Dark Holler Discography

"Yesterday Will Be Better" CDr hollr271

An exceptional album of homegrown old-time music played on homemade instruments. 12 songs, mostly traditional, culled from Withrow’s Kentucky upbringing and delivered in a style which both harkens back to the grandfathers of the genre (Dock Boggs, Roscoe Holcomb, Frank Proffitt, Fred McDowell) while adding Kirk’s own style into the mix. Played on cigar-box banjos, diddly bows, cigar-box guitars, and something called the “voodoo box.” Primitive Americana with mojo to spare.

Terry Earl Taylor

"Another Time" CD hollr231

Track Listing:
1. I’ve been Away
2. Where the Cock don’t Crow
3. John Lankin
4. Wish I had a Parker Pen
5. She came down to Town
6. Long Journey Home
7. Go Make another Grave
8. Motel in the Pines
9. Sadie Grove
10. Dock Boggs is Dead
11. Hanging at Picnic Rock
12. Prettiest Girl I ever Saw
13. Waterbound
14. Poor Clarence Hopkins
15. Billy Bones
16. November 31st
17. Going ‘round the World

The Spectral Light & Moonshine Firefly Snakeoil Jamboree

"The Gravedigger's Lament and the Unquiet Dead" 3" CDr hollr232

The Spectral Light & Moonshine Firefly Snakeoil Jamboree play creaking, wheezing, imperfect music from America’s forgotten shadows. This is true Gothic Appalachian music, rooted in old-time music and often played on 19th century instruments ~ their repitoire is mostly traditional: graveyard blues, murder ballads, ghost songs, and old hymns. They sing, as one reviewer stated, “the sound of musical cobwebs.”

"The Gravedigger’s Lament and the Unquiet Dead” is 6 songs, approximately 20 minutes of tombstone blues and boneyard ballads. All of the songs are previously unreleased except “In the Pines” which originally appeared under a different name on the “Tractor Tunes Vol. 2”

Track Listing:
1. Sweet Nora Lee / June Apple
2. Two White Horses
3. Dark Holler Blues
4. In the Pines
5. Death Letter
6. The Unquiet Grave

sold out / out of print

Bob Buckingham & Friends

"My Friend is a Mule in the Mines" CD hollr881

"My Friend is a Mule in the Mines" was the second release from Dark Holler. Subtitled "Old-Time Excursions," this CD has been praised for it's wonderfully original approach to old-time music. Fiddle tunes, old-time country, and blues are all handled with equal skill by Bob, a multi-instrumentalist from York County, Pennsylvania (now relocated to North Carolina). The title cut is a song his Grandfather sang for the Bishop among others when he retired from the Methodist clergy. The CD also includes a nearly lost, traditional York County Fiddle tune, called "Unicorn".

Bob appeared regularly in the region with the Contra Rebels, the house band for the York Folk Dance Association. Fellow band members, Reed Martin and Todd Clewell join Bob on this project which includes four banjo duets with Reed. Other guests include Bob Hess and Timothy Renner.

track listing:
1. Old Molly Hare
2. Sandy River Belle
3. Going Down South
4. Ramblin’ Gambler
5. Forked Deer
6. My Friend is a Mule in the Mines
7. Long Steel Rail Blues
8. Unicorn
9. Ground Hog
10. Soldier’s Joy
11. Lying Blues
12. Dark Holler Blues
13. Liberty
14. Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down
15. Mole in the Ground
16. The Yellow Rose of Texas
17. Sourwood Mountain
18. Sally Ann
19. Improv/Deal

The Spectral Light & Moonshine Firefly Snakeoil Jamboree

"Scarecrow Stuffing" CD hollr991

Listen to the lonesome banjo, the banshee fiddles, ghostly dulcimer, guitars, flutes, banjo-mandoline, harmonium…these haunted voices call from the dark hollows of another time This is The Spectral Light & Moonshine Firefly Snakeoil Jamboree. Their music has been called old-time, Appalachian-gothic, wyrdfolk, dark-folk. As one reviewer put it, their songs are “the sound of musical cobwebs.” The songs are mostly traditional: murder ballads, ghost songs, 19th century Christian hymns- passed down through history, gathered by the band, and presented here with a few originals in a similar vein.

Timothy, the founder of The Spectral Light & Moonshine Firefly Snakeoil Jamboree, grew up in a haunted farmhouse in rural Maryland. Though living in rural America, Timothy was not exposed to non-commercial rural American music until his mid-20’s. Upon hearing the music, Timothy said he felt like he had come home. A short time later he bought a banjo. The rest is history. Quite literally. For besides the old songs, Timothy plays banjo in the clawhammer style, a rawer style of playing, as old as the instrument itself, which predates the bluegrass finger-picking styles most people think of when they hear the word “banjo.” Timothy, who also founded the acid-folk band Stone Breath, is joined here by Sarada (also of Stone Breath), RA Campbell (of Stone Breath and Mourning Cloak), Prydwyn (Stone Breath and Green Crown), and Bob Buckingham, the man who first showed Timothy how to play clawhammer.

Track Listing:
1. God Bless the Moon
2. Tom Dula
3. Path of Nails
4. Black Horse Ride
5. Cold Rain and Snow
6. The Song of the Scarecrow
7. Walkin’ in the Palor
8. A Conversation with Death
9. The Bone Collector
10. The Cuckoo
11. Stealing the Fire from Heaven
12. Little Margaret
13. House Carpenter
14. Thirteen
15. Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down

sold out / out of print