John Haywood - Upon My Word & Honor - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Since 2015, Never Met A Stranger has been producing experimental media and recording interviews and field recordings with vernacular musicians, artists, preachers, and activists throughout the mountains, coalfields, and countryside of central Appalachia. In 2017, they contacted artist, tattooist and musician John Haywood and the next day, traveled to Whitesburg, KY, to record The Parlor Room Sessions with John Haywood, Kevin Howard, and Russell Griswald. Captured late one summer evening in Haywood's tattoo shop (The Parlor Room - Art & Tattoo), this 16-track album celebrates the lineage of Eastern Kentucky musical traditions as John, Kevin and Russell swap stories and perform songs they learned directly from old time legends George Gibson and Lee Sexton, among others. Highly celebrated in their own right and much like their mentors and predecessors, John, Kevin, and Russell continue to carry on these traditions by performing throughout the region and by teaching at the Cowan Creek Mountain Music School in Whitesburg, KY.

Love Hard is Flagland's third album, and at twenty tracks, speaks volumes to the Brooklyn trio's songwriting stamina and dedication to doing things on their own terms. The recording process was piecemeal, done sporadically by the band between shows, and with the exception of drums at Let 'Em In Music in Brooklyn, was recorded and mixed in Dooley's apartment. The themes weaving throughout Love Hard can be summed up with a few key words Love hard. Fight hard. Live hard. The same can be said for the variance of musical styles. Equal amounts of ferocity are heard on the bipolar InchComfortable LifeInch and bleak, hard-hitting InchMonster,Inch as on their musical antithesis, the jubilant power-pop InchSugarcube.Inch Flagland is a multi-dimensional band that is impossible to tag or define. Everything is open to interpretation.

Fahey fans know that this 1971 album is one of his best-but what most don't know is that it was intended to be a 2-LP set. Nine of the songs were dropped just before it's ; here they are-for the first time-with the rest of the original album!