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Hot Coffee, Mississippi is a real place, but we haven't been there. We have, however, drunk coffee—hot—and been to Mississippi. We also play music that sounds caffeinated and definitely inspired by Mississippi and by the other great states of the American South. And some Yankee states too. And some places that weren't states in the 1860s and so don't care about the Civil War. We do live along the Potomac River, a region neither known for its coffee or its similarity to Mississippi. It does, however, get quite hot, and it does remember the Civil War.

Hot Coffee, Mississippi, is a project of Lester Feder, who was born in a place memorably described as "the polyglot yankee suburb tactfully known as 'Northern Virginia'." He grew up steeped in the southern music traditions that still run deep in the area, piedmont blues guitar and old time banjo. (He did not have many friends in high school, which made him a wicked banjo player. Or maybe cause and effect went the other way.) Then he got an electric guitar, learned to amplify his banjo, and, most frightening of all, started drinking coffee. Now he mostly sings original songs, and some country and blues classics, percolating traditional music and rock and roll. And he plays some low-key weepers, too.