Fiery Gizzard: Vinyl LP

Label: Dear Life Records
Release Date: 5th September

Deep in the hills and the forests of Appalachian America is where Joseph Decosimo's sound is borne and a tradition is honoured with fiddle, banjo, drones and shimmers of bursting sunny mornings and dark clouds. 

Old-time and traditional music stay exciting for their contrasts. Exacting instrumentation honed through mentorships and late-night jams at fiddler’s
conventions tangles with a community-sourced inventiveness that influences variants and new sounds. Joseph Decosimo is a master of this genre for this
very reason, blending deep technique with an openness and curiosity that keep his music crackling with life. A “marvelous fiddler” (No Depression) and banjo
player who braids “exultation and veneration” (INDY Week) into his music, on his third solo album Fiery Gizzard Decosimo gathers a close-knit ensemble of
friends from his musical career to infuse his interpretations of fiddle and banjo pieces with a contagious communal joy. As an artist working with traditional
music from the South and Appalachia, Decosimo chooses songs based not only on historical significance and lineage but also his own sensory approach. For
Fiery Gizzard, his ear was tuned to otherworldly tones and mystery, sourcing from field recordings such as Virginia fiddler Luther Davis’ hypnotic version of
"Shady Grove "while amping up the music’s psychedelic potential. On the middle Tennessee banjo composition “Flowery Girls,” a VHS of bluesman Abner Jay
inspired Decosimo to rig up a pickup inside a fretless banjo and play it through a tube amp to capture some of Jay’s edge and funkiness. But to round out the
sound and keep it kinetic meant galvanizing a genre-eschewing crew to jam out– and not in a “spaced-out drooly” kind of way, he laughs, but as a sort of
“responsive conversation.”Decosimo has always been a community-minded artist. He began playing as a seventh grade rin Tennessee, fostering relationships
with older players at jams and in homes, a learning mode natural to his inquisitive nature and desire for musical connection. A folklorist by intuition, he later
became one by profession, studying with old-time legend Clyde Davenport, teaching in East Tennessee State University’s renowned bluegrass program, and
receiving his PhD at the University of North Carolina with a dissertation titled “Catching the ‘Wild Note’: Listening, Learning, and Connoisseurship in Old-Time
Music.” In North Carolina, Decosimo kicked about in the verdant environment of Durham and Chapel Hill’s folk and indie scenes, collaborating with artists
including Alice Gerrard, Hiss Golden Messenger, and Jake Xerxes Fussell. This community has influenced his own music, including his “sublime and strangely
heartening” (Bandcamp Daily) 2022 release While You Were Slumbering and Beehive Cathedral, Decosimo’s 2024 “Appalachian mountain music treasury”
(New Commute) trio album with Luke Richardson and Cleek Schrey for Dear Life Records. Continuing on this path, Fiery Gizzard is home base for a loose
outfit of mostly Tarheel-basedmusicians from within and beyond traditional music. Inspired by a tour with fiddler Stephanie Coleman (Nora Brown), guitarist
Jay Hammond, and synth builder and multi-instrumentalist Matthew O’Connell, Decosimo assembled studio mates based on close friendships and comfort.
Coleman, O’Connell, and Hammond contribute to Fiery Gizzard, along with bassist and producer Andy Stack (Helado Negro, Wye Oak), horn player Kelly Pratt
(Beirut, David Byrne), Mipso and Fust’s Libby Rodenbough, Joseph O’Connell (Elephant Micah), and trad/experimental artist Cleek Schrey.