featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music
September 29, 2026
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust
IF YOU ONLY LiSTEN to ONE RECORD THiS WEEK
As we reminded folks with last week's Orville Peck review, concept albums can be a tough creature to tame. Ian Noe has mentioned that Canyon Falls Trailer Band (Lock13) tells the story of an outfit trying to strike gold, trusting their fate to a one-night stand. Restricting his third LP to a single story short changes the Kentucky artist's masterful way with character sketches and regional mythologies. The sixteen-cut project never limits itself or wears out its welcome, but rather cements Noe as an unparalleled backwoods bard.
Ian Noe said of Eastern Kentucky in a recent interview, I grew up here. It's all I've ever known. I love it. I'm inspired by it. It's where I learned how to play music. Noe excels at painting his portraits and spinning his yarns without judgment. On CFTB he names names and plots places on the map: Hook a left down at the crooked Coke sign, he advises on "Heidelberg Fisherman's Ball". Because he sings from a place of deep respect, Noe can call out hillbillies and rednecks, whether he's recounting a Friday night rager or detailing a town's falling prey to addiction. On "Heidelberg", the narrator boasts, I never get towed and I never get stuck / I got a VCR baby, make my own wine.
Canyon Falls Trailer Band is produced by Andrija Tokic, who earned the right with his superb work on 2022's River Fools & Mountain Saints. On songs like the title cut, he surrounds Noe with a deeper band than usual, with special recognition to Jo Schornikow's piano and Billy Contreras, whose fiddle serves an essential role here. As he loosely follows the story of the dreams and aspirations of a fellow country artist, the line between fiction and his own story is blurred: I'm trying to make a living / The only way I know how. The collection's more upbeat tracks rumble by on an appropriately easygoing spirit. "Redneck Mess" delivers a rowdy, shout-along country chorus, as the narrator plots his ascension: Someday when I'm sitting good / I'm gonna buy this whole mountain / And move it out to Hollywood. The great Russ Pahl fuels numbers such as "Another Night Like That" with blazing electric leads and pedal steel support.
But Ian Noe fostered his growing reputation on records constructed with subtlety and restraint, numbers that ranged ably between folk and country. Even with the added support, "What I'd Give" and "Tobacco Moon" recall the writer's fondness for minor keys and haunting imagery (what was the last country song you remember that featured a french horn solo?). "Bible County" hails from the same spectral place: Your old house is a lonely kudzu bed / And the birdbath broke, and the flowers disappeared. Dedicated to Blaze Foley, "Jukebox Blues" fills the footsteps of Townes Van Zandt: My back's been hurting, I know it won't be long / I can feel the angels circling / I pray I go out on a Merle Haggard song. Noe also name-drops country-adjacent artists like the Byrds, Waylon, and George Jones. "Leeann" is one of the year's most memorable tunes: The speakers stay high / All through the night, playing Live Rust. It's a moment of tentative homecoming on a record shot through with departures, a quietly masterful song.
Fewer than ten years have passed since Ian Noe's promising debut EP, Off This Mountaintop, and the songwriter has taken due time honing his craft. There are no cheap rhymes or false narratives on Canyon Falls Trailer Band. We can count of few fingers the artists in whose company we'd include Noe: John R Miller, Pony Bradshaw, Drayton Farley. But we're just as tempted to hoist him onto his own pedestal. There may be vague resolution to the artist's story he relates here (They sold all their pub off their eight LPs / With a Live! and one Greatest Hits), but that doesn't detract from the project's impact. The project provides us a clear-eyed glimpse into Eastern Kentucky denizens, and thereby into the heart of its foremost songwriter.
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