Hillfolk Noir

Artist Information

Biography

5 QUESTIONS WITH HILLFOLK NOIR

1. Are you really “hillfolk”?
We’re reasonably normal 21st-century urban dwellers with cell phones and city-people jobs. Yet our Idaho roots reach into shadowy corners of the state where the echoes of settlers still reverberate off the walls of the valleys. We sing happy and sad songs of our ancestors and happy and sad songs of our own — often they’re one and the same. It’s like Guy Clark says: Somedays the songs write you.

2. Are you a quintet? A quartet? A trio? A duo? A dude?
All of the above; it depends on the day. (The possible mathematical combinations are too many to list here.) The one constant is our main man Travis Ward, Hillfolk’s lead singer, guitarist, chief songwriter and visionary.

3. What the heck is Junkerdash?
Junkerdash is a term we applied to our peculiar take on traditional acoustic mountain music, which is filtered through a half-century of folk, country and rock ‘n’ roll and fed by our affinity for medicine show culture and Depression-era string-band blues. If Junkerdash were in the dictionary, there would be multiple definitions up to and including “psychedelic swamp-shack rags.” However, if you’re looking for something neat and tidy to place in print or casual conversation, feel free to use current music-journalism parlance and call it “indie folk.”

4. What’s the Hillfolk Noir Radio Hour?
The Hillfolk Noir Radio Hour is our new album (March 2012). The full-length studio recording is sequenced like an old-timey radio program straight out of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, complete with commercial breaks plugging a bunch of fake products we made up. The album is available in the uber-modern digital and CD forms, but we prefer the limited-edition 10-inch vinyl, packaged to resemble a 1920s-era 78 (but sounding much better).

5. Hillfolk has traversed the country north to south and east to west spreading the good Junkerdash word. Whose musical paths have you crossed?
We’ve played with Built to Spill, James McMurtry, Neko Case, Justin Townes Earle, Deer Tick, Gourds, Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Gerald Collier, Heroes and Villains, Train, Jesse Dayton, The Dusty 45s, Neva Dinova and tons of other great acts that you may or may not have heard of. We’ve also performed on countless American street corners because we hold the busking tradition in high regard and, well, sometimes we need the gas money.

Instrumentation

Travis Ward - Vocals, Kazoo, Harmonica, words, National Guitar
Mike Waite - Stand-up Bass
Jared Goodpastor - tambourine, Washboard, snare, harmonies
Alison Ward - Banjo, Washboard, harmonies, Singing Saw
Shaun King - Banjo

Discography

Cobwebs in the Boxcar
Flowers Don't Bloom
Norman Waiting Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Attic Reels, Protests and Nervous Breakdowns
Ibid Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Diggin' Songs
9+1
Live at the Old Idaho Penitentiary
Skinny Mammy’s Revenge
Record Store Day Split 7-inch (with Finn Riggins)
Hillfolk Noir Radio Hour

Official Website

http://www.hillfolknoir.com

Links

• Facebook
• MySpace
• Deli Radio
• Old Website (archival material)

Audio

• The Great Grizzly Bear Scare
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• Run Round Reel
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• Parchman Farm Blues
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• Dying Bed Blues
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• The Lord Will Come
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Lyrics

• Hangin Judge
• The Great Grizzly Bear Scare
• The Love I Thought I'd Never Know
• Pine Box

Video

Photo Gallery

Press

• Endorsement by a Legend [+ Show ]
  

  “If John Steinbeck owned a speakeasy, Hillfolk Noir would be the house band.” — John Doe (X, The Kni...“If John Steinbeck owned a speakeasy, Hillfolk Noir would be the house band.” — John Doe (X, The Knitters)

• Album Review [+ Show ]
  

  “Too authentic to be considered alt anything. Ward is an evocative, charismatic singer-songwriter wh...“Too authentic to be considered alt anything. Ward is an evocative, charismatic singer-songwriter who embraces diverse shards of Americana. Time-warped kaleidoscopes —sparse, historically reverent and pretty terrific.”

• Best Boise Bands [+ Show ]
  

  “Hillfolk Noir have fine-tuned their dark, Depression-era jangly blues to become one of the most inc...“Hillfolk Noir have fine-tuned their dark, Depression-era jangly blues to become one of the most incredible bands in [Boise]. They are as honest as they come.”

