BONUS TRACKS: Documentary Goes Deep Inside a Band Breakup
Stacy Chandler
Posted On October 6, 2023
The Show Ponies and their split in 2017 are the subject of the documentary "We're Not Lost." (Photo courtesy of The Show Ponies)
“We’re Not Lost” documentary poster
It’s never easy when a band decides to break up — not for fans, and not for the band members themselves. But you rarely get a view into that decision and its aftermath that goes any deeper than a press release or social media statement. A new documentary titled We’re Not Lost: The Last Ride of The Show Ponies (trailer) chronicles the 2017 farewell tour from indie stringband The Show Ponies, providing plenty of performance footage but also interviews with band members about their feelings around the split. You can stream We’re Not Lost online for free now through Sunday, and the filmmakers from North Forty Productions and Show Ponies band members will host a live Zoom Q&A (register here) on Sunday at noon ET. (Show Ponies alum Jason Hawk Harris has a new album, Thin Places, out today. Read our review here. His former bandmate Clay Chaney has a solo album in the works for early next year.)
If you can’t beat the Black Friday holiday shopping mayhem, you might as well join it. The good folks behind the annual springtime Record Store Day are once again hosting Record Store Day Black Friday, which lets independent record stores in on the capitalist frenzy with special vinyl offerings perfect for gift-giving (or gift-getting!) for music lovers. The list of Record Store Day Black Friday albums landed this week — 175 of them! You can peruse the list here, and as always, we’ll have a curated list of roots-music goodies ready for you to take into the trenches in November.
As is always the case at the International Bluegrass Music Association’s annual conference and festival at the end of September, dozens of bands filled downtown Raleigh, North Carolina’s streets and venues with strains of bluegrass running the full range from traditional to progressive. I was able to catch fantastic sets from AJ Lee and Blue Summit, Mighty Poplar, Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway, Tall Poppy String Band, Jerron Paxton, The Thomas Cassell Band, and many more in my rambles that week. But it’s not every day — or every IBMA — that you get to witness the birth of a new band. In an amphitheater set billed as Jake Blount, Kaia Kater, and Tray Wellington, those three musicians, plus bassist Nelson Williams, announced their collaboration was just the start of something more. From the stage they announced their new Black stringband: New Dangerfield. The name honors Dangerfield Newby, a formerly enslaved man who raided Harper’s Ferry alongside John Brown in 1859 and has a fiddle tune named for him. Learn more about Newby’s story — and the story of New Dangerfield — on the band’s brand new website.
While the headlining acts at the FreshGrass Festival are always incredible, you don’t want to sleep on the finalist showcases for the FreshGrass Awards. Emerging bands and players compete to win prizes aimed at supporting their work toward the next phase of their careers, and the audience is treated to some incredible music and bragging rights to say we saw them before they were big. Past winners have included AJ Lee and Blue Summit (band), Tray Wellington (banjo), Tristan Scroggins (mandolin), Bronwyn Keith-Hynes (fiddle), and Anna Tivel (singer-songwriter), to name just a few. The 2023 winners of the FreshGrass Awards, announced at the FreshGrass Festival in North Adams, Massachusetts, last month, are:
BAND: The Cahaba Roots from Boston
BANJO: Nikolai Margulis from Princeton, New Jersey
FIDDLE: Ella Jordan from Austin
GUITAR: Nick Weitzenfeld from Johnson City, Tennessee
Learn more about the winners and finalists here.
WHAT WE’RE LISTENING TO
Here’s a sampling of the songs, albums, bands, and sounds No Depression staffers have been into this week:
Bob Boilen’s farewell show at NPR’s “All Songs Considered”
Noah Kahan with Kacey Musgraves – “She Calls Me Back”
Amos Lee – “Greenville,” from his tribute album to Lucinda Williams, Honeysuckle Switches, coming on Record Store Day Black Friday in November
Gram Parsons and the Fallen Angels, feat. Emmylou Harris – “Love Hurts,” from The Last Roundup: Live from The Bijou Café in Philadelphia March 16th, 1973, to be released for Record Store Day Black Friday
Proper. – The Great American Novel
Rhiannon Giddens – “Another Wasted Life” (a partnership with the Pennsylvania Innocence Project)
Lizzie No – “Lagunita,” from her new album, Halfsies, coming in January
Laura Jane Grace – “Dysphoria Hoodie”
The Brothers Comatose feat. Ronnie McCoury – “The IPA Song”
Old 97s – Wreck Your Life
Golden Shoals – “Jimmy Beam Ain’t My Friend”
Alex Cuba Tiny Desk Concert
Nikki Lane – “When My Morning Comes Around”
Abigail Rose – “Edges”
The War and Treaty – “Cold,” from their Academy of Country Music Honors 2023 tribute to Chris Stapleton
