A dark haired man sits down in front of a microphone with a well-traveled guitar on his lap. He looks at the audience across the stage lighting, strums an off-kilter, wide-open chord, pauses, then sings - “See the stubble wheat fields, far as you could care to drive.” He pauses again, then with a shout, kicks his feet into a galloping rhythm on a piece of oak below his chair and launches into a fast country-folk shuffle. “We go chasing freight trains and watch the autumn geese fly.”

This is Montana songwriter Adam Nordell, performing place-based songs on guitar, 5-string banjo and foot percussion. Drawing inspiration from the sounds of early country and Appalachian mountain music, Nordell fuses lyrical poetry with a deeply-rooted strain of American-folk music. “A melody is a story, and any story needs a landscape - I get to create a landscape around with my songs with a guitar and my feet - so you can step right in to the song and look around.”

Featured folk and roots musicians from across Montana include: Johanna Davis — fiddle and harmony vocals (Sassafras Stomp); Barb Piccolo — accordion (WMDs, Clancy Jammers); Adam McDonald — drums (Tonight We Ride); Matt Cornette — bluegrass and clawhammer banjos (Missoula’s Broken Valley Roadshow); Nate Biehl — mandolin (Broken Valley Roadshow); Gary Morris — trumpet (Kalispell’s Tra Le Gael); Chris Cunningham — second guitar and harmony vocals (Bozeman, Storyhill); Ken Glynn — drums (Bozeman, Sixth Sense).

This is his debut solo album.

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