Dom Flemons, the GRAMMY Award-winning musician and music scholar, will release his new album Making American Music: The Smithsonian Sessions on 22nd January 2027 via Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.
Recorded in the Nicholas and Eugenia Taubman Hall of Music at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, Making American Music is the first-ever roots music album made entirely using instruments from the museum’s 5,000-plus musical instrument collection. By researching, composing, and performing music that both preserves and reinvents Black musical tradition, Flemons has ushered in a Black roots music renaissance. On Making American Music, his third album for Smithsonian Folkways, he breathes new life into twenty-two historic instruments, including guitars played by Elizabeth Cotten and Mississippi John Hurt, Lew Snowden’s banjo, quills made by Joe Patterson, and a number of 19th-century treasures. The result is a record that brings together Flemons’ musical talent and scholarly pursuits in company with remarkable backing musicians to present a vibrant collection of musical treasures. Making American Music: The Smithsonian Sessions releases via CD, digital, and as a 2LP vinyl set.
Performing solo, with his new Black string band The Traveling Wildfires, and backed by Smithsonian staff, on Making American Music, Flemons leads listeners on a journey through two centuries of music. Across twenty-one songs, Flemons performs Black string band music, early jazz, Afro-Caribbean melodies, African American folk songs, 19th-century banjo breakdowns, pre-blues songsters, Piedmont blues guitar, rhythm & blues, bluegrass, Hawaiian steel guitar, country blues, gospel music, and beyond. Making American Music also features a number of originals by Dom Flemons as well as his arrangements of songs associated with Monroe, Hurt, Tampa Red, Doc Watson, The Stanley Brothers, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Jesse Fuller, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and Washington Phillips.
Extensive liner notes by Flemons and Troutman, with creative direction by Vania Kinard, illuminate the instruments, repertoire, and creative process behind this convergence of American songcraft, musicianship, and sound.
You can find the track listing for Making American Music: The Smithsonian Sessions below:
Side A (17:51)
1. Shultz’s Dream (4:57)
2. Sourwood Mountain / John Brown’s Dream (3:50)
3. Bankhead Blues (2:35)
4. Long Journey Home (3:02)
5. My Baby Said Yes (3:27)
Side B (19:15)
1. Traveling Shoes (1:41)
2. DC House Party (3:33)
3. Island (4:46)
4. Country Quills (2:20)
5. Lost River Blues (3:13)
6. Star-Spangled Banner (0:44)
7. Briggs’ Jig (2:58)
Side C (20:39)
1. Night and Day (5:16)
2. Pay Day (3:52)
3. Blues Jumped a Rabbit (3:32)
4. Bye Bye Baby Blues (4:03)
5. San Francisco Bay Blues (3:56)
Side D (19:39)
1. Desert Sunrise (5:15)
2. Mother’s Last Word to Her Son (3:49)
3. Piedmont Picker’s Choice (5:23)
4. Take Me Back to Bronzeville (5:12)
Smithsonian Folkways has shared the high-octane bluegrass single Shultz’s Dream, which Flemons wrote in honour of the first Black musician inducted into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame. Though he was never recorded, Kentucky guitarist Arnold Shultz was a prime influence on bluegrass originators Bill and Charlie Monroe.
