North Carolinian folk-fusion artist Ryan Gustafson (who performs under the alias The Dead Tongues) today releases his latest album Transmigration Blues via the Durham-based label Psychic Hotline. The news arrived last month with the lead single, “Peaceful Ambassador.” Gustafson is thoroughly rooted in the North Carolina music scene, having previously served as guitarist for both Phil Cook and Hiss Golden Messenger. He also counts Mandolin Orange and Mountain Man as friends.
He recorded Transmigration Blues, his fourth album, during summer 2019 in the midst of a bout of depression. But the record doesn’t only promise gloom. ”’Transmigration Blues’ belongs to the moments weaving between uncertainty and discovery,” he says of the release.
From The Dead Tongues album “Transmigration Blues”, out now via Psychic Hotline
My new song, “Hey Moon,” is out everywhere now. I often find myself talking to the moon. Maybe it’s just my Cancerian nature or maybe it’s something everyone does. But it feels grounding to have that constant presence throughout life. In my years of traveling around and finding myself in strange or unknown places, it’s been a sort of anchor to look up at the familiar light. I wrote this song about looking inward through conversing with the moon, or the emotional self. Something that seems easy to forget to do in times like these.
Over the course of the last few Hiss Golden Messenger albums, MC Taylor has become one of the preeminent names for fans of contemporary Americana. And if you’ve ever seen his band live, you know he has some serious musicians on the road with him. One of them is fellow North Carolina native Ryan Gustafson, who plays guitar on Hiss Golden Messenger tours but also has his own project the Dead Tongues. his third album under that moniker is Unsung Passage.
When it comes to the mythology that’s surrounded folk wanderers over the years, Gustafson offers a modern approximation of the real deal. He’s backpacked across Europe, and hitchhiked across America with just a banjo. He lived in a school bus he rebuilt; he also intended to take it across the country, but ran out of gas money. Now he resides in a camper in the woods in Asheville, and in the quiet moments between tours he retreats there, to collect his thoughts and memories of all those travels and funnel them into the songs that become Dead Tongues material.
Fittingly, then, the music on Unsung Passage is in line with other contemporary Americana — it blends strains of folk, blues, country, and rock for meditations that can balance pangs of yearning with true wonder, that can conjure up the swamps of the south as well as the plains out in the middle of the country. Gustafson’s sound is roadworn, bearing the marks of all the time spent in all those places. If you like Hiss Golden Messenger, chances are you’ll also appreciate what Gustafson is doing here.
Along with the announcement, Gustafson has shared Unsung Passage’s lead single “Won’t Be Long.” The track is emblematic of the rambling man storytelling that dominates Unsung Passage. “Don’t know which side of the fight I’m on/ Don’t know when I’ll die/ But it won’t be long,” Gustafson sings plaintively in the chorus over some gently tumbling fingerpicked guitar.
“Won’t Be Long” is from The Dead Tongues‘ new LP, “Unsung Passage” Out May 18, via Psychic Hotline.
The Dead Tongues is the moniker of Asheville’s Rya Gustafson and he’s part of that North Carolina collective. He’s played with and opened for Hiss Golden Messenger and Phil Cool. And like the music from both of those artists, The Dead Tongues’ music has an inherent, yet subtle, spirituality about it.
Gustafson is a bit of a nomad and free spirit. He’s very comfortable on the road, observing the daily travails of like going around him. “When I’m traveling, it’s like walking into these different windows. I’m a witness, with my mouth shut,” Gustafson says. “The people you meet, the way the landscape speaks to you, how a desert is different than a mountain: It has the potential to bring out something you didn’t know was there.”
The ten tracks that encompass Unsung Passage are a wonderful blend of folky twang. Almost every tune feels like the lyrics could be an old fella spinning a yarn at the end of a bar or sitting on a porch talking to no one in particular. The music backing these tales is a wonderful tapestry of guitars, strings, banjos, etc. Its as if someone blended TBT, Horse Feathers and Ryan Bingham and out poured The Dead Tongues. While the album never veers from Americana, the variety within that genre that Gustafson uses to get his tales across is quite lovely.
This album is a grower. Play it multiple times. Put it away for a couple of weeks. Come back again. That’s what I did and I find myself enjoying it more and more with each listen.
The ten tracks that encompass Unsung Passage are a wonderful blend of folky twang. Almost every tune feels like the lyrics could be an old fella spinning a yarn at the end of a bar or sitting on a porch talking to no one in particular. The music backing these tales is a wonderful tapestry of guitars, strings, banjos, etc. Its as if someone blended TBT, Horse Feathers and Ryan Bingham and out poured The Dead Tongues. While the album never veers from Americana, the variety within that genre that Gustafson uses to get his tales across is quite lovely.
This album is a grower. Play it multiple times. Put it away for a couple of weeks. Come back again. That’s what I did and I find myself enjoying it more and more with each listen.
Live from Arbor Ridge Studios in Chapel Hill, NC.
“Won’t Be Long” is from The Dead Tongues’ new LP, “Unsung Passage” Out May 18, via Psychic Hotline.
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