Just hours after receiving landmark status, the Mississippi John Hurt Museum in Avalon, Mississippi burned to the ground on February 21,2024.

John Hurt lived in this three-room shack for years .

It’s not my job to pass judgement. However, the coincidence between the museum being put on the National Landmark Registry and the incident seems uncanny.

Just hours after receiving landmark status, the Mississippi John Hurt Museum in Avalon, Mississippi burned to the ground on February 21,2024.

John Hurt lived in this three-room shack for years .

It’s not my job to pass judgement. However, the coincidence between the museum being put on the National Landmark Registry and the incident seems uncanny.

John Hurt’s music has brought innumerable hours of joy to my life. It has taught me a lot about simplicity, drive, and musical gentleness.

I know it has done the same for generations before me and will do so for many to come.

Adam Wright and I wrote this song a few days after the fire. We wanted to pay tribute to the great man, and to the place he lived in that is now lost forever.

We are all poorer for it.

I had the opening lines about the flames. I read them to Charley, and he started spitting out lines faster than I could type them.

I picked up a guitar that was tuned to open G from a previous recording project and started riffing on a G7 voicing that sounded cool to me. The combination of decidedly major-feeling melodic elements and more bluesy

I had the opening lines about the flames. I read them to Charley, and he started spitting out lines faster than I could type them.

I picked up a guitar that was tuned to open G from a previous recording project and started riffing on a G7 voicing that sounded cool to me. The combination of decidedly major-feeling melodic elements and more bluesy ones seemed to fit this song. The song evolved into a meditation on the multi-faceted natures of the elements. The guitar part was played on my Martin 000-28 Norman Blake signature model, in Open-G tuning with the capo on the 3rdfret.

The banjo is a 1922 Gibson GB six-string banjo. It has an enormous 14-inch head, and sounds like it comes from very distant time, which it sort of does. I recently got the banjo from @retrofret in New York. It’s so much fun to play

Charley Stefl and I have been writing songs together for about twenty years now. Charley co-wrote one of my all-time favorite country songs “The Fool,” a big hit for Lee Ann Womack.

He is a scholar of Byzantine history and art, a very smart and well-read man, an excellent guy to have a beer with, and one of my oldest friends in Nashville.

We

Charley Stefl and I have been writing songs together for about twenty years now. Charley co-wrote one of my all-time favorite country songs “The Fool,” a big hit for Lee Ann Womack.

He is a scholar of Byzantine history and art, a very smart and well-read man, an excellent guy to have a beer with, and one of my oldest friends in Nashville.

We co-wrote some songs with the late great Nanci Griffith that she ended up recording, and we got a bunch of Bluegrass cuts together. Two went to number one, if I remember correctly.

We still get together to write a couple of times a month - and it’s always good and easy.

This is another song about traveling, and arriving - if only for a moment.

I had the guitar lick for a while and had never used it in a song.

We wrote the rest in less than an hour, no need to get in the way when the flow is right.

Written by Charley Stefl (Charley Stefl Music, SESAC admin by Bluewater Music) & Thomm Jutz (Thomm Songs, SESAC admin by Bluewater Music

Another song co-written with Charley Stefl.

This song pays homage to the songs that make our world turn. Like the ones that Bobby Bare played on a German TV show in October 1981, with an 11-year-old version of myself watching.

Those songs lit a fire in my soul - and they still do.

I played a Martin 0000-18 guitar (with sinker mahogany back and

Another song co-written with Charley Stefl.

This song pays homage to the songs that make our world turn. Like the ones that Bobby Bare played on a German TV show in October 1981, with an 11-year-old version of myself watching.

Those songs lit a fire in my soul - and they still do.

I played a Martin 0000-18 guitar (with sinker mahogany back and sides) on this song.

It was Peter Cooper’s guitar. He bought it after we finished working on Bill Anderson’s audio book.

A note from Bill is still in the case. Playing his guitar is a soothing way for me to remember Pete. The vocals were recorded with an AEA R44 microphone through an Audioscape Golden 58 mic pre.

The guitar was recorded with an AEA R84 through an AEA RPQ mic-pre.

Written by Charley Stefl (Charley Stefl Music, SESAC admin by Bluewater Music) & Thomm Jutz (Thomm Songs, SESAC admin by Bluewater Music