How a folkish string quartet blazes their own trail
Hailing from Cincinnati, Ohio, a town with a thriving music scene and part of the Louisville/Cinci/Indianapolis circuit, The Tillers are busy promoting the release of their latest album with a grueling summer tour.
The eponymous album has been available from Sofaburn Records since late March and the band has been on the road ever since, playing to sold out shows and killer crowds.
Undeniably popular in their local stomping grounds, the folkish/string quartet has been honing their craft for a little over a decade now, garnering numerous awards and recognition. With five albums (four studio and one live recording) under their belts, there’s no questioning that the fellas know their business.
Musically it’s fair to call them a string band. Their earliest days were spent playing traditional folk tunes on the street, covering the likes of Woody Guthrie and the ever present author of much older traditions, “anonymous”.
Over time, they made the tunes their own, incorporating their diverse musical backgrounds including a firm footing in punk music, leading to one reviewer to remark, “They often sound like old-time Appalachian, other times they’re the Ramones on acid.”
In this respect they are excellent representatives of what is best described as a new folk revival, one with a new set of rolls. The original folk revival of the fifties was rigid, with a strict adherence to form and tradition, and while that era produced some beloved groups, their identities were largely subsumed to a predefined image.
The mockumentary A Mighty Wind explores this to a degree, satirizing the tropes of the genre and revealing that in that first era of folk revival, players, songs and groups were largely interchangeable with little differentiation. It was…modular.
Contrast that to the modern folk revival represented by groups like The Tillers and our own hometown heroes, Strung Like a Horse, where the power and cultural importance of folk music is reimagined by a generation unbound to strict adherence or rigidity.
The musicians are the product of their own experience and exposure to musical genres and they bring that variety of taste and style to a genre that is by definition, “music of the people”.
It follows that the music of the people is an ever changing, evolving style and not a moment frozen in time by the recordings of the great Alan Lomax.
It isn’t an altogether new approach, as evidenced by the Pogues’ treatment of “Jesse James” or Dropkick Murphy’s fantastic rendition of “Which Side Are You On?” but these have until recently tended to be one-offs, almost novelty treatments of old tunes whereas The Tillers, et al, represent a growing movement of “modern” folk and Appalachian tunes that are seeing unprecedented popularity and wide acceptance.
The band’s latest release is a perfect example of the new folk revolution, blending old traditions with new approaches into something that a younger and increasingly diverse generation can appreciate both for its vintage roots and modern interpretation.
Sadly, the closest their summer tour brings them to Chattanooga is a September 2nd performance at the Muddy Roots Festival in Cookeville, Tennessee, itself a brilliant melting pot of old and new.
It’s not that far a drive, being a little over an hour and a half up the road, and if the festival itself weren’t enough to make it a worthwhile trip (it is) then the opportunity to see The Tillers live and in color is more than motivation enough.