Joseph Decosimo

Joseph Decosimo reminds us that the old stuff can still do work in our world: It can still sustain us and fill us. Over the last decade, Joseph Decosimo has emerged as one of the most compelling interpreters of the older banjo, fiddle, and song traditions from the Appalachian South, especially from his native Cumberland Plateau. A national old-time banjo champion and blue-ribbon winner at the South’s most prestigious fiddlers’ conventions, he’s one of the last to have studied under the region’s older artists. But that’s only part of the story: Living in the bustling indie hub of Durham, Decosimo has become a go-to collaborator for ethereal fiddle and banjo sounds, collaborating with Hiss Golden Messenger, Jake Xerxes Fussell, Wye Oak, and Elephant Micah. On While You Were Slumbering, Joseph reconciles the disparate creative worlds of his musical life, conjuring panoramic sounds from rare old ballads and snaking instrumentals.

Well-chosen collaborations sustain the rare, powerful magic of deep tradition revisited, realized with able help fiddler and singer Stephanie Coleman and composer/fiddler/pump organist Cleek Schrey as well as from new collaborations with local Durham artists Alice Gerrard (Hazel and Alice) and Elephant Micah visionaries Joe and Matt O’Connell. Alec Spiegelman (Cuddle Magic), co-producer of Anna & Elizabeth’s enchanting 2017 EP, lends his bass clarinet and mixing skills, constructing warm, enveloping spaces. A recording process, slowed in part by the pandemic, forced patience on the project. Remote collaborations and home recording sessions in Durham and Brooklyn, a surreptitious session in a Princeton University studio, and another in bluegrass icon Alice Gerrard’s backyard encouraged Decosimo and crew to follow the music’s lead and allow arrangements to swirl into place.

Drawing its title from the final verse of a hard-hitting regional version of the ballad “Man of Constant Sorrow,” While You Were Slumbering meditates on what happens in the lost time of our lives. This veteran trad musician and PhD holding folklorist fills the lost time with sonic dream worlds, ripe for exploration. Taken together the pieces serve as stations in an observance of loss—a lost foxhound, a lost coon dog, a lost gander, a lost home, a lost love, a lost life.

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