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The festival, now in its third year, is the brainchild of organizer Andy French.
“Well, we'd like to think of Deep in the Valley as kind of a festival for bands who aren't necessarily festival bands," he told WAMC. "It's more of a bringing together of eclectic sounds.”
French is the owner and operator of Raven Sings The Blues, the music review website he co-founded in 2006.
“We try to do a wide variety of genre and bring it together and find the interconnections between those genres," he continued. "We, in the past, it's been psych and jazz and folk, and this year, I'm really excited that we're expanding into the country, and the psychedelic country aspects that have been a big part of the music that I cover on Raven Sings the Blues as well.”
The festival site itself is crucial to the Deep In The Valley experience.
“The idea is to hearken back to the kind of calm, 70s outdoor farm festival type of things," explained French. "It is on the grounds of a working orchard, on the Migliorelli Orchard, and that's where the From The Ground Brewing sits. So, it is very pastoral, very calm, very family oriented. It's kind of meant to be a bucolic day out in the country with the Catskill views in the background.”
The day is structured to follow a distinct musical journey.
“What we try to do is create an arc of sound that starts out soft," French told WAMC. "We're going to do Seawind of Battery, who is in an ambient country genre, and we moved to Magic Tuber Stringband, they're great folks out of North Carolina, a three-piece string band. Bong Wish out of out of Massachusetts, who has a real psych pop feel as well, and then we'll get into the loud and the heavy stuff with the legends, Sunburned Hand of the Man, a bit of Nashville psych country from Sean Thompson's Weird Ears, who I’m very excited to see as well, and then Jeffrey Alexander and the Heavy Lidders will be playing alongside members of Sunburned Hand of the Man in an augmented lineup just for that day, and then we are back into the quiet again, Trummors, who kind of have that Emmylou and Graham feel of country right before we get into Steve Gunn to close.”
French’s evident passion for the music scene he’s helped coalesce is reflected back to him by the participating bands, who describe Raven Sings The Blues as a beloved gathering place for left field rockers, folkies, and jammers.
“I think having a home for the heads is really important. I think that's maybe what it means to me the most," said Sean Thompson of Sean Thompson's Weird Ears, who was born and raised in Nashville. His music reflects both the twangy country heritage of Music City and the sun-warped sound of San Francisco in its mid-century, acid inflected psych rock heyday.
“Something that's really important for me to focus on is trying to make music that is as cliche free as possible," he told WAMC. "Maybe not using too many of just idioms that are played out, I think, is super important for me, because I think playing that kind of music, especially now in the 21st century, it's really important to find ways to push the sound to new areas and new inspirations. What that means for me right now is bringing in a rich history of fusion and jazz and improvisatory sounds into that sort of choogling framework, and I've found a lot of inspiration in that combination lately, especially in my live show.”
Thompson is eager to share the stage with artists who have kept the torch of cosmic American music blazing bright.
“If everything goes as planned, I will be nice and inspired, hopefully a little sleepy and fulfilled," he said. "I think it's such a good lineup, and I'm really looking forward to a big, inspiring day of awesome music, and hopefully can play my part in that as well.”
David Lerner of Taos, New Mexico-based Trummors explained how the band’s drippy, dosed brand of country rock is part of the searching, cosmic sound that Deep In The Valley’s roster highlights.
“I like a lot of new country music, we listen to it in the car, but we're not really that, you know what I mean?" he told WAMC. "Like, we're not steeped in kind of tradition in that sense. We're sort of products of the 90s indie and alternative underground, so we kind of bring a different sensibility and maybe a little bit less reverence for like tradition or anything like that. So, we're kind of like, as our predecessors have, kind of bringing different influences into what I guess would be a basic template of close harmony and songwriting, but trying to put our own stamp on it, make it a little bit more inclusive and not quite just for the for the folks who grew up in places like the South or Kentucky that have this great tradition of bluegrass or country music. We're not that, but we love all that stuff.”
For Evan Morgan of Magic Tuber Stringband, currently headquartered in Georgia, Deep In The Valley is a celebration of the long history of American weirdness.
“A lot of ink has been spilled about Cosmic Americana or New Weird America as a concept," he said. "But I think at the very root of it, there's this sense that the more folk traditions that that emerged out of the prewar recording industry, a lot of that stuff is pretty weird and not uniform. So, that term ‘traditional music’ kind of became a catch-all for more vernacular forms of music, that, when you actually listen to those recordings, you realize it's quite eclectic and also very, very weird at times- And I think that’s what we’ve always kind of been interested in.”
As a pre-festival warmup tonight, experimental rock band Oneida is headlining a show alongside Jeffrey Alexander and the Heavy Lidders and Vague Plot at Tubby’s in Kingston. Drummer Kid Millions tells WAMC it was a no brainer to get involved with Deep In The Valley.
“It's wonderful to have like a very distilled experience," he said. "Festivals tend to be kind of bloated, but this one is one day, wraps up by sundown, a very carefully curated list of bands that maybe aren't getting the attention that they could deserve. It's just a unique and a cool festival. There aren't many experimental rock, indie rock festivals that operate in this way. There's plenty of bluegrass events, but this feels unique.”
Deep In The Valley kicks off at 11:30 a.m. Saturday at From The Ground Brewing in Red Hook, NY.
