Fiery Gizzard, the new full-length from Durham, North Carolina songwriter and musician Joseph Decosimo coming later this summer on Dear Life Records, is not quite what it appears on the surface. Ostensibly the album is a solo record of traditional folk songs, but in practice it is anything but solo and goes far beyond retreading old ground. With Decosimo joined by fiddler Stephanie Coleman (Nora Brown), guitarist Jay Hammond, synth builder and multi-instrumentalist Matthew O’Connell, bassist and producer Andy Stack (Helado Negro, Wye Oak), horn player Kelly Pratt (Beirut, David Byrne), plus Libby Rodenbough (Mipso and Fust), Joseph O’Connell (Elephant Micah) and trad/experimental artist Cleek Schrey, the album draws on the invention and curiousity intrinsic to community to push its old-time inspiration in new directions. A style which neither regurgitates or moves away from traditional folk sensibilities but embraces the spirit which has always marked its best practitioners. Joseph Decosimo is not here to rehash or reinvent, he’s here to continue an old tradition.
Lead single and album opener ‘Ida Red’ is the perfect introduction to the style. Taking inspiration from the likes of Linefork, KY banjo player and singer Morgan Sexton, who took classic Appalachian folk music and made it his own with layers of improvisation and quirk, the song finds Joseph Decosimo and co. carrying this torch forward. A blurring of the line between careful craft and inquisitive malleablity, entirely true to the musical history from which is descends yet never restrained by its conventions.
Photo by Robert Birnbach