Somewhere on I-85 South, there's a boy with a guitar case in the back seat and the whole Upstate calling him home, and that's where this thing starts, in a car, at night, windows cracked, radio off cause he's writing the song himself right now, ain't got time to listen to nobody else's. Except he isn't alone anymore; he's got a whole band behind him now, Riley Myer bendin the lead guitar, AJ Barrett switching off between banjo and harmonica, and Fanny Wonder holding the whole thing together on drums so it doesn't just fly apart somewhere around exit 40.
Benny Hagerty fronts the band; his rhythm guitar and voice sound like he's confessing something he ain't fully worked out yet himself. The whole outfit's rooted in Appalachian folk and blues, a Blue Ridge Mountain sound that's stripped down to the bone and then built back up with four people instead of one. I keep listening to one called "Keowee Moon," off their debut record "Hills & Highways," which dropped back in February, and it's named for that lake up in the foothills that we all know and love.
Benny hits home with this song. Death Valley on a Saturday. Triple T's, and anyone that's passed through Clemson has lost something at Triple T's: a fake license, a Saturday night, a bad decision, a phone number scrawled on a napkin. Anyone that's driven I-85 at 2 am has talked to themselves the whole damn way just to stay awake and stay sane. This is no postcard song, this is a whole band driving eleven hours cause somethin in em told em to.
They been on the road too, hauled this sound up through North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, all the way up to New Jersey and New York City and back again, and still they come home. It always seems like there is a fair bit of loneliness in the good ones; always has been. Isn't sad exactly. Homesick, I guess.
