David Huckfelt Shares KING WHIRL featuring Dave Simonett of Trampled By Turtles

David Huckfelt will release his solo debut, Stranger Angels, on February 22, 2019. Today, the acclaimed leader of The Pines shares "King Whirl", featuring close friend Dave Simmonett ofTrampled By Turtles. The track is his third offering from the album, written in solitude as the Artist-In-Residence on Isle Royale, where hypnotic banjo and gentle acoustic guitar meet trippy public domain samples and shimmering soundscapes.

"'King Whirl' was almost titled 'The Least, the Last, & the Lost' because that's partly who this record is for," says Huckfelt. "The strange angels that fall through the cracks of this world, which is more of us every day. Whirl overthrows Zeus and becomes King, and its chaos on the landscape, black snake pipelines being built while we speed toward destruction, Saint Francis & the Wolf gettin' ready for the funeral. It's a song against the excess that's choking us all, turn the wine back to water. Erik Koskinen is one of the most original electric guitar players around, he helped write the arrangement, and Dave Simonett's vocals add a sweet urgency to the lines. We got this in two takes, and the first was just as good. In the world we're building, the revolution will not be televised, but the apocalypse sure will."

HEAR / SHARE "KING WHIRL"
https://youtu.be/fNts6kkfvHg

The music on Stranger Angels is both transportive and reflective, focused inwards even as it draws on an abundance of outside influence. "I have a vast trove of collected field recordings, samples, interviews, snippets and extremely rare tracks from all corners of early American music," explains Huckfelt. "Native American peyote songs, moonshiner tutorials and stories from Hamper McBee, hollerin' competitions in North Carolina, a man chopping up a piano with an axe in 1934, a Kiowa flute player being recorded for the first time at the Smithsonian, and more. All giant windows into another world and the soul of man unchanged. It fits with the theme of Stranger Angels, these spirit guides from another world who call to us, screaming in our ears all day so quietly from beyond."

To bring this all together, Huckfelt called upon electronic music wizard Andrew Broder of Fog, who has collaborated with everyone from MF Doom to Bon Iver, and brought him into the studio to play these samples like an instrument, adding to the texture and content of each track. The record also features a never-before-assembled dream team of players, from Amelia Meath of Sylvan Esso and J.T. Bates of Big Red Machine to Phil Cook, Darin Gray (Tweedy, William Tyler) & Jeremy Ylvisaker (Andrew Bird).

Stranger Angels draws on deep wells of Native American tradition and spirituality, a life-long anchor for Huckfelt which has developed more fully through working with Native songwriters and poets like John Trudell, Quiltman, Keith Secola, Tom LaBlanc and more.

Artfully weaving the historical, the ecological, and the personal into an elegant lyrical web, the songs on Stranger Angels contain layers of surprise and richness.

Huckfelt expands, "None of this would have been possible without the artist residency at Isle Royale, which I call the land of room enough, time enough. Money is not the only obstacle to creativity for a working artist, space and time are also endangered. The National Park Service is in the conservation business, and they're experts at leaving things alone and letting natural processes work. The residency was a hands-off, no string attached gift of solitude as a songwriter, and the first time I've been able to stretch all the way out and follow every first thought to it's conclusion."

The CD version of the record is shipping now for pre-orders, with vinyl soon to follow in early February; both are available for pre-order now at www.davidhuckfelt.com