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ARTIST
TITLE
The Old Gods
FORMAT
LP

LABEL
CATALOG #
FTR 830LP FTR 830LP
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
7/3/2026

Joseph Allred is a Tennessee-based guitarist, singer, multi-instrumental composer, and visual artist with deep roots in the Upper Cumberland region of Tennessee and Kentucky. Their guitar playing draws from diverse musical styles including Appalachian folk, bluegrass, blues, flamenco, and classical guitar, as well as from folk iconoclasts John Fahey and Robbie Basho, figures of the 20th century avant-garde like Albert Ayler, Derek Bailey, and Henry Flynt, and the musical traditions of India, Iran, and the Arab world.

"The impetus for this album came while I was sitting in a cave near my house, ruminating on very old things. The title has to do with my own interest in history and rootedness, but it also acknowledges a futility. The pursuit of the 'old gods' often involves an obsession with simplicity and purity that only resolves through the construction of dishonest fantasies and a correlated denial of complexity. Perhaps the 'old gods' only start to become apparent when we know ourselves in relation not only to the vast and ancient cave networks in the mountains, not only to the data gathered from the lives and deaths of stars light years away, but also to the near-incomprehensible complexity of the dirt's microbiome, the constant marching of life and death under our feet at every moment which will eventually consume our bodies just as our sun's death throes will consume the earth. Though the starting point of this album was a rumination, the pieces contained here are less meditations than they were opportunities for me to empty myself of myself. It's only in these moments that I begin to feel I know anything at all." --Joseph Allred