The Dead Tongues
Unsung Passage
PSY-001 • Released: May 18, 2018
Liner Notes
The 2023 reissue of Unsung Passage will be available on Clear Vinyl as an online exclusive, Pale November Blue Vinyl as a Magnolia Record Club exclusive, Golden Hour Yellow Vinyl as a North Carolina Indie Store Exclusive, standard black vinyl, and CD. Pre-orders for this release should ship on August 25, 2023.
The ten remarkable songs of Unsung Passage are long-distance distillations of experiences, of events lived and places seen and pondered and ultimately poured into reflective anthems for our harried times. Gustafson recorded these songs much as they were written-during short summer sojourns away from the road, when he and a quartet of friends could gather in the Chapel Hill studio The Rubber Room for two-day sessions. Longtime North Carolina confidants and collaborators James Wallace, Jeff Crawford, and Casey Toll form the rhythm section, while Mountain Man’s Molly Sarlé harmonizes softly and adds a filigree of unexpected flute. Other friends offer fiddle and percussion, cello and extra guitar, softly padding songs that stand as statements unto themselves.
Contributors
- All songs written by Ryan Gustafson
- Recorded at the Rubber Room in Chapel Hill, NC and at CD Alley 2, in Durham, NC
- Produced and mixed by Ryan Gustafson
- Engineered by Saman Khoujinian Ryan Gustafson
- Performed by:
- Ryan Gustafson - vocals, guitars, banjo, harmonica, keys
- James Wallace - drums, keys, vocals
- Molly Sarlé - vocals, flute
- Jeff Crawford - bass (tracks 1, 2, 5, 7), vocals
- Casey Toll - bass (3, 4, 8, 9, 10)
- Emily Frantz - fiddle (9)
- Will Franke - violin (3, 6)
- Drew Anagnost - cello
- Andrew Marlin - mandolin, vocals
- Josh Moore - vocals
- Thomas Costello - vocals
- Josh Oliver - guitar (8)
- Art and design by Timothy Revis
- Photography by Shervin Lainez