Article Contributed by HearthMusic
Published on 2026-09-13
Jake Blount will release Single-Footing Horse, an album he is calling his final stringband record, on September 18. The release arrives as Blount tours nationally through November and prepares for an entirely new musical project expected in early 2027.
On Single-Footing Horse, Blount returns one last time to the music that first inspired him and the community that sustained him: Appalachian old-time stringband music. Following his groundbreaking 2020 album Spider Tales, Blount became known as an artist who could deftly contextualize centuries of Black struggle and American oppression through the lens of folk music.
His later work on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, including 2022’s The New Faith and his 2024 collaborative album symbiont with Mali Obomsawin, explored Afrofuturist and Indigenous-futurist concepts that pushed well beyond old-time music. Despite that expansion, Blount continued to feel pigeonholed as an old-time artist.
Over the years, those ties became overwhelming as Blount struggled to understand why it was so important to many white folk musicians that he remain a spokesperson for Black banjo music. He had grown tired of fan interactions that devolved into tearful confessions about slave-owning ancestors, merch-table microaggressions, and being seen as a product rather than a person. Eventually, he stopped playing old-time banjo altogether.
Instead, Blount focused on his doctoral studies in ethnomusicology, opening up new worlds of music and new understandings of the music industry’s troubles. He consulted on the film Sinners and wrote an essay for the soundtrack’s liner notes. He also formed New Dangerfield, a group bringing together the next generation of Black stringband musicians, and began writing original music in preparation for a major new project that will take his work in a different direction.
Before making that change, however, Blount wanted to give one last send-off to the old-time music he loved and pay homage to the people and places that taught and informed him.
“I wanted it to be a reflection of the type of old-time music I like to play,” Blount explains. “To actually perform old-time, you have to make a lot of musical compromises. My approach came out of a growing awareness on my part that I’d started to compromise more than I could stand and lost touch with the things I really liked about playing old-time music.”
Blount recorded the album with mentors Jeff Claus and Judy Hyman of the pioneering stringband The Horse Flies and brought in longtime friend Cap Cooke, a powerhouse banjo player who had never toured or recorded in a studio before. Late one night during the sessions, the musicians began playing “Single-Footing Horse” as a test for their microphone setup. Blount had learned the tune from New England fiddlers Jon Bekoff and Nate Paine and had loved it for years. Transfixed by what they heard, the band decided to record it on the spot.
While double-fiddling with Hyman on the second take, Blount rediscovered the feeling that had made him fall in love with old-time music. That sense of transcendence through communal music-making lies at the center of Single-Footing Horse. For Blount, community means more than sharing tunes; it also means mutual support and care, something he found through the friends and mentors he met in the old-time scene.
“I wanted to put this out for the old-time community,” Blount says, “not overthink how to sell others on it.”
The album’s first single, “Shady Grove,” is adapted from a version played by the late Greenfield, Massachusetts, fiddler Jon Bekoff, who was a major influence on several of Blount’s mentors. Blount altered the tuning, added a singing section, and reshaped the tune as part of the album’s celebration of his teachers, friends, and musical community.
“Of course, now that I’ve decided this is my last stringband album,” Blount says with a laugh, “I’ve found myself playing my banjo more than ever!”
September 13 — Culture Center Theater — Charleston, WV
September 14 — John C. Campbell Folk School — Brasstown, NC
September 15 — The Pinhook — Durham, NC
September 16 — Potter’s Craft Cider — Charlottesville, VA
September 17 — Pie Shop — Washington, DC
September 18 — Creative Alliance — Baltimore, MD
September 19 — Jalopy Theatre and School of Music — Brooklyn, NY
September 20 — Swell Folk Festival — Lippitt Memorial Park — Providence, RI
October 14 — Club Passim — Cambridge, MA
October 15 — The Parlor Room — Northampton, MA
October 16 — May Memorial Unitarian Universalist Society — Syracuse, NY
October 17 — Caffè Lena — Saratoga Springs, NY
October 18 — One Longfellow Square — Portland, ME
October 24 — Riddlefest — Burnsville Town Center — Burnsville, NC
November 19 — The Cedar Cultural Center — Minneapolis, MN
November 20 — The North Street Cabaret — Madison, WI
November 21 — Old Town School of Folk Music — Chicago, IL
November 22 — The Focal Point — St. Louis, MO
For additional information and ticket links, visit Jake Blount’s official tour calendar.
