One can almost feel the inner torment of the 19th century sailor as he leaves his love at the door and sets out into the rainy gloom of a New England seaport, off to sea once more. Fiddlefreak favorite Tim Eriksen has a new record hitting the streets in October 23, titled Josh Billings Voyage (previous posts here and here.) Once again, he utilizes haunting vocals, bajo sexto, fiddle, and banjo to link vintage ballads to the modern world in his own inexplicable way. Here and there he deviates from the traditional format and experiments with modern sounds, but he always returns to his “northern roots.”

Josh Billings VoyageFrom his press release: Eriksen transforms global fragments into a tale of an imaginary town, told with a keen emotional edge… To tell this story, the story of the New England village of Pumpkintown, Eriksen draws subtly on decades of intensive study of the South Indian veena and its repertoire, on years of wrangling with the difficult but rewarding bajo sexto, and on a lifetime of singing deeply rooted, highly emotional traditional ballads. In Pumpkintown, young men set out on journeys over the sea, people live and love and die and dance, and the graveyard and hills mark time.