Black Jake & the Carnies set fierce murder ballads, dark warnings, and a certain tough rust-belt revivalism to the beat of an old-time string band. This octet offers a unique blend of Americana, bluegrass, and punk. Their ten-song debut record, "Where the Heather Don't Grow," was recorded and mixed by Jim Roll in his Ann Arbor, MI studio. Steve Leggett of the All Music Guide writes that Black Jake plays "a kind of raucous acoustic Americana that tosses post-modern Appalachian murder ballads, Irish drinking songs, skewed, twisted love songs and general cautionary tales into a stylistic blender that has them sounding like nothing so much as a maverick, hopped-up punk polka band in full 21st-century everything-fits jug band mode"--and that just about covers it! Come and check out the music from their accurately named second album, "Sundry Mayhems."
