Duo’s debut captures a river’s rhythm to tell stories of innocence and wonder.
‘The Moon That Moves The Sea’, the first release of Jenner Fox and Jeremy Elliot, is an acoustic album that runs like a river, fresh and clear, through a strain of Americana. Fox, the writer and singer, comes from a family of river guides and has continued to follow those currents. He’s lived in California, Connecticut, rural Chile, Texas, Oregon, and now, Washington state. He started busking in Palo Alto, California while still in high school. He made his first album to supplement his guide’s income by selling CDs around campfires and on boat ramps. Eventually, Fox released six solo albums including ‘Planet I’m From’, which includes contributions from Chris “Critter” Eldridge (Punch Brothers) and Brittany Haas (Dave Rawlings Machine, Crooked Still), and which is produced by Lawson White (Lake Street Dive). He developed his live performing skills in small house concerts and in front of 8,000 people playing alongside Trampled by Turtles.
Elliot is an exceptional guitarist from Macon, Georgia, who lives in Bellingham, Washington. He and Fox have played together for years and formally joined forces on a 2020 tour. The result is ‘The Moon That Moves The Sea’. This album, with just the two guitars and vocals, is evocative and revelatory, allowing us to feel the influence of Fox’s years on the river.
America’s rivers have always played a huge role in American music. Along with the big three; Mississippi, Missouri and the Ohio, there is a long list that have been written about, inspired hundreds of songs, or are just mentioned in hundreds of others. These include the Green, Yellow, Kern, Black, Tennessee, James River and Suwannee.
River songs flow through all of Americana. Quebecois voyageurs adapted French folk songs as they paddled canoes; riverboat men both adopted and inspired sea shanties while rivers wash away sins in many spirituals. Most songwriters have dipped their pens in riparian ripples. Foster, Kern/Hammerstein, Mitchell, Springsteen, Fogarty, Young, Garcia/Hunter, and Young all went down to the river for inspiration.
Though of the river, Fox’s songs aren’t about rivers. His lyrics are gentle, more like meandering a rural stream than a rushing raft-ridden river. He paints pictures that are reminiscent of children’s books much loved by adults, such as ‘Goodnight Moon’ or ‘Going On A Bear Hunt’. He writes in ‘Spare Bedroom’: “Welcome to my spare bedroom/Behind the door/ I built a fort/I strung up sheets from chair to chair/And underneath I disappear”. ‘Window’ is a song about and to a tree: “I look out my window/I see a tree/And I wonder if it ever thinks about me”. ‘Pickles’ is a sweet song about a dog.
That said, Fox’s songs sound like the river. Fox and Elliot’s guitars flow around each other, like currents around rocks. That fluidity is most prominent in the instrumental ‘Hamlin Road’. But it also surfaces elsewhere, often instrumental interludes such as ‘Window Song’.
These two musicians are more than comfortable together; they blend various streams that flow together to create a river, combining different sources to become one entity in motion. At just nine songs ‘The Moon that Moves The Sea’ is short, but enough to leave hope there is more to come.
