I got an amazing disk in the mail this week from a Minneapolis-area band called the Roe Family Singers. Describing them as gothic old-timey doesn’t really go far enough.  The songs feature original murder ballads and musical saw amidst the banjo and autoharp. Among the musical topics:
- Starving wolves come down out of the mountains in the snow and attack a couple
- A wife kills her husband and is haunted by him because she could only bury him two feet in the earth (moral – if you do’em in, bury’em deep!)
- A woman loses her unborn baby because of her cocaine habit and turns to prostitution for money to support her habit.
If you like Gillian Welch, Charlie Louvin, the Handsome Family or Red Molly, you have to check these guys out. They have several videos on youtube – I’ve embeded one below. The musician on the front right is playing musical saw.
