The Ballad Of Charlie Avalon
The Stillhouse Junkies have gone all out on their latest venture. It’s a sweeping and ambitious 20-plus-track concept album that’s been years in the making. Some of the material even predates the Junkies’ previous release, 2022’s Small Towns.
The band’s founder, guitarist, principal songwriter, and singer Fred Kosak describes The Ballad of Charlie Avalon as “a culmination of what it’s felt like being a touring musician over most of the past decade …. The only thing you know to do is keep playing no matter what else happens.”
In the accompanying press material, Kosak goes on to say that the collection is also based roughly on the life of Mississippi John Hurt.
The songs themselves are poignant and provocative and often free-wheeling and jam-based, with imaginative vocal and instrumental arrangements. They tend to be soulful and impressionistic rather than fact-laden or topical, thus they mostly stand on their own, with or without and over-arching story line. A thread of a story line is provided by Sam Bush, whose spoken narration is interspersed among the songs.
Kosak is joined here by the latest configuration of the band, which includes Alissa Wolf on vocal and fiddles, Matt Thomas on bass and Eric Lee on vocals, mandolin, guitar and fiddle.
