“I work on the farm 60 hours a week between March and October. An average week during the busy season has two harvest days, one market day, and three days of weeding, planting, and everything else.” It’s a busy life for singer-songwriter and farmer NATHANIEL TALBOT, who runs an organic vegetable farm on Whidbey Island, in Washington State’s Puget Sound. In addition to farming, he’s just released his fourth album, SWAMP ROSE & HONEYSUCKLE VINE on Portland, Oregon’s Fluff & Gravy Records. The album marks the harvest of a different sort for Talbot, who has also spent over two decades tending to the crafts of songwriting and guitar playing. His songs on the new album are intimately tied to the lush farmland and windswept vistas of Whidbey Island, deeply rooted in the earth and American traditionalism.

Swamp Rose & Honeysuckle Vine captures the raw, live energy of Talbot’s guitar playing, and has a more stripped-down approach than his previous albums – no drums, fewer string arrangements, and sparse vocal harmonies. Tracking guitar and vocals live and solo, usually in just one or two takes, Talbot then brought in his quartet of Portland all-stars,Anna Tivel (violin, vocals), Sam Howard (double bass) and Lincoln Crockett (mandolin) and Benji Nagel (dobro), whose auxiliary instrumentation is used intentionally and sparingly to great effect, filling in and conversing with the core of Talbot’s playing and singing. “Challenging what folk music is capable of,” says Seattle Weekly, “Talbot’s powerful, uplifting voice harnesses a country twang complemented by lush acoustic finger-picking and a violin that feels like it was birthed next to a babbling brook in the mountains.” Channeling the lyrical prowess and gritty charm of Anais Mitchell on tracks like “As the Way,” and the concrete characterization in the work of Elliott Smith on tracks like “Able Man,” Talbot stands on the shoulders of generations of folk musicians and Americana singer-songwriters before him. His approach to music feels like that of someone who treats it as a craft handed down and honed, like the tilling of soil or the carving of wood.

Nathaniel Talbot’s music has dirt under its fingernails, the product of decades of hard work and crafting – retuning, replanting, and retelling. The result is true American roots music, combining the soulful edge of tradition with the Pacific Northwest’s legacy of freedom and innovation.