Hiss Golden Messenger

REISSUED!!! HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER's acclaimed Haw, a limited release in 2013, is available again on CD & LP! Remastered, the album now features re0imagined artwork by SAM SMITH. Haw is the name of a river, a modest tributary of the Cape Fear, flowing rocky and swift through 110 miles of Piedmont North Carolina, wending Southeasterly past abandoned and repurposed textile mills, rickety hippie homesteads, and red-clay farmland fringed pine forests. Haw is also one of a few names for a small Siouan tribe that once resided in the eponymous river’s valley and may have alternately known themselves as the Saxapahaw or Sissipahaw. M.C. TAYLOR, who wrote these songs, once lived hard by the Haw with his wife Abigail and their son Elijah—Well I come from the bottom of the river Haw, he sings—but he doesn’t live there anymore. On the album Haw, rhythm section stalwarts TERRY LONERGAN (drums) and SCOTT HIRSCH (bass, guitar, and production) are joined by PHIL COOK, BLACK TWIG PICKERS banjoist NATHAN BOWLES, and on Telecaster, WILLIAM TYLER, BOBBY CROW  (saxophone), MATT CUNITZ (keys), GORDON HARTIN (steel guitar), JOSEPH DECOSIMO  (fiddle), SONIA TURNER  (vocals), and Mark PAULSON of the BOWERBIRDS (strings) also crew, navigating Haw’s shoals of trouble and delight.