Album Notes

FolkPsalm performs a unique and original collection of Old Testament Psalms set to fiddle-based Americana music. The band consists of some of the area's finest musicians, including renowned freelance upright bassist Robbie Link, vocalist Taz Halloween, drummer Mark Simonsen, central NC fiddling icon Al McCanless, Shady Grove Band founder and mandolin player Charles Pettee, Steep Canyon Rangers founder Lizzie Bahnson, guitarist Brian Bolton, and vocalist Brittany Whitmire.

"Ecstasy, dread, defiance, betrayal, hope... the Psalms, the sacred hymns of the ancient Hebrews, overflow with deeply human feelings that transcend any particular age, even any particular religion. But their soul-searching metaphors can become muffled by the chapter-and-verse, thee-and-thou format through which many people today conventionally experience them. That's why Chapel Hill-based musician Charles Pettee has taken up-to-date translations of the Old Testament Psalms and combined them with the modal folk sounds of bluegrass, creating powerful, critically acclaimed new acoustic settings." -- Mountain Xpress, August 6, 2003

"For lots of folks, the psalms have mostly been stylized throwbacks to some quaint, ancient piety safely removed from our stumbling humanity. Charles Pettee frees these audacious songs from our neutered banishments, to work their dark-bright alchemy once again... something very old, very true is at work here." --Mitchell Simpson, pastor