April 2024—

Our latest song “Control Burn” is out everywhere now. We recorded this at home, in the Boghouse in Jackson, when the prescribed burns in the Pines were just beginning in February. It came out the day of the Earthquake, and it seems fitting since fire and shifting earth are both featured in my book “Hornpipe & Other Poems” that came out last year. I was sitting at my uncle’s funeral when the church began to rumble, pews trembling. Not a bad day to release a song.

Thanks to Tyler Sarfert for playing synth and mixing this at Tribl Studios in Hammonton, NJ and thanks to Dana Yurcisin for mastering it in Asbury Park, NJ. We really like the way this one sounds.

“Control Burn” is super personal and we hope if it makes you feel something you will share it with someone you love while we’re all still around.

Thanks for the support on the first half of our Spring tour. The people we met and played for in NY, NJ, PA, and Quebec, you’ve rejuvenated our sense of what we do, and why we do it.

We have some really special shows coming up in May and June, check them out here on the show page. And then Pine Barrens Volume Two will come out in the Summer, we just finished recording. There’s so much coming down the old cedar stream.

-Joe & James

March 2024—

Our new video for “Mt. Holly Jail”, Live at WXPN on The Folk Show, is live now on NPR Music and WXPN. Watch it below or at the link here. To say it’s a dream come true is a huge understatement. We do this all with no manager, no label, no trust fund or silent sponsor. Just your pals Joe and James (with more than a little help from our friends), so when something like this happens we take it to heart.

We’re so glad to be able to represent folk songs from our home woods on a forum such as this. Thanks to everyone who has supported us from day one.

We’re back at it, hitting the road from the Pines of Jersey, to Montreal, Quebec, and points in between as we kick off our Spring International Tour. Come listen at one of the appearances below. New dates are being announced all the time, so make sure to check our Concert Listings for any new dates that may be added. See you out there, friends. - JM & JB

Our new single “Hammer”

Out Now Everywhere!

A new Jackson Pines documentary premiered on PBS.

Watch full video here!

WHEEL

NEW ORIGINAL SINGLE OUT NOW!

Out now!

New Album

PINE BARRENS VOLUME ONE

Out now everywhere

Vinyl & CDs available on bandcamp

Here is our new record, a collection of folk songs that either originated or made a home in the Pine Barrens. We recorded it in one afternoon in the woods of our home town, in James’ house and we’re so grateful to the team that made it happen.

James Black: stand-up bass
Max Carmichael: banjo, octave mandolin, flute, vocals
Cranston Dean: mandolin, guitar, vocals
James Herdman: fiddle, vocals
Joe Makoviecki: guitar, vocals

Engineered: John Sell
Mixed and Mastered: John Sell & The Phantom
Album Art: Steve Omark

Two of these songs were written by Merce Ridgway Sr. in the 1940’s, and he appears on the cover of the record. Two others are older folk songs played by his band The Pine Hawkers back then. One is a 600 year old English ballad that found its way to the Pines around 1750 and was sung the whole time, another is a Mississippi John Hurt song that originated as a Methodist hymn written in Ocean Grove by a man born in Cape May, who traveled often through the Pines. And two versions of a fiddle tune from contemporary Lakewood, whose teams are The Piners. And they said we had no regional folk music!

Special thanks to Arlene Martin Ridgway, John at the Riverton Historical Society for the photo of Mt. Holly, Albert Music Hall in Waretown, NJ, and our families.

A new slate of concerts have been announced, we can’t wait to see you and play you some of these very old songs, as well as new ones we just wrote. Read about the album on New Jersery Stage Magazine here.

Regards,

Joe & James

The Unquiet Grave - OUT NOW

The second single from Pine Barrens Volume One is “The Unquiet Grave” which is Child Ballad No. 78. A very old song about dealing with grief.

The lyric goes back as far as 1400CE England, and the music we sourced was recorded in Ocean County, NJ in the 1930's. Its journey from where it began to where we found it is one of the reasons we made this album.

This tune is referred to as a Child Ballad. It's not a song for children, and is not a song about children. Far from it. In the 1800s, Francis Child spent his career collecting 305 English and Scottish ballads, writing down every version of every one he could find. Although many ballads have been found in NJ, No. 78 had only been found in Newfoundland and Kentucky, until...

This song was heard by songcatcher Herbert Halpert in 1937, when an 82 year old man by the name of Allen Clevenger sang his version of this song in Magnolia, NJ, a town that no longer exists. He said he learned it from his mother-in-law, Mrs. Grover, who grew up in Colliers Mills, where we grew up fishing with our dads in our hometown.

The melody was different from the many Appalachian versions we had heard, and so we created our own arrangement around the melody and devised this interpretation. We felt the flute a correct addition for a tune that also goes by "Cold blows the wind."

Our version continues the tradition by applying the Pine Barrens melody to an older version of the lyrics, with accompaniment created by us in the Pine Barrens in 2022. Quite the journey, and now it’s here.

-Joe & James

Mt. Holly Jail - OUT NOW

We’re excited to present the new single from our new album “Pine Barrens Volume One”. This tune is a bonafide 1800’s New Jersey folksong from the Pinelands where we grew up. We recorded it at the Boghouse in Jackson, live in one take.

Joe & James