Whippoorwill

“Masterful at containing the true dynamic nature of emotions. At once, sad and joyful, yearning and fulfilled. Which element stands out strongest depends on your mood. This is beautiful, masterfully crafted, skillfully performed music..” HEY REVERB

"There's a classic, organic and rough-hewn aesthetic (think, After the Gold Rush, Neil Young) and a synergy of voices and sensibilities alluding to the rare magic of Fleetwood Mac-- but the subjects and sounds coming from the full-length debut, "The Nature of Storms" (Fall 2019), indicate a band fully aligned with the trailblazing women of indie rock while holding their own space on the 'alt' fringes of folk and country."

"Cathartic, cinematic alt-folk sourced by rebellious country upbringings and delivered across vast percussive landscapes. For Whippoorwill, there's little separation between the soul and the scenery-- heartbreak is a ripped floodplain and longing, an unbroken expanse of sky (via non-traditional banjo, long harmonica riffs, distorted guitar, and three-part harmonies that can scorch, soar, or haunt accordingly). "

LONG STORY:
Alysia Kraft was raised on a family-owned Wyoming cattle ranch, Staci Foster alongside the rivers of the Texas Hill Country. Foster and Kraft met by chance at a porch picking party at SXSW 2013. The two exchanged songs throughout the night before parting for separate tours, later naming themselves “Whippoorwill” for the bird cooing through the pauses in song on the night of their meeting.

In 2016, Foster and Kraft put other musical projects (Staci Foster, The Patti Fiasco) on the back-burner and worked as ranch hands while pre-producing debut EP, "Good to Be Around." Recorded at GPM Studio in Fort Collins and co-produced by Tallgrass, their debut album contains six- stick-to-heart tracks that earned them regional nominations for Wyoming Public Radio and the Colorado Playlist's Best Albums of the Year. Culture Trip named them to the female edition of 50 Musicians You Need to Know from Each State and MYCounty 95.5 called them a Top Ten Act to Watch in 2017. Tobias Bank (Von Stomper) joined the band in November 2016 on drums, brining depth and musicality to the rhythm section and adding third part harmonies to a rich set of singing.

The band finished work in the fall of 2019 on a much-anticipated full-length debut album. Produced by J.Tom Hnatow (Horse Feathers, Vandaveer) and mixed by Duane Lundy (Jim James, Ringo Starr) at Lexington, KY's Shangri-La Studio, the album is the product of two years touring the American west honing a sound as expansive and raw, tough and stoically beautiful as the landscapes that source their songs.

"It seemed like these songs were all birthed of storms-- personal storms, the post-Trump political shit-storm, and then the literal storms we drove through almost everywhere we went over a period of our first year on the road-- Oklahoma tornados, Texas floods, Northwestern forest fires, Wyoming white-outs. The instability outdoors reflected a lot of the volatility we were all wrestling in our personal lives as we committed to this project and really became a band. The storm dissipates into calmer moments on the album, but there's a theme of things being unsettled, unstable and needing badly to come to a place of reckoning and resolution."