GRAMMY Award-winning musician and scholar Dom Flemons, known as “The American Songster,” will release ‘Traveling Wildfire’ on March 24, the latest offering in his indelible musical journey and his most personal album to date.
The last album delivered by American Songster Dom Flemons was Black Cowboys in 2018, on which he paid tribute to the music, culture, and complex history of the golden era of the Wild West, shedding light on the role that African-American, Native American and Mexican men and women pioneers played in westward expansion. That album was two years in the making, the idea initially inspired by Phillip Durham’s book The Negro Cowboys. With Traveling Wildfire, his second album for Smithsonian Folkways, he turns to an important, overlooked voice that he’s proudly rediscovered: his own.
“Knowing that I was going to be showcasing original material for a good deal of the record, I wanted to give people a different view of my songwriting,” he says. “I figured that I’ve done enough records where people know that I can do old-time material. I didn’t let myself be limited by that. There are some spots on this album that will be a surprise for people. I think it will take them into a very different headspace in terms of what they’d expect from me. But that’s also something I wanted to do. As an artist, you have to think, ‘What aren’t they going to expect?’”
While Flemons can kick up the dust, he can also roll out the smooth, as we heard on Too Long (I’ve Been Gone) from 2014’s Prospect Hill. That said, you have not heard him like this before. On the slow-country-waltz ‘Slow Dance With You‘, the first album single, featuring Matt Pynn on pedal steel and David Hidalgo of Los Lobos on drums, Flemons’ vocals are smooth and soulful, a cross somewhere between Charley Pride and Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline.
The album is like a journey of two halves, with traditional country music woven throughout the first half of the project, with the second half easing into an acoustic, upbeat style that showcases Flemons’ talents as an arranger, musician, and interpreter of folk songs. It was envisioned as a double album, and with artwork by mixed media collage artist Sylvia Marina Martinez, the double vinyl LP package looks stunning.
Traveling Wildfire feels like a joyful awakening from a familiar, dreamlike state.
As well as Matt Pynn and David Hidalgo mentioned above, other guest musicians include Sam Bush on fiddle, the Pogues’ James Fearnley on piano accordion and a duet with Lashon Halley (co-lead singer of Dustbowl Revival).
The album was recorded in Los Angeles with producer Ted Hutt (Old Crow Medicine Show, Dropkick Murphys), Traveling Wildfire represents The American Songster’s journey for the past two decades and takes a deeper look at how those years changed his life. The album begins quietly, like an intimate conversation in the middle of the night, and as it unfolds, it calls to mind the initial sparks that happen at the beginning of a new relationship.
“When I was coming up with these particular numbers for Traveling Wildfire, I wanted to have a flavor of very traditional Country & Western music that could also reflect the Black experience from my perspective,” Flemons says. “One of the things that I’ve noticed since Black Cowboys is that people are wanting to hear more Black country music that reflects both their culture, environment, and values while still sounding like it’s rooted in tradition.”
Raised in Phoenix, Arizona, Flemons comes from a family of civil rights leaders, Tuskegee Airmen, and preachers who were prominent figures in the Black community of Arizona. His father, a former basketball player and member of the Black fraternity Kappa Alpha Psi introduced him to classic country music. As a kid listening to local radio, Flemons learned more about country legends like Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell. In college, he took an online class on country music history and first heard the music of DeFord Bailey and Charley Pride. That discovery ignited a passion for finding other African American performers with country songs in their repertoire.
Alongside original compositions, Flemons covers Rev. Gary Davis (Saddle It Around) and a song learned from a prison recording by Jimmie Strother (We Are Almost Down the Shore). He also turns to the work of Eric Andersen (“Song to JCB”) and Bob Dylan (“Guess I’m Doing Fine”), who issued music on Folkways early in their careers, making their inclusion on this project especially fitting.
Asked what he hopes his audience will hear in Traveling Wildfire, Flemons replies, “I hope people will be able to hear the different phases of my life through the lyrics and feel the energy that fuels my creativity within the songs. The past few years for me have been a time of deep reflection and meditation. I hope that the album will light a fire of inspiration inside everyone who experiences it.”
Traveling Wildfire Tracklisting
- Slow Dance with You
- Dark Beauty
- If You Truly Love Me
- Traveling Wildfire
- It’s Cold Inside
- We Are Almost Down to the Shore
- Nobody Wrote It Down
- Saddle It Around
- Big Money Blues
- Old Desert Road
- Rabbit Foot Rag
- Tough Luck
- Song to JCB
- Guess I’m Doing Fine
- Songster Revival
Folkways Album Page: https://folkways.si.edu/dom-flemons/traveling-wildfire