"This immensely talented band from Asheville, N.C., was my favorite discovery at this year's Americana Music Festival. River Whyless builds its music around fiddle, guitar and harmonies, with imagination and textures that set the band apart from many of its acoustic and folk-based peers." -Bob Boilen, NPR Music
All gallery photographs by Halli Anderson, Daniel Shearin and Ryan O'Keefe
Drumming is an activity that, unlike writing, delivers me not more deeply into thought, but out of it, away from it. Here, behind the kit, I am a man without words (much as I love them), the whole train of language behind me now where I sit cutting into time with the sharp axe-edge of raw existence. The blade bites nicely (on the good days) and there is nothing else. No fear or niggling ambition. No need to seek meaning. Just me and the shimmering axe-edge and the sweet spattering of woodchips.