Biography
-
Years Active
2008 – present (17 years)
-
Founded In
Kalamazoo, Kalamazoo County, Michigan, United States
Cold Mountain Child creates earthy, nature-wave folk music with soul, psych-tropicalismo influences. It has been said,
"Kalamazoo's Cold Mountain Child brings poetic beauty, lush "complex vibes" to the indie-folk scene."
John Sinkevics, WYCE
The band seeks to offer myths of heart to a world cluttered with distraction and destruction. In March 2015 they released their latest album, Earth Wave Sway, on vinyl.
Their songs are rooted in pastoral folk structures, offering an aural tapestry that includes traditional roots americana, neo-soul groove and psychedelic nature narratives. Singer-songwriter Tyler Bradley chants of ecstatic agency, tender loving and a yearning for new realities beyond the mundane. Their live performances offer both lyrical acoustic ballads and a lush full-band vibe which adds influences from jazz, tropicalia and reggae. At home in travel trailers, orchards, and in sun-baked patios, their sound strides psychic and cultural borders, from rural southwest Michigan to barrios in southern Mexico. Their sounds are a humble exaltation to wild nature, including the human that glows in each of us.
Led by the pull and power of aural creation, Tyler Bradley and David Spalvieri-Kruse created Cold Mountain Child in 2008, after Tyler had finished recording a series of lo-fi autumnal songs titled ''And All I've Done is Walk Around and Hide in Leaves". Music became an inner compass and salve midst the excess and confusion for sale on every corner. The duo collaborated on piano and guitar arrangements to release their first official album, "Stillness Singing" in 2009. Layers of woodsy, wintery tones and hushed vocal harmonies were all blanketed in an analogue, lo-fi esthetic. Lyrically the album mirrored Tyler's travels throughout Peru as well as inner journeys of meditation and sacred plant explorations.
After playing and touring locally following the release of Stillness, David moved for a time to a small town in Maine where the air smelled of pine. Tyler also left Michigan for the dogwood blossoms of Atlanta, Georgia. This period marked the growth of Tyler as a songwriter and lyricist, wrestling with the beauty and inherent wisdom of nature, the inner depths of self-knowledge and a search for realities beyond the cruelties of the capitalist system. Their sounds shifted from the cozy winter layering of their earlier material to a more earthy, psychedelic folk tone. In 2011 they released "High Peak Hearth Songs", an E.P. chronicling a revelatory time Tyler spent traveling alone in the Andean high mountains.
Shortly thereafter several other musicians joined the group, including Michelle Brenes singing heady vocal harmonies and John Kreider, a percussionist with a gift for nuanced rhythms that naturally enhanced the band's earthy folk vibe. Their expanding sound wove influence from roots Americana, 60's protest folk, tropicalismo and reggae, and in late 2013 they began recording their new album. During production Tyler and David moved out to Bangor, a small rural community in southwest Michigan, to live in a travel trailer on a friend's farm. With its quiet challenges of self-sufficiency and its rambling ecstasies of inner/outer Selfhood, country life profoundly impacted Tyler's lyrical and musical journey by further connecting his inner realms with his surrounding community of beings - animal, vegetable, mineral.
Released on March 27th, 2015, their new album, Earth Wave Sway is a reflection of these years of growth. Cold Mountain Child returns to share the nectars of its explorations, and stands to create heart songs, hymns of our sacred place on this great earth and of our need to move beyond the destructive nature of market civilization.
The band manifests concurrently as a four-piece act and solo acoustic experience, beginning work on LP2 for 2016. They've shared stages with Strawberry Heritage, Red Tail Ring, Chris Bathgate, Elisabeth Pixley-Fink and Jeffrey Lewis. Join them for their next live performance and come ride the earth wave!
Artist descriptions on Last.fm are editable by everyone. Feel free to contribute!
All user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.
