Pine Hill Haints

Welcome to the Midnight Opry (KLP236) is the third full-length album by The Pine Hill Haints and it’s like a burning tumbleweed headed straight for an open field in the middle of a dry summer. It’s bright, dangerous, vast, and blistering. Laid out before you is a full rotation of snazzed-up, working-class rockabilly. The contradiction there is left open like that so you’re given all sorts of room to mentally wander from one track to the other on an emotional journey that takes you from the range to the rock show – whatever you want to make it within those parameters, that’s what it is.

The digital version of this album is available from Bandcamp.

Originally from Alabama, The Pine Hill Haints formed in the late ‘90s and have since released several albums on . Lead singer James Barrier is a sight to be seen at their live shows (of which they play many) poised tall and dandy behind his home-made wooden microphone stand. He’s backed by a family of a band that provides honey-toned instrumentation through the use of accordions, washboard, saws, buckets – and of course the standards: guitar, bass, and drums.

For this release, the band recorded at Dial Back Sound Studio in Water Valley Mississippi on 2-inch tape. The tracks were recorded live in one night, and then mixed the other night; the end result is anything but slap-dash however, it takes years of practice to become this quick on the draw.