Horse Feathers will reissue their debut album, Words Are Dead, on August 28th via Kill Rock Stars, two decades after it first appeared. Long out of print, the album has been completely remastered and pressed on an exclusive colour vinyl, housed in a foil-stamped jacket. The package also restores a replica of the original six-song demo CD, once available only at shows.
It is easy to forget the band started as a duo – or that the term ‘indie folk’ didn’t even exist at the time (as Ringle shares below). After fronting rock bands in Idaho, Justin Ringle moved to Portland in 2004 and turned to acoustic music, playing open mics under the Horse Feathers name. In early 2006, multi-instrumentalist Peter Broderick — a familiar presence in these pages — heard a couple of Ringle’s demos and offered to help build them out. That February the pair recorded Words Are Dead at Skyler Norwood’s Miracle Lake studios, and Portland label Lucky Madison released it that September. Heather Broderick joined on cello before the year was out, and from 2007 a rotating cast of players formed around Ringle’s guitar and voice.
The reissue leads with the demo track Finch on Saturday, the first thing the band committed to tape. As Ringle tells it:
“‘Finch on Saturday’ perfectly embodied the spirit of the early days of Horse Feathers. An impossibly earnest and economically arranged acoustic number conceived during the middle of a Portland summer. Bush was president and bombastic indie rock ruled the day. Contextually I think we felt vaguely punk playing gentle music teasing political themes at the time. ‘Indie Folk’ wasn’t a genre we had heard of yet.”
In the years after Words Are Dead, Horse Feathers built a catalogue shaped by patience rather than reinvention. House With No Home, Thistled Spring and Cynic’s New Year widened the palette without loosening the restraint that set them apart, and by Appreciation the sound had opened outward into warmer, fuller arrangements. Ringle stayed the constant, writing songs that prized emotional precision over spectacle. Revisiting the debut now, that same care for space and tone still anchors everything the band does.
To support the release, the current ensemble — Justin Ringle (guitar, vocals, banjo), Nathan Crockett (violin, saw), Halli Anderson of River Whyless (violin, vocals), Kati Claborn of Blind Pilot (banjo, vocals, clarinet) and Luke Ydstie, also of Blind Pilot (bass, cello, vocals) — recreates the mood of the original with taut dynamics and sensitive arrangements across a US tour.
Pre-Order Words Are Dead (Deluxe Reissue): https://horsefeathersband.bandcamp.com/album/words-are-dead-deluxe-reissue
Tour Dates:
August 6th – Portland, OR @ Topaz Farm
August 20th – Spokane, WA @ The District Bar
August 22nd – Olympia, WA @ Wild Child
August 23rd – Seattle, WA @ The Tractor
August 27th – Trout Lake, WA @ Trout Lake Hall
August 28th – Astoria, OR @ Liberty Theater
August 29th – Eugene, OR @ Eugene Art House
August 30th – Bend, OR @ Silver Moon Brewing
September 11th – Asheville, NC @ Grey Eagle Music Hall
September 12th – Durham, NC @ Stanczyk’s
September 15th – Roanoke, VA @ The Spot on Kirk
September 16th – Charlottesville, VA @ The Southern
September 17th – Vienna, VA @ Jammin’ Java
September 18th – New York, NY @ Village Presents
September 20th – Boston, MA @ Club Passim
September 23rd – Arlington Heights, IL @ Hey Nonny
September 24th – Lake Orion, MI @ 20 Front Street
September 25th – Columbus, OH @ Natalie’s Grandview
September 26th – Pittsburgh, PA @ Club Cafe
