Dear Creek (part of Del Ray Music Week)

Dear Creek and the Barefoot Wanderers’ popularity is growing quickly. They are a folk/indie band influenced by blues, jazz and rock and fostered by the heart of the Appalachian music tradition. Their live shows are passionate, energetic, sincere and always a blast, complete with diverse instrumentation like a washboard, banjo, mandolin, melodica, the Appalachian dulcimer and three part harmonies. All members of the band are students at Shenandoah University, an established and growing music conservatory on the East Coast. They have received raving reviews from around the country, including this one from Kyle Patrick of Groopease:

“Such a gentle voice guides intricate, naturally oriented sounds, creating a lovely texture and the familiar feeling of a summer day in a wide open field with nothing to do. It’s easy to imagine the compliments of birds and wind when enjoying the music of Dear Creek. They’ve successfully derived feel-good qualities from folk and jazz, two very different moods, and resolved upon a very distinct, soulful energy. Just listen to the mid-heavy clean electric guitar in the track “A Word’s Worth”, and you’ll know damn well what I mean.

Bright yet full strums provide much of the content, which is altered and intensified by technicalities, stylistic changes, and a mean stand-up bass tone. The percussion, in accordance with the direction of the tracks, plays upon the ability to drive and declare, as folk music tends to do, and then turn right around and “jazz” the hell out of it. Dear Creek’s self-titled album can be seen as an audible symbol of the balance between external out-pour and internal questioning; resolution and new-found mystery; give and take. All in all, this is a very well-crafted, dramatic, fun, genre-bending album from what will assuredly be an increasingly imaginative and expansive band.”
-Kyle Patrick of Groopease

Write-up by Becca Pollard