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Donna Lynn Caskey / Press

“Nameless Heart is the album of an accomplished musician—a banjo player of extraordinary skill and imagination. Donna Lynn Caskey is a Magna Cum Laude graduate of the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC, where she received a scholarship to take the class “Clawhammer Banjo by Ear.” Her old-time roots are evident throughout, but she has taken the banjo into a vast new territory as well, where her songs often modulate between major and minor keys, shift rhythms without hesitation, and always find the perfect note to meld tune and meaning together into a seamless whole. As Emerson said to a certain Good Grey Poet who had requested him to review his first edition of Leaves of Grass: 'I greet you at the beginning of a great career.'”

“I heard her sing and play her banjo a few years ago, in the midst of so many musicians and songwriters playing their songs, and I never could forget her music. Simple and stark against beautiful driving rhythms and delicate passages of her fine 5-string banjo, her songs resound like modern spirituals. She writes and plays beautiful songs of enduring hope along the ways of being human. Her voice and words and banjo all seem entwined, so that her songs seem intrinsic, unforced, and genuine. Her message is earthy and affirmative both, a beautiful connection between the world of nature and of man, and her acoustic textures reflect this natural connection... This is delicate and dynamic music, unaffected, beautifully produced by Mark Hallman, full of spirit and calm focus. This is music that is good for the spirit – good for all that ails us – an acoustic antidote to chaos and overload. I hope this is the first of many. She’s very much the real deal.”