Swamp Rose and Honeysuckle Vine by Nathaniel Talbot
It’s a busy life for singer-songwriter and farmer NATHANIEL TALBOT, who runs an organic vegetable farm on Whidbey Island, in Washington State’s Puget Sound. In addition to working 60 hours every week on the farm between March and October, he has released his fourth album, SWAMP ROSE & HONEYSUCKLE VINE on Portland, Oregon’s Fluff & Gravy Records (November 20, 2015). The album marks the harvest of a different sort for Talbot, who has also spent over two decades tending to the crafts of songwriting and guitar playing. His songs on the new album are intimately tied to the lush farmland and windswept vistas of Whidbey Island, deeply rooted in the earth and American traditionalism.
“The folk music and big trees that surrounded my childhood were hugely impactful,” says songwriter and farmer Nathaniel Talbot of his upbringing just a few hundred miles south of his farm in the foothills just southeast of Portland, Oregon. “I spent most of my free time running around the forest and making up adventures with the neighbor kids,” he says. “The natural setting certainly imprinted on my sense of self and how I make music.” Raised on the music of Paul Simon and Eric Clapton, Talbot began playing music at a young age, learning piano at seven and turning to guitar around thirteen, later steeping himself in the sounds of local artists like Soundgarden, Elliot Smith, and Kelly Joe Phelps. Produced by Talbot along with Rob Stroup, Swamp Rose & Honeysuckle Vine marks a big step forward in Talbot’s evolution as a lyricist and a storyteller. “If you listen to my previous albums, there’s a lot of songs of logging, botany, and even soil erosion, photosynthesis and the deep beauty of hiking at night,” says Talbot. But upon becoming a farmer, he began to dig deep into our most human trait – storytelling. “There was all of a sudden all this raw, untapped material to write about. Stuff that people used to sing about – stories about farmers wrestling the landscape, loving it, abusing it, old tractors getting stuck in the wetland, kids leaving the farm, soil blowing away in the wind, long hard days of work and the amazing sense of reward and connection with the land.”
Swamp Rose & Honeysuckle Vine captures the raw, live energy of Talbot’s guitar playing, and has a more stripped-down approach than his previous albums – no drums, fewer string arrangements, and sparse vocal harmonies. Tracking guitar and vocals live and solo, usually in just one or two takes, Talbot then brought in his quartet of Portland all-stars, Anna Tivel (violin, vocals), Sam Howard (double bass) and Lincoln Crockett (mandolin) and Benji Nagel (dobro), whose auxiliary instrumentation is used intentionally and sparingly to great effect, filling in and conversing with the core of Talbot’s playing and singing. “Challenging what folk music is capable of,” says Seattle Weekly, “Talbot’s powerful, uplifting voice harnesses a country twang complemented by lush acoustic finger-picking and a violin that feels like it was birthed next to a babbling brook in the mountains.” Channeling the lyrical prowess and gritty charm of Anais Mitchell on tracks like “As the Way,” and the concrete characterization in the work of Elliott Smith on tracks like “Able Man,” Talbot stands on the shoulders of generations of folk musicians and Americana singer-songwriters before him. His approach to music feels like that of someone who treats it as a craft handed down and honed, like the tilling of soil or the carving of wood.
Nathaniel Talbot’s music has dirt under its fingernails, the product of decades of hard work and crafting – retuning, replanting, and retelling. The result is true American roots music, combining the soulful edge of tradition with the Pacific Northwest’s legacy of freedom and innovation.
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