Ian Noe

TakeRoot alumnus Ian Noe delivered a great calling card in 2019 with debut album Between The Country, on which he takes listeners back to 1970s folk and country. The young Bob Dylan and especially John Prine were already his great heroes in his teens. Not surprisingly, those very influences resonate in Noe’s music. River Fools & Mountain Saints, released in 2022, also evokes memories of Prine, who died in the early 2020s, but Noe also manages to build a bridge to the present in a beautiful way.

Noe learned to play guitar at a young age from his father and his grandfather, with songs by Merle Haggard, Neil Young, Jimmy Buffett and John Prine making regular appearances. The latter americana and roots legend in particular, with whom Noe performed as support in Germany, Norway and Sweden as recently as 2019, became a gigantic inspiration: “No one – and I mean no one – has had a bigger impact on me musically. When my father played Prine, they stuck out like nothing else I’d ever heard before or really ever since,” he wrote on Facebook.

As on his debut album, River Fools & Mountain Saints contains songs that are an unflattering portrait of life in Kentucky, one of the poorest states in the US. Poignant stories of drug addicts, Vietnam veterans, broken hearts, loss and regret, all delivered in a grainy voice reminiscent of Noe’s all-time greatest hero.