Dowsers Sign to Gar Hole Records With Two New Tracks

Dowsers are a sextet spread between North Carolina and Illinois, and their lineup reads like a cross-section of the experimental folk-rock underground rather than a casual pickup band. Courtney Werner and Evan Morgan come from Magic Tuber Stringband and Weirs; Oliver Child-Lanning from Weirs, Sluice and Fust; Austin Cash from his solo work and Nathan Smearage; James Gibian from Beak Trio; Alli Rogers from Alli Blois. The group also organizes a festival, FEAST.

Their signing to Gar Hole Records arrives with two songs that pull in different directions. “Dogwood” is a slow roots-rock ballad Morgan wrote in spring 2020 at a friend’s grandparents’ house in Hayesville, North Carolina. A dogwood tree outside that house sits at the center of the song, which he frames as a reflection on aging against natural cycles that keep returning, and on how dependable those seasonal markers remain as local ecosystems shift.

“Three Forks of Cheat” is an instrumental built on an Edden Hammons fiddle tune from Webster County, West Virginia, which Morgan learned through playing with Will Csorba. He has said the tune’s uneven B part suggested the three forks of the Cheat River, and the arrangement closes with a sludge passage he credits to the Athens band Harvey Milk.

Taken together, the pair shows a band treating traditional material as something to be bent and rebuilt rather than preserved. That is the more interesting proposition, and it is the reason these two tracks are worth the attention.