Porch Stompin' with Foghorn Stringband

photo by Mike Melnyk

Grab a jug of yer favorite XXX, put on yer stompin' shoes and set on the porch for this one with yer friends. 

Hearth Music brings you 21 songs from the venerated American old-time ensemble Foghorn Stringband. They've been leading a new roots music revival out of their homebase of Portland, Oregon for over a decade now. With their new album,(Get it here) Outshine the Sun, Foghorn Stringband has added a new member to the lineup–Bellingham country singer Reeb Willms–and they're continuing to explore not only Southern old-time music, but also vintage country and even Cajun music.

To produce Outshine the Sun, Foghorn Stringband went back to the source of their music, gathering around a single microphone and a roaring wood stove in Caleb’s Portland, Oregon home. The rainy winter nights pulled them even closer, and if the music sounds both wildly virtuosic and intimately hand-crafted, that’s the kind of paradox on which Foghorn thrives. The songs and tunes on Outshine the Sun come from rare and wonderful sources like old-time masters John Ashby, Dwight Lamb, and The Stripling Brothers, but also from well- known sources like The Carter Family, Charlie Poole, The Stanley Brothers, and Hazel Dickens. Outshine the Sun is a glorious explosion of stringband music, with members trading instruments as quickly as harmony lines. Caleb Klauder is known for his rapid-fire mandolin picking, but is also featured here on fiddle. Sammy Lind is an amazing fiddler, but brings some deft banjo picking to the album, and all four members trade off singing leads and swapping harmonies. Over all, there’s a rough-and-rowdy, hell-for-leather attitude to the album, the same spirit that made Foghorn Stringband an inspiration for multiple generations.