02:52

about

Jalopy Records, the record label of Red Hook's Jalopy Theatre, is proud to announce the release of "Lone Prairie", the album and first LP from The Down Hill Strugglers on April 28, 2017.

The Down Hill Strugglers is a string band composed of Eli Smith, Walker Shepard and Jackson Lynch, who play at various times; fiddle, banjo, guitar, mandolin and harmonica. They have been playing together for five years and have performed at the Newport Folk Festival, the Kennedy Center, the Library of Congress, the Brooklyn Folk Festival and many other places. In 2013 they were featured on the soundtrack to the Coen Brothers film, "Inside Llewyn Davis" produced by T-Bone Burnett. The Down Hill Strugglers band formed while hanging out at the home of their mutual friend Peter Stampfel of the Holy Modal Rounders, where they also met friend and mentor John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers.

The album features 13 all new recordings from the band and liner notes by Amanda Petrusich, contributing writer for The New Yorker, Pitchfork and a contributing editor at The Oxford American. Her music and culture writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Spin, BuzzFeed, and she is the author of “Do Not Sell At Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78rpm Records”. Petrusich has written that “The Down Hill Strugglers are, to my ears, the very best interpreters of traditional material presently going.”

From the liner notes:
“Lone Prairie was recorded in the spring of 2016 at the Jalopy Theatre in Red Hook, Brooklyn. The band used two microphones, and played directly into a mono Nagra one-quarter-inch tape machine. They either ducked away from or leaned toward the mic to get their sound levels right. Then they stopped monkeying with the recording altogether, which is surely part of why it feels so pure and urgent. It is energizing in the way that looking at a river is energizing.”

“So what does it mean for a young band to make music like this right now? Our cultural moment certainly allows for (if not encourages) gratuitous elevation of the Self above all – but the Down Hill Strugglers think about their work differently. Each of these tracks takes inspiration from the rural visionaries of the early twentieth century, from the melodies and expressions that once guided and sustained whole communities in the Mountain South, the Deep South, and Way Out West. Lone Prairie is an earnest monument to the rural artists and songs this band loves: the Mississippi Possum Hunters, the Skillet Lickers, Bill Shepherd and Dock Boggs, the Carolina Tar Heels, Frank Blevins, George Pegram, Wilmer Watts, and many others. Using lovingly excavated 78 r.p.m. discs as source material – Walker, Jackson, and Eli disappear inside these tunes. In this way, the Strugglers become part of a continuum. Their performance is less about ardent self-expression and more about empathy, of finding a way in to other people’s anguish and elation: understanding it, bodying it anew, respecting it, and carrying it on. They pay homage to and remake in equal measure, as artists have been doing for centuries. This, I believe, is the best and most useful work a folk musician can hope to do.”

The album will be released as an LP, as well as on CD and via digital download.

credits

released April 28, 2017

Recorded by Don Fierro at the Jalopy Theatre
Art by Bruised Egos
Produced by The Down Hill Strugglers

license

about

Down Hill Strugglers New York

contact / help

Contact Down Hill Strugglers

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like Down Hill Strugglers, you may also like:

Sidetrack My Engine
by Nora Brown

supported by 81 fans who also own “Lone Prairie”

Amazing rendition from one so young spider-mark
go to album
All By My Ownsome
by Jackson Lynch

supported by 79 fans who also own “Lone Prairie”

Beautiful! I've been a fan for years and just found the solo stuff. lains
go to album
Jackson Lynch, 7 Inch Series
by Jackson Lynch

supported by 77 fans who also own “Lone Prairie”

Very unique rendition, made me think about my old dog too, I'm pretty sure he's treatin' possums wherever land he is. lightnwolfie
go to album
Long Time To Be Gone
by Nora Brown

Nora Brown continues to bring nuance and resonance to her modern interpretation of Appalachian folk and bluegrass on her latest LP. Bandcamp New & Notable Aug 30, 2022
go to album
Wealth of Sorrow
by Cahalen Morrison

Bright and skipping songs that foreground the sound of the banjo and fingerstyle guitar in music that feels timeless. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 5, 2020
go to album
Spider Tales
by Jake Blount

This album speaks to the continuum of African diasporic culture that is central to the vibrant canon of Americana folk music. Bandcamp Album of the Day May 29, 2020
go to album
Long Time To Be Gone
by Nora Brown

supported by 75 fans who also own “Lone Prairie”

I have listened to bluegrass and old-timey style banjo music for many years. Nora Brown has the most poetic interpretation of these styles that I have heard so far. She is the John Fahey of banjo (but also with striking vocals). brit_b
go to album