Singing River “Shoutin’ Good Time” EP Announcement Bio

In an age when it's increasingly difficult to discern what's actually real, Singing River stand poised to point the way forward with our sanity—and good taste—intact. With their upcoming EP Shoutin' Good Time, the roots/Americana sextet issues a timely reminder that music requires the human spirit in order to give it life, and that the art of curation will never go out of style. Long before machines could reproduce genres entirely on their own, living-breathing artists all too often succumbed to the temptation to freeze musical traditions in the past rather than keep them alive. For Singing River, this distinction forms the lifeblood of their existence as a band. 

After recording primarily as a duo for their 2024 full-length Talkin' Destination Blues, co-founders Mike James and Anthony Kuhn re-constituted the group as a full-blown six-piece ensemble for Shoutin' Good Time. Jeremy Stoner (bass guitar and tuba), Pete DeLoe (guitar), Tommy Formicola (pedal steel). Naturally, this gave James and Kuhn more colors and timbres to work with, resulting in a spirited blend of rockabilly ("King of the Minor Leagues"), ragtime ("I Thought I Heard Bob Dylan Say"), No Depression-influenced anthems ("Lost by the River"), and a three-way intersection between Nashville twang, Memphis soul, and rock (the title track)—along with James and Kuhn's fascination with pre-war jazz and blues, and folk. 

The release of leadoff single "King of the Minor Leagues" celebrates Major League Baseball's World Series while cleverly sending-up the pursuit of success. Over a driving rockabilly backbeat, James sings from the perspective of a protagonist who showed a flash of promise "only for a couple of weeks," as he hopelessly woos a lady who's way out of his league. Like so many other images in the Singing River universe, baseball—once universally regarded as America's pastime and a unifying cultural force—serves as a relic of a bygone era. That said, the band isn't trying to flee from the present by living in the past. On the contrary, all of their music brims with the hope and promise that we can once again find ourselves by simply retrieving what we've lost. 

"We were never looking to be confined to that 'old-time' stereotype," says James. "For me, the American song tradition is still very much alive and well—you just have to recognize that it's there. It's literally in us. Everything from Buddy Bolden to Mavis Staples to Hank Williams to any of their modern descendants. Because they were just the latest incarnation of what came before them. I mean, just think of all the un-sung artists who paved the way for them. It's endless. The great ones synthesize the musical language they learned and turn it into something entirely their own. No machine can ever do that, but it's up to us whether we lose that skill or not. Because we've always had people who were just playing dress-up. That's never been my thing." 

The ultimate musical explorer, James is just as likely to wax breathlessly on the role of figures like Scott Walker and Alan Parsons as he is on Scott Joplin and Alan Lomax. As a teenager during the 1980s, James came of age—and embraced his inner songwriter—as hard rock, alternative, and indie forms were blossoming in the public consciousness. And as the drummer of the band Longwave at the turn of the millennium, James witnessed first-hand the much-ballyhooed downtown New York scene that gave us groups like The Strokes. But he's always possessed a deep affinity for digging deeper. 

"These days," he offers, "I'm drawn to old '78s and even written scores. But I still have all the CD maxi-singles and CD-Rs I burned from other people's collections." 

Fittingly, James and Kuhn grew up one street over from one another, both consumed with music from a young age—only they didn't know it. 

"Mike and I were almost destined to meet," says Kuhn. "Think of how many nights we were both sitting there in our individual bedrooms fumbling around on our guitars, each oblivious to the other's presence. It was only years later that we realized we were so close. It's a lot like the music we're exploring now—those bonds are there for all of us, even if you don't see them."