Biography
While most of their contemporaries are surfing the blogosphere daily to figure out what new hip direction they should take their band in to get some notice, LA’s Driftwood Singers have taken a very un-contemporary route. The duo of Kris Hutson and Pearl Charles play a simpler kind of folk that one might’ve heard on the southern front porches of 1930’s America.
Kris, in suspenders and all, rotates between guitar, banjo and mandolin while harmonizing along with Pearl, who dressed in garb fit for hanging sheets out to dry in Appalachia, strums her autoharp. The pair of 19 year olds has already logged more than 100 shows since they began playing last fall, with tours up and down the west coast and trips to Nashville and New York City. Not ones to turn down many shows, they recently played 3 shows in one day across the greater Los Angeles area, a morning stop in Oxnard, afternoon gig in Glendale and an evening show in Silver Lake. It’s that kind of determination to play whenever and wherever possible that has started gathering them attention from music fans and critics alike including No Depression who posted some of their earliest home demos. They were recently (and fittingly) featured on a Carter Family tribute alongside Calvin Johnson and Kimya Dawson.
Their debut EP, Look! carries on where their demo’s left off. After attempting to record the songs in a studio, they decided to record them at home on a hand held cassette recorder that was then cleaned up in mastering. The resulting 5 songs are showcased in a way that lets you feel the warm crackle of the phonograph they appear to be coming from. Inspired by beat poetry and murder ballads, songs like “Coco Ellis”, “Come Across the Tracks” and “Rosalee Little” are irresistible gems for anyone with an old soul and an ear for the yester year.
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