Kentucky country singer Ian Noe has announced that he’ll follow 2022’s great River Fools & Mountain Saints with a new album, Canyon Falls Trailer Band, due September 25 via Thirty Tigers (pre-order). It’s a concept double album, of which the press release says this about:
Canyon Falls Trailer Band is a sweeping 16-song concept album drawing on sounds from folk rock to country and is Noe’s most ambitious project of his career. The album imagines a legendary fictional band (Canyon Falls Trailer Band), who perform for one night only as a showcase seeking industry approval. The imaginary band explored a disparate range of genres in an attempt to entice the music industry. Their fate is unknown but their unforgettable performance remains the stuff of music legend.
Noe released a new single from the album, “The Heidelberg Fisherman’s Ball,” a lively celebration set at an Eastern Kentucky fishing gathering and marks a pivotal moment in Noe’s creative process. Noe was struggling through a rut ruminating on similar, minor chord songs he wasn’t happy with and a Youtube clip of legendary songwriter Craig Wiseman turned the page. It became one of the defining pieces (along with title track Canyon Falls Trailer Band) to birth the central storytelling scene of the album. Inspired by Wiseman’s philosophy of letting ideas flow without overthinking them, the song arrived immediately.
“This is simply the story of a fisherman’s gathering down by the riverside where the various women of Heidelberg present themselves like a date auction and try to find a mate. That is the Heidelberg Fisherman’s Ball.”
The album was recorded with longtime collaborator Andrija Tokić at Nashville studio The Bomb Shelter, and it features contributions from Charlie McCoy on harmonica, Billy Contreras on fiddle, and Russ Pahl on pedal steel. Check out “The Heidelberg Fisherman’s Ball” below.
Tracklist
1.) Canyon Falls Trailer Band
2.) The Heidelberg Fisherman’s Ball
3.) Tobacco Moon
4.) She’s Familiar (In the Strangest Ways)
5.) Kentucky Hurricane
6.) What I’d Give
7.) Redneck Mess
8.) Antarctica
9.) Another Night Like That
10.) Bible County
11.) Leeann
12.) Return of the Interstellar Angels
13.) Whiskey to Work
14.) Jukebox Blues (For Blaze Foley)
15.) Dixie Speed
16.) Kickin’ it in Nashville