Bone Orchard Revival

Reared in the dusky twilight of Michigan industry and baptized on its haunted shores, Bone Orchard Revival offers Sunday morning lovesick hymnals to break your back and harmonies to mend it, with siren songs sweet and sultry as a Saturday night.

At once angels’ trumpets and devils’ trombones, Adam M. Arscott and company deliver olde-time country, gospel and blues-influenced songs steeped in love, loss, desire and delicious strangers. Bone Orchard Revival’s sound is laden with high lonesome harmonies, ethereal melodies and an unyielding sense of reverence for the trails blazed by those who have hoisted this rag before them. The listener will swoon with that familiar glow as undertones and influences rear their heads, from the Carter Family to Tom Waits, The Handsome Family to Willie Nelson, the strings of Nashville to the line workers of Detroit. Songs unfold like travelogues, revealing steam engine days long gone, heads full with whiskey, ghost moons over sleeping cities, salvation for the sinner and those all too frequent evenings when you wind up using parking meters as walking sticks.

The current live lineup features Trevor Trumble (bass/banjo/guitar), Jesse Livingston (piano/organ/accordion), Scott Waknin (drums), Leeana Marsh (backing vocals) and Grant Netzorg (lead and baritone guitar).

The Bone Orchard Revival tale begins in Michigan in 2006; Mr. Arscott and Jeni Lee Richey were bound by fate to found the ensemble. Initially performing material written by Adam over several years, Mme. Richey soon contributed her sublime songsmithing as well. Performing both as a duo and with band setups from trios to eight piece mobs, the two barnstormed Detroit and Ann Arbor area venues, quickly drawing notice from concert goers and fellow musicians alike. The debut album ‘Hush Money Hymnals’ (Sinister Soul Recordings, 2008) widened the map with reviews from US and UK publications, radio play and sales from the Great Lakes states to Spain and Greece.

In 2009, Mr. Arscott headed West in search of forlorn mining towns and High Plains damnation. A new cadre of musicians for this chapter of the Bone Orchard Revival saga was assembled in Denver, Colorado; new songs were written, new arrangements made – keep the telegraph machine wired in for news, details on the new lineup and upcoming performance dates from ornate theatres to seedy outskirts bars and all places in between.