The Dead Tongues (Solo) w/ Josh Moore

After five months of not picking up an instrument, The Dead Tongues’ Ryan Gustafson
wanted to get rid of everything that was tied to his identity as a musician. He even
thought about changing his name. He was getting ready to throw out old notebooks
packed with years of material but, for some reason, he decided to stop and go through
them, just to see if there was anything worth saving. And sure enough, he found some
images and lyrics, threads from former selves he didn’t want to lose. Thus was the
catalyst for Dust, his fifth and best album as The Dead Tongues.

Gustafson recorded Dust in nine days, the fastest he’d ever recorded anything. It was
the fastest he’d ever written anything, too – in the past, writing a song would take
months, but this time he somehow felt freer, and wanted to have fun. The record was
recorded at Sylvan Esso’s studio, Betty’s, in the woods of Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
He built it out with help from a number of his musician friends – Joe Westerlund
(Watchhouse, Megafaun, Califone) on drums, Andrew Marlin (Watchhouse) on
mandolin, backing vocals from Alexandra Sauser-Monnig and Molly Sarlé of Mountain
Man, among others.

Dust is meant to be listened to while taking a night drive, farflung and roving and
existential. Somewhere between the expansiveness of American jamband and the
banjo-centric folk songwriting of Gustafson’s Appalachia home. Gustafson explains the
thematic throughline succinctly: “It’s this idea of uprooting and rebirth and cycles, and
the past informing the future, and the future informing the past. There is no single story.
Everything is connected.”