Among The Oak & Ash began with two friends looking for a change. New Yorker Josh Joplin and Nashville’s Garrison Starr were both signed to major labels when they were teenagers, and have traveled the world performing their songs. Their paths crossed on the road and they discovered a natural camaraderie born from shared experiences and over time, their friendship meandered into a musical collaboration just when they were looking to take a breath from their solo careers.
Their self-titled debut, Among The Oak & Ash I (Verve Forecast), starts at the beginning. It is immersed in some of America’s oldest music – in this case Appalachian murder ballads -- and illuminates the tenacity, beauty and universality of its themes and subjects. Joplin and Starr went back and forth between Nashville and New York City, choosing songs and working out arrangements and harmonies, then enlisted the help of their friends, producer and bass player Brian Harrison (Shelby Lynne) and drummer Bryan Owings (Emmylou Harris) to begin recording in Harrison’s home studio in Nashville. What began as a private sing-a-long among friends slowly developed into a natural progression for the pair’s own path as performers.
What is striking to both singers is that songs first conceived centuries ago still resonate today. Songs of death and hope, murder and love, lechery and splendor, transcendence and cruelty are still the major themes of modern songs, as they are still the common threads between love affairs, current events, and all points in between. Perhaps it is a result of living in a modern world that makes these songs instantly comforting and strikingly beautiful, because the melodies are simple and the themes timeless.
For Starr, it was not an easy sell at first. Though her roots are deeply felt in her Southern upbringing, she was concerned that she would not be able to connect with “a bunch of old folk songs.” But, she quickly discovered that her rich vocal tone was a natural for this and that the music wasn’t as foreign as she thought. “I had this ‘I get it!’ moment when Josh played the songs on acoustic guitar. I fell in love with the melodies, which to me sounded new and timeless. I realized I could get inside these songs in my own way.” Joplin first became enthralled with Appalachian music when he was introduced to Cari Norris, the granddaughter of the late Lily May Ledford, an original Coon Creek Girl and the first all-women string band in radio. “I was like a wide-eyed anthropologist explaining my important new discovery of a lost culture to an audience of its descendents.” For him, it’s that elemental connection to traditional music and its humanity he returns to when he needs to be reminded “that there is something bigger in this world that threads us all to one another.”
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