Reviews

Jake Blount & Friends
Album: Single-Footing Horse
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 12
Website: https://jakeblount.com/

Jake Blount & Friends' new album Single Footing Horse is a bold, imaginative step forward from one of the most thoughtful and historically engaged artists in contemporary roots music. Blount, an award winning performer, scholar and interpreter of African American folk traditions, has long been recognised for his ability to illuminate the deep cultural lineages running through old time, spirituals, blues and string band repertoire. His background steeped in ethnomusicology, activism and a commitment to reclaiming Black contributions to American folk shapes every corner of this record.

The album's title is more than a poetic flourish. A single footing horse is a gaited breed known for its smooth, four beat "single foot" gait, prized for endurance, agility and an almost gliding motion. It's a creature built for covering long distances with grace and stamina, an apt metaphor for Blount's musical mission. He moves through traditions with that same fluidity, connecting eras, communities and histories in a way that feels both effortless and deeply intentional.

Musically, Single Footing Horse is a rich tapestry of country, old time string band textures, blues inflections and rhythmic ideas that nod toward rockabilly's early pulse. The cross genre interplay is subtle but striking: fiddle tunes that suddenly tilt into driving backbeats, banjo lines that flirt with the swagger of early rock 'n' roll, and ensemble arrangements that feel communal, improvisatory and alive. Blount's collaborators a rotating cast of friends and fellow tradition bearers add warmth and elasticity, creating a sound that is rooted yet exploratory.

There's also a quiet but powerful acknowledgement of the women who shaped the wilder edges of early American music. While the album doesn't mimic rockabilly outright, its flashes of attitude and rhythmic bite evoke the spirit of pioneers like Wanda Jackson and Memphis Minnie artists who pushed boundaries and carved space for themselves in male dominated genres. Blount's nod to them is woven into the album's ethos: honouring the overlooked, amplifying the marginalised, and recognising the full breadth of American musical ancestry.

Single Footing Horse is an album of movement across time, across traditions, across identities delivered with grace, scholarship and a restless creative spark. It's one of Blount's most compelling works yet.

Angie Ingrams

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