Hogan & Moss and the Old Weird America
Thursday, June 2, 2022
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Mesquite, NV
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Original songs with old souls. The Carter Family canon. West Texas waltzes, Appalachian mystery rants, vintage country, blues and soul and midcentury swing. Part folkabilly scorch, part 1930s dancehall, part neon desert twang. It sounds like Ireland, North Mississippi and East Tennessee, and an imaginary place where songs by Tom Waits, Townes Van Zandt, Amy Winehouse, Nirvana, Warren Zevon and Billy Joel are rearranged by the likes of Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, Bob Wills, Geeshie Wiley, A.P. Carter. and the ghost of Blaze Foley. It’s uplifting and dark, historical, primitive, modern, joyous and haunting.
Jon Hogan and Maria Moss have toured Texas and the Western U.S. full-time for more than a decade, and now play more than 250 shows, house concerts and teaching events annually. Their shows range from high-energy full-band dance celebrations with the Old Weird America band on bass, drums, mandolin, lap steel, and fiddle, to house-concert duo and trio performances with upright bass. In 2016 they toured in Ireland, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Based in Houston, they play a regular circuit of gigs in the Texas Hill Country and the Big Bend in the fall, winter and spring, and tour New Mexico, Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming in the summer.
In 2018 Jon and Maria were selected as Facilitating Songwriters/Artists in Residence in a national music engagement and research initiative funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. Throughout the year, they work with nonprofit foundations to bring music performance, music history, and the craft of songwriting to classrooms and communities. They also give talks on the enduring power and mystery of the music of the Carter Family and other old-time artists.
The Old Weird America band takes its name from Greil Marcus’ classic work of American music criticism, an inspirational and indispensable codex to a music that nonetheless remains a mystery, and forever shall.