Who: A crew of country roots-rockers led by 27-year-old Cory Chisel, a Wisconsin-based singer-songwriter who croons like Nebraska-era Springsteen, dresses like a Deadwood extra and recorded his first EP in his family’s Minnesota cabin.
Sounds Like: Chisel’s Death Won’t Send a Letter is filled with woozy gospel organs and broadly strummed acoustic guitars, and a few famous faces — Brendan Benson co-wrote first single “Born Again,” and his Raconteurs bandmates Little Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler guest, along with My Morning Jacket’s Carl Broemel.
Vital Stats:
• Chisel grew up in a religious household where he was “sheltered from popular music.” An uncle who is a blues musician turned him on to Howlin’ Wolf and John Lee Hooker and Chisel eventually stumbled upon the Clash.
“It’s not a hard jump from John Lee Hooker to Joe Strummer, actually, and from there, Bob Dylan was the next step,” he says. He traded in his hockey stick for a guitar in the summer of sixth grade and whipped up his first batch of songs.
• Hesitant to say he’d ever leave the Midwest, Chisel explains nature is a critical part of his artistic process. “If you’re in a superficial environment, I think the music tends to lean that way. Something about being in the woods… it’s a critic, the environment itself,” he says. He recorded Death in Los Angeles and Nashville, where he admits he was more at home. “In L.A., I found myself thinking in the studio, ‘Shit, traffic’s going to be awful,’ all these peripheral things you don’t want to be thinking about.”
• Church music and Johnny Cash were both big influences on young Chisel, who was drawn to the emotional expansiveness of ...
Article Source: Rolling Stone : Rock and Roll Daily