Seems to be our week for stringbands, but that’s ok. Susto, the alt-country group led by frontman Justin Osborne, have announced the release of Susto Stringband (Volume 2) on May 29 via Missing Piece Records. It’s the follow-up to last year’s Susto Stringband (Volume 1), which featured bluegrass and old-time reworkings of seven Susto favourites alongside two new compositions in collaboration with Asheville’s Holler Choir. The upcoming album continues this collaboration, with a solidified lineup of Clint Roberts, Jackson Grimm, Nat Copeland, Helena Rose and Joey Brown, plus with the added help of friends Morgan Wade, Joshua Hedley and Madeline Dieruaf.
And it’s the work with Morgan Wade that we’re highlighting today on one of Susto’s hardest-hitting songs. Lyrics like “I had a dream we were doing hard drugs in a street alley, you were lying dead next to me” are hard to ignore. And although it’s not what you might call a typical bluegrass song, it does work really well reshaped this way. Really well. Justin Osborne agrees, saying, “Having Morgan join us for Hard Drugs was a dream come true. I’ve been a fan of her music and who she is as a person for a long time, and I was so glad she was interested in collaborating for this project. She picked Hard Drugs as the song to feature on, and I’m so glad she did, because her vocals brought that song to life for me in a whole new way, and I’m excited to finally be sharing this version with the world!”
