Nog maar eens een droevige folk song en opnieuw in een sobere uitvoering gebracht. De tekst snijdt enerzijds, maar wordt ook met een dosis humor gebracht. Halstead komt muzikaal alvast een pak rijper over dan zijn leeftijd doet vermoeden.
Dark Black Coal verschijnt op 5 mei 2023 via Thirty Tigers.
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Born in Kentucky and raised in West Virginia, it's no surprise that Halstead draws influence from like-minded peers Tyler Childers and Sturgill Simpson, but he has also found inspiration in the work of Nicholas Jamerson and Cole Chaney. "All these folks mentioned have laid a path and shown that it's okay to be from these parts; we're not so looked down on anymore,” says Halstead. The aforementioned contemporaries have given him the ability to be proud of who he is, and that has led him to be a driving force in the scene of young artists from the Appalachian region.
“Out here selling my food stamps just to make ends meet,” sings nineteen-year-old West Virginian Logan Halstead in that opening line of his new song “Man’s Gotta Eat.” “This one always makes me laugh, and it should make you too,” he says, but, like the rest of Halstead’s upcoming album Dark Black Coal—out May 5th via Thirty Tigers—there’s a lot more to it than humor. “This song is deeper than that, with underlying truths about the opioid epidemic…and stealing copper.” With just an acoustic guitar, fiddle, and his ragged-beyond-its-years voice, Halstead paints his darkly funny picture of life in America’s Appalachian region while pulling no punches and making no excuses. “This one is about a grind that I hope many of y'all don't have to see or go through,” Halstead says before continuing, “but...a man's gotta eat."
