Cincinnati Folk musician Mike Oberst has been keeping busy with regular bouts of touring with The Tillers, but he’s also found time to squeeze in work on a new solo album. Six Feet of Earth, Oberst’s second solo venture, is slated for release on Oct. 12 via his Reggieville Records label.
Six Feet of Earth contains a mix of traditional Folk ballads from Scotland, England, Ireland and the U.S., as well as a couple of originals. Described as a mix of “murder ballads, love stories, work songs, traditional instrumentals” and more, Oberst sings and plays banjo and a few other instruments on the album, with some friends helping out on the recording on instruments like cello, uilleann pipes and even sitar.
Today, CityBeat is honored to share for the first time the beautiful new music video for lilting, haunting Six Feet of Earth track “North Country,” one of the LP’s original compositions. The pastoral black and white clip was shot by brothers Evan and Alex Hand.
In a statement about “North Country,” Oberst says the reflective song is dedicated to his mother and his grandparents:
My mother was born in 1942, and with four younger siblings, grew up on a farm in rural, central New York. Her father and mother raised sheep on the farm nestled between the rolling hills and old stone walls. As an adult, she moved to Northern Kentucky to take a teaching job, met my father and in 1982, and I was born.
Every summer and winter we’d drive or take a Greyhound bus north-east, back to the family and the farm. Aunts and Uncles gathered every Wednesday night for coffee in homes not but a few miles apart, dwellings made of lake-stone and wood. Grandmother sent us kids out to gather from the garden, pick wild blackberries, or check on the new lambs. And for me, a kid from the outskirts of Cincinnati, I experienced a real freedom running around those hills, woods, barns, creeks, pastures, corn cribs, and stone walls. I felt a connection with the land, the natural world surrounding me, and a bond with my family and ancestors. Now, years have passed; it’s a place I don’t get to visit too often, but it remains a place that is dear to my heart, never far from my thoughts. The time I sing about exists now as a memory in song.
This one is for my mother, Lori, and my grandparents, Agnes and Albert. All my love!
Oberst will celebrate the release of Six Feet of Earth on Saturday, Oct. 12 at Newport’s Southgate House Revival. Tickets for the release show are available now at ticketweb.com.
This article appears in Sep 4-11, 2019.