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“I’d been thinking about making another solo record for some time, something sonically and thematically different from what I’d done before, different in instrumentation and approach to recording as well. I wanted to start recording every song with the smallest musical unit appropriate to the song and only add what felt necessary and relevant, keeping everything in the realm of acoustic instruments. Some songs started and ended with just me singing and playing, others with me and bass player extraordinaire Mark Fain, or as a trio with Tim O’Brien and Michael Rinne. All the main ingredients are live, especially all the lead vocals. It was extremely liberating to record like this, in the moment, with almost no premeditation, no direction to the players, not even much, or any, direction to myself. It felt immensely freeing to my guitar playing and reconnected me with an energy I wasn’t sure I still had. It takes players that you trust 100% to record like that, like all the players on this album - and engineers like my old friend Andy Kern, and my new friend Finn Goodwin-Bain, who are willing to move fast and with confidence to capture the moment.” Ring-A-Bellin’ Tracklist: Too Many Walls Mourning Moon Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Blues Sharpen Your Knife Knocking ‘Round Knoxville Stirring Up The Ghosts Rag And Bone Holy Mother Mountain Damascus Road Bitter Change The Alchemist’s Way There’s A Rock In The Middle Way Past Whiskey Time Everything Is Everything Out Jump The Devil You Can Walk The Hammer And The Anvil Settle Me Down

Thomm Jutz and his trans-Atlantic collaborator, the 32-time BBC Radio 2 Folk Award-nominated Martin Simpson aim to spread their love for Cecil Sharp’s 1916 and 1918 collection, “English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians”—particularly those tunes from singers Mary Sands and Jane Gentry and the mystery and timelessness which they convey. Knowing they weren’t the only ones obsessed with this particular catalog, Simpson and Jutz found a host of others with a similar mission, bringing together a mix of roots artists from both sides of the pond—Sierra Hull, Angeline Morrison, Odessa Settles, Tim O’Brien, Tammy Rogers, Seth Lakeman, and more—to create an homage to the bridge from Appalachia to England and back, just as the songs of Sands and Gentry originally did.

Tim Stafford & Thomm Jutz announce new album Wall Dogs. Fellow songwriters, guitar players, hobby historians, and friends Tim Stafford and Thomm Jutz announce their new album Wall Dogs -released on October 18, 2024. Their 2023 release Lost Voices was met with widespread critical acclaim. All twelve songs on this record were written by Stafford and Jutz. Reflections on art, history, spirituality, and solitude are the thematic cornerstone of this collection

After calling both Tim Stafford and Thomm Jutz “master guitarists and writers,” the beloved, late music writer and historian Peter Cooper described their upcoming collection, Lost Voices, just like this: “These are new kinds of bluegrass songs, informed by mutual heroes Tony Rice, Norman Blake, John Hartford, and Gordon Lightfoot, yet not beholden to any prior influence, other than the influence of the American experience.”

When it came time to lay down all fourteen Stafford- and Jutz-penned songs on Lost Voices, the pair decamped to Jutz’s log cabin studio outside of Nashville with a crew of like-minded greats including Shaun Richardson on mandolin, Ron Block on banjo, Tammy Rogers on fiddle, Mark Fain on bass, and Dale Ann Bradley as a guest vocalist. When all was said and done, Stafford and Jutz ended up with an album of all original music that perfectly reflects the depth of both knowledge and skill—and an effortless cool—that the duo possesses; an album of tunes that the aforementioned Cooper called “Songs that bring American history—mountain culture, steam trains, vaudeville, race, baseball, strife, and grace—to technicolor life.”

As songwriters, musicians, and friends, Thomm Jutz and Tammy Rogers explore the Appalachian sounds that inspire them on Surely Will Be Singing, their first-ever album together. Recorded in their home studios in Nashville, these 12 original songs echo the acoustic production, lyricism and vocal blend of their folk and bluegrass heroes while naturally setting a foundation for more music to come. “We’d always talked about making a duo record,” Jutz says. “We started on some demos and when the pandemic hit, we were writing on Zoom. We both said the last thing we wanted was to say when this thing is over that we wasted a year sitting on the couch and watching TV, so let’s stay with it. And that’s what we did.”

Album artwork numbered and signed hand pulled original print by artist Julie Sola. Size 8.5' x 11"

I’ve long admired Julie’s work, and consider her a dear friend. Julie just recently moved to New Mexico, after spending many years in Nashville, where she worked at Hatch Show Print and perfected her craft of hand-carved, hand-pulled linoleum prints. When Tammy and I were looking for some original folk art, that would represent the music on this album, it didn’t take long to find something in Julie’s portfolio that we loved. Julie’s artwork speaks to the simplicity of these songs, and to the simple joy we can find in making music. We have a limited number of sixty of these prints for sale, as a custom package with the CD. You can learn more about Julie’s work at www.fatcrowpress.com

Like its predecessor, To Live In Two Worlds Volume 2 is filled with stories of mysterious deaths, moral dilemmas, struggling musicians and historical events that range through the years and across the globe, offered alternately with the help of a crackerjack string band and by nothing more than Jutz’s guitar and voice. The album is now available for pre-order ahead of its September 25 release.

“As always with my writing, you’ll find characters from days gone by in this collection of songs,” says Jutz, who was nominated for IBMA Songwriter Of The Year in 2017, 2018 and 2019. “Real or imagined, they struggle with their place in the world — like we all do. My beliefs, frustrations and hopes live in these characters, in the spiritual overtones and worldly undercurrents of their human existence. From the writing desk to the recording studio it’s been a genuine joy to work on this album.”

With songs ranging through the early days of country music to modern day historical events like Nashville’s historic flood and the fire that raged through Paris’ Notre Dame cathedral, Jutz weaves a rich historical timeline with memorable melodic strains and vivid turns of phrase. People long-forgotten live again, favorite characters from modern classics make their appearances, and stories never told before come clothed in the sounds of days gone by.

Nominated for The Recording Academy Grammy Award for "Bluegrass Album Of the Year"

Among these releases we find the stories of rambling vagabond musicians, the hard life of mill workers, tragic Civil War characters both real and imagined, semi-forgotten regional legends and new stories of more recent real-life dramas and tragedies that will be tomorrow’s parables. Each single release is a pairing of works — one featuring a crackerjack bluegrass band, the other featuring just Jutz and his guitar — that may complement, expand upon or contextualize one another.