Look Homeward
Durham, North Carolina, United States | Established. Jan 01, 2012 | SELF
Music
Press
North Carolina and string bands go together like, well, Mississippi and blues players. They just grow better in their respective homelands. Such is certainly the case with Look Homeward the “band of brackish brethren” that includes Lee Anderson (guitar, vocals), Alex Bingham (upright bass), Evan Ringel (trombone, fiddle), and Wilson Greene IV (banjo).
When the band busts out the brass, though, it's down to the bayous we go. That's a new thing for the boys in Look Homeward and the addition sent them into the studio to re-work a few tracks off their upcoming album, including “Steamboat.” They say, “When we recently added trombone to the band and played this tune together for the first time, as soon as the brass entered we said, 'Yes … absolutely!' both to the trombone being an integral part of Look Homeward and to re-recording this song with brass. It just felt so right.”
The trombone adds a sense of place to the cut ... a very specific place. "'Steamboat' is a song about an imaginary trip to New Orleans -- a place where the sacred and profane, past and present, spirit and flesh, are all joined together into one messy, poetic, glorious reality. Likewise, this is a song about being young ... longing to experience all the mysteries that life has to offer while searching for a place to belong.” - The Bluegrass Situation
HAILING from North Carolina, Look Homeward are masters of layering, pulling in sweet-singing, textural strings at just the right moment or a thumping and grooving bass just in time for some quick-stepping merriment. Wistful banjo picking brings out the delicateness of the instrument, and gentle horns groan like cabin floorboards underfoot.
On their self-titled 2015 LP, the four-piece blends mountain music, jaunty indie-folk, and timeless pop (I mean, track three is straight-up called “Motown”) with a wink toward vaudeville fun. Lee Anderson’s warm and inviting vocals are reminiscent of folky brethren like Dawes and The Avett Brothers, and will make you wanna find a good rocking chair and run up to the North Georgia mountains for the weekend. With a name referencing fellow North Carolinian Thomas Wolfe’s first novel, Look Homeward, Angel: A Story of the Buried Life, Look Homeward certainly looks to the summits and meandering streams of their home turf to spin their take on Appalachian tradition. - Connect Savannah
Look Homeward will appeal to fans of the Avett Brothers, and “Morning Light” is the perfect acoustic tune for that bright sunshiny day. The collaboration...will gladly warm your heart as soon as you wake up. - Paste Magazine
Discography
Still working on that hot first release.
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Bio
Look Homeward is a band of brackish brethren hailing from the piedmont of North Carolina. Lee Anderson (guitar, vocals), Alex Bingham (upright bass), Evan Ringel (trombone, fiddle) and Wilson Greene IV (banjo) pair the Appalachian drawls and passionate picking of venerated field recordings with the soul tones of Atlantic beaches and boggy bayous. Marrying banjos with brass, the quartet celebrates the American South in a mingling of old and new, traditional yet surprising. Add honest folk songwriting and the result is music that just might sound like home, wherever you’re from.
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