• Best of 2011 [+ Show ]
  

  “Hillfolk Noir plays dark, rural folk music that might one moment embrace praising the lord while lo...“Hillfolk Noir plays dark, rural folk music that might one moment embrace praising the lord while loading your Winchester, and the next moment flirt with drinking sour mash from a jagged mason jar while the devil looks over your shoulder.”

• Album Review
  

  “The spirit of punk as well as the back porch informs this music’s underlying earthiness.”

• Album Review
  

  “Brilliant, edgy punked-up acoustic hillbilly blues.”

• Album Review [+ Show ]
  

  “[Ward is] pulling off the most difficult of musical tasks — making an old style fresh, allowing you...“[Ward is] pulling off the most difficult of musical tasks — making an old style fresh, allowing you to experience the delta blues, Midwest folk, protest songs and countrified ballads in an engaging new manner.”

• Album Review [+ Show ]
  

  “Washboard rhythms, heavy guitar, melancholy banjo and the dark profundity of a stand-up bass give H...“Washboard rhythms, heavy guitar, melancholy banjo and the dark profundity of a stand-up bass give Hillfolk Noir’s music a foot-stompin’, two-steppin’ vibe, but their inky, folky sounds reverberate with creepy things hiding in forest shadows.”
  

• Radio Feature [+ Show ]
  

  “The band is more than just a string of genre-related adjectives; the sounds they create provide a h...“The band is more than just a string of genre-related adjectives; the sounds they create provide a haunting backdrop for the troubadour rantings of Ward.”

• Album Review [+ Show ]
  

  “What sets them apart from Old Crow Medicine Show and their ilk is an insistence to not allow themse...“What sets them apart from Old Crow Medicine Show and their ilk is an insistence to not allow themselves to get ahead of the music; by not allowing for pop culture compromise throughout Skinny Mammy’s Revenge, Hillfolk Noir allows their largely unadorned music to stand on its own.”

• Album Review [+ Show ]
  

  “It’s raw and blatantly unpolished; the sort of music one can imagine being played in the backyard o...“It’s raw and blatantly unpolished; the sort of music one can imagine being played in the backyard or on the doorstep. It’s the immediacy which is appealing.”

• Album Review [+ Show ]
  

  "Whether it's the tolling bells of deathbed fevers, the loping swagger of a stranger in town walking..."Whether it's the tolling bells of deathbed fevers, the loping swagger of a stranger in town walking down Main Street as every gunslinger in town stops and stares, or the wagon trains of woe rolling past desolate, arid, landscapes on a breeze of radiation, Ward and his Hillfolkers flow through the last wisps of a world gone very wrong for the protagonist with crooked, receding grins at reapers grim and eager as they transcend the alt.country hokum with a full-tilt-off-kilter medicine show of captivating enchantment that should diffuse beyond the canyons, badlands and sad-swaying hillsides of Idaho."

• Album Review [+ Show ]
  

  “[The] drive to celebrate the past and indeed to achieve a degree of authenticity continues to this ...“[The] drive to celebrate the past and indeed to achieve a degree of authenticity continues to this day with several fine artists ... digging deep into the backwaters of American traditional music and bringing it bang up to date. Hillfolk Noir ... are a particularly fine example of how to go about this.”

• Radio Feature [+ Show ]
  

  “As soon as you hear it, you are there with them, in that circle of musicians, hearing up-close thei...“As soon as you hear it, you are there with them, in that circle of musicians, hearing up-close their great songs, the heartfelt stories ... a roots classic without doubt.”

• Radio Feature
  

  “Modern-day old-time wonderment.”

• Album Review
  

  “A fine showcase of the music of real America.”

• Radio Feature
  

  “Full of music of character.”

• Album Review [+ Show ]
  

  “Skinny Mammy’s Revenge is a great example of superb Americana music that will put any listener in a...“Skinny Mammy’s Revenge is a great example of superb Americana music that will put any listener in a good mood.”

• Album Review [+ Show ]
  

  "Country rock, then more folksy, then something that sounds like Tom Waits, and then something that ..."Country rock, then more folksy, then something that sounds like Tom Waits, and then something that could have come out of late-'60s San Francisco."

• Radio Feature
  

  “I like this very much.” — Ricky Ross

• Endorsement by a Bartender
  

  “You guys sound like Johnny Cash on Robitussin.” — Ryan, Pengilly’s Saloon bartender

Setlist

We don't do any modern covers, but we do a handful of traditional songs. We have about 60-70 songs in rotation, so our sets are determined by the venue and audience.

Basic Requirements

PDF Rider

Hillfolk Noir Stage Plot

Calendar