The Dead Tongues

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Tumbleroot is a mostly-standing-room venue. Limited seating available.

Dust is the fifth album from The Dead Tongues, the project of Western North Carolina-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Ryan Gustafson. Gustafson recorded Dust in nine days, the fastest he'd ever recorded anything. It was the fastest he'd ever written anything. 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, far-flung and roving and existential. Somewhere between the expansiveness of American jam band 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."