American Magus

"It all started as a lark," says Adam Gray, a 26 year old graduate student in English, and the brain-child behind Northern Michigan’s finest new folk experiment, American Magus. His love of traditional music and the echo-boom of the mid 1960s is "indicative of a broader shift" in the tastes of the constellation of local music talent, Gray states. American Magus’ debut album, Antebellum, drawing on pre-war folk, murder ballads, and John Fahey, certainly supports Gray’s claim.

Raised on a healthy dose of the royal McCartney/Dylan/Wilson triumvirate, Gray traded one of his Fender guitars for a Good Time banjo and a Gibson F-style mandolin in the summer of 2006 and an idea was born. "I always wanted to take this vision, this essence of musical history, to the Upper Peninsula." Indeed, several of Gray’s previous bands, the power-pop trio Distant Cousins, and the Kinks-cum-Zombies combo of The Mean Reds weren’t making the kind of local impact that Gray envisioned. Then, in a small Keweenaw-area pub, Gray met American Magus’ sole other member, Melissa Welsh. "She was wearing this black-and-white polka dot dress. Something right out of a 1930s revival meeting, or a Flannery O’Connor short story. And she told the bartender to ’turn it up’ when Springsteen’s; "Born to Run" came over the speakers. That was that," Gray says with a laugh. "She had an old Tascam 4-track recorder and she started helping me to cut the album a week later in my apartment’s spare bedroom."

It is The Boss, indeed, whose knack for defiant working-class folk is felt most deeply on Antebellum. From the swooning falsetto intro of "Algebra Homework" to the final banjo rolls of "The Life You Save May Be Your Own," Gray’s music also evokes a Nebraska-era campfire sing-along or the hell-hound-on-my-trail Americana of a Eudora Welty story.

The frightening American Gothic tale "Bete Noir" begins with a lonely harmonica and the simple words of Gray, telling the story of lovers in a dangerous time, and "Idle Hands" may be the jauntiest song about murdering your lover this side of Nick Cave.

The album, though, is perhaps best summed up by its penultimate tune – the spare, "Murder Weapon." As Gray simultaneously praises and damns the heart of an unrequited love, one realizes that torture and salvation have never sounded so young and so gorgeous.

Gray is currently planning a two-CD release of covers from the Cole Porter songbook. "He's a goddamned American treasure," Gray states. The release date is set for August 1, 2009.