The Dead Tongues + Louisa Stancioff

Event Details

After five months of not picking up an instrument, The Dead Tongues’ Ryan Gustafson

wanted to get rid of everything that was tied to his identity as a musician. He even

thought about changing his name. He was getting ready to throw out old notebooks

packed with years of material but, for some reason, he decided to stop and go through

them, just to see if there was anything worth saving. And sure enough, he found some

images and lyrics, threads from former selves he didn’t want to lose. Thus was the

catalyst for Dust, his fifth and best album as The Dead Tongues.

Gustafson recorded Dust in nine days, the fastest he’d ever recorded anything. It was

the fastest he’d ever written anything, too – in the past, writing a song would take

months, but this time he somehow felt freer, and wanted to have fun. The record was

recorded at Sylvan Esso’s studio, Betty’s, in the woods of Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

He built it out with help from a number of his musician friends - Joe Westerlund

(Watchhouse, Megafaun, Califone) on drums, Andrew Marlin (Watchhouse) on

mandolin, backing vocals from Alexandra Sauser-Monnig and Molly Sarlé of Mountain

Man, among others.

Dust is meant to be listened to while taking a night drive, farflung and roving and

existential. Somewhere between the expansiveness of American jamband and the

banjo-centric folk songwriting of Gustafson’s Appalachia home. Gustafson explains the

thematic throughline succinctly: “It’s this idea of uprooting and rebirth and cycles, and

the past informing the future, and the future informing the past. There is no single story.

Everything is connected.”

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This is a 21+ event.