Following a series of records with Thrill Jockey (including the sensational Seasonal Hire with Steve Gunn), the Black Twigs return to the VHF mothership to continue their charming and original take on Old Time and Appalachian-inspired string band sounds. Together since 2001, and a continuous presence in the music’s true home of Southwest Virginia, the Twigs represent the actively working evolution of the traditions – learning songs from other locals, playing dances at the Floyd Country Store, etc – without retro-artifice or nostalgia. The ragged-but-right performances and recording (and Sally Ann Morgan’s perfect cover design) sit at the ideal intersection of DIY/”underground” and local string sound values. On Friend’s Peace, the band travels a range of styles, from the lovely harmony on the trad-classic “Moonshiner” to the racing fiddle/guitar/banjo on the “Money Musk” medley. Mixed in with the traditional songs are several perfectly-placed original tunes, including Mike Gangloff’s keening “Cara’s Waltz” and Isak Howell’s solo guitar spotlight on “Barnswallow.” LP cut by Golden, pressed in Virginia by Furnace. Includes download card.

“Laid down before the Great Isolation and offered in hope for the community to come. MOONSHINER: Sally and husband Andrew sing words from West Virginian Currence Hammonds’ version of this widespread song, with a melodic structure from John Gallagher. If you haven’t heard Currence, or John’s album with Scott Prouty and Chris Coole (or with Dwight Diller and Tom King), you should. MONEY MUSK/ICY MOUNTAIN/TOMMY HAWK: Sally and I start the song with Money Musk, inspired by Dwight’s recording of James Hammons (a cousin of Currence and son of fiddle giant Edden), then everyone joins in for Icy Mountain, learned partly from the recordings of WV/Ohio fiddler Ward Jarvis. The medley’s third part is Tommy Jackson’s (and maybe Hark Garland’s) song Tomahawk that Jackson had on one of his 1950s square dance albums and which entered the folk repertoire in the fiddling of Ward Jarvis, among others. We’d heard recordings of Ward playing it at his home but it was Steve Kruger’s playing at Blacksburg, Va., sessions that started us. CARA’S WALTZ is one of my songs inspired by my wife and has been played many times for the dancers at the Floyd Country Store in Floyd, Va. SHEETS OF RAIN, STREAMS OF SUN is a dream of changes of cloud and light across the mountainsides, sometimes slow, sometimes less so. WILL YOU MISS WHEN I’M GONE? is one we’ve sung for years and always is better when Andrew is with us to knit together the harmony, as he does here. ROAN MOUNTAIN SALLY ANN comes from the mighty Roan Mountain Hilltoppers, whose skill and power and sheer welcoming exuberance should be inspirations for anyone playing this music. KNIGHT ON THE ROAD: First heard from Maddy Prior and Tim Heart, but Sally found a version collected by Artus Moser of Western North Carolina. BARNSWALLOW: Isak calls this an inadvertent tribute to our pal Charlie Parr, also part of a long, ongoing attempt to catch some of the sweetness, simplicity and dissonance of Elizabeth Cotten’s beautiful playing. ST. VALENTINE’S MARCH & ELLISTON JOY: Two love songs -- one grew from the other after Cara asked if the tune had words. The banjo sticks came later. DAN FRIEND’S PIECE is a West Virginia tune we picked up years ago from the magnificent recordings of Ernie Carpenter. For us, it became a lament for our friend Jack Rose when we played it at memorials a decade ago. Then it opened farther and farther, taking us into all sorts of spaces, a winding path to renewal.

-- Mike Gangloff, Ironto, Virginia, August 2020