Scorch-folk singer-songwriter Jon Hogan and fingerpicker/harmony-vocalist Maria Moss have created a unique, powerful sound with their guitars and voices. It’s at once uplifting and dark, modal, modern, and haunting. Original songs blend a 1930s folk sensibility with the soul of old-time Appalachia; their adaptations of traditional mountain music illuminate a new, authentic Old Weird America, and leave listeners feeling they experienced something timeless and meaningful. Based in Austin, they play as a duo and with the Jon Hogan String Band, which includes washtub or upright bass, and sometimes mandolin and fiddle.
The Blaze Foley posthumous co-writes
Marsha Weldon of Texas Ghostwriters Music, sister of the late Blaze Foley ("If I Could Only Fly," "Clay Pigeons"), in early 2009 asked Jon Hogan to write music for several of Blaze’s unfinished songs. These co-authored songs, from Blaze's lyrics, are on the upcoming EP "Safe in the Arms of Love: the Blaze Foley Co-Writes," due in December 2011.
"Long Shot," released in Nov. 2010, is the first Hogan & Moss duo CD. Mixed and mastered by Jonathan Byrd for a raw, natural sound, it is "two guitars, two vocals, three songwriters and the truth." It features songs by Hogan, Moss and Byrd, plus two old-time traditional songs, performed with the duo's trademark intensity.
"Go Lightning" is an old-time album of Hogan's arrangements of 16 traditional songs, recorded live on analog tape around a single mic in Feb. 2010. You can see David Shane Duke's video of the sessions and hear unmastered mixes of many of the songs on the Reverbnation media players. Fundraising for mastering, production on vinyl and a documentary DVD about the project is under way. An excellent studio-mix CD of the full album is available at shows or by writing jonhogan@jonhoganmusic.
Hogan's Musical Roots
Jon Hogan grew up in the American West and has lived in almost every Western state. Immersed from childhood in traditional American, gospel and country music, at age 14 he was playing guitar at city-park bluegrass gigs with his sister and mother. By 20 he was writing songs. Since then, he’s created a formidable repertoire of ballads, love songs, waltzes, and scorch-folk rockers.
Jon’s musical influences began with Woody Guthrie, Dock Boggs, Uncle Dave Macon, Rutherford & Burnet and the Carter Family, and grew to include Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, the White Stripes, Townes Van Zandt, Blaze Foley, Jack Hardy, Greg Brown, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, John Prine, Danny Barnes, Jonathan Byrd, Norman Blake, and Nirvana. He's also been deeply influenced by Smithsonian Folkways' "Mountain Music of Kentucky Vol. II" and the Harry Smith anthology, also known as the Smithsonian Anthology of Folk Music.
The Road to Texas
In the early 2000s, Jon played in bluegrass bands around the Northwest, including Seattle's Crown Hill Billies, learning hundreds of songs. Whenever the road called, he’d busk; he traveled America by train with a dollar in his pocket and a guitar on his back, finding home, friends and inspiration for songs on the rails and in the towns through which they still pass. In 2005, while on one of many 45-day Amtrak jaunts, he made a stopover in Austin; he fell hard for Texas right away, and never looked back.
"Locomotive fingerpicking, like Elizabeth Cotton on a freight train"
Maria grew up in Houston, but spent time as a child soaking up the music and culture of Eastern Tennessee, where her family roots date to the 1860s. Houston was a further education in down-to-earth music: blues halls, zydeco church-dances, swamp-rock and the public radio station KPFT/Pacifica were important influences. So were songwriter havens like Sand Mountain, the Old Quarter and Anderson Fair. She also developed a passion for and a knowledge of outsider, folk, self-taught and visionary art. After graduating from the University of Houston, she had a career as a journalist and editorial consultant, writing first for the New York Times out of the Houston bureau and later for national magazines. In 2007, while recovering from a serious illness, she returned to guitar, and quickly found a unique, driving finger-picking style. They met in 2008 at the Kerrville Folk Festival, and Hogan recognized the sonic "nick" that her unusual picking style offered his own music.
The Jon Hogan String Band
Jon Hogan guitar and vocals - guitar and vocals
Maria Moss - guitar and vocals
Sean "Cornbread" Andrews - washtub bass
Kris Greenwood -- upright bass
Eric Gerber - mandolin and vocals
Richard Bowden - fiddle
Sarah Stollak - fiddle and vocals
Gustavo Roman - fiddle
