i first learned of ian’s work when i got his debut album, ‘between the country’, in 2019. i felt his writing and delivery were profound and unique, and that album stayed in my rotation for quite a while. he somewhat dropped off the radar after that, i am sure partly due to the pandemic. but now we get his follow up to that album – what he considers to be the flipside – with ‘river fools and mountain saints’. he claims he conceived of the title first, and then came up with the characters and stories to flesh it out. the landscape and people of his hometown of lee county kentucky are imbued throughout, appalachia history seeps up through the tracks.

it is tempting to try to lump him in with other kentucky artists that have recently made it big, like chris stapleton, sturgill simpson, and tyler childers. but ian is deeper and more pure than that. it is always unfair to compare new artists to legends like dylan and prine, but it is not terribly out of line here. i can hear a bit of both, especially their earlier work.

he says that most of his characters are real life people, with ‘river fool’ being about a local legend who is a fixture in the region, who ‘spends his days in a muddy haze, tangled in the cattail poles, working on an ancient bottle’. rather than trying to cast him as a local drunk, he shows the carefree and happy life he leads. it may be the most uplifting song on the album.

it was recorded over a span of two years strictly on reel to reel tapes, at a leisurely pace that gave time for the songs to marinate and evolve. if you liked his last one, you will surely love this one.