STEVEN STUBBLEFIELD

By Sean Maloney

After a nearly decade long absence Steven Stubblefield has returned with "Darkness Falls Fast In The Hollow", six-songs of stark, cinematic mountain dulcimer from Chicken Ranch Records.
The longtime leader of Austin, TX’s rockers Starlings TN, Stubblefield’s return to the fold finds him exploring the peaks and valleys of mountain life and the modern world.   

Built around
Stubblefield’s mountain dulcimer and featuring guest musicians from his new homebase of
Eureka Springs, AR, Darkness Falls Fast In The Hollow is six songs of powerful picking,
haunting vocals and songs that will shake the very foundation of your soul.
“This is kind of like a homecoming,” says Stubblefield. “So it all kind of started about two years
ago…Just every morning I'd get up early in the morning and drink coffee and I would noodle
around. I'd realize at the time that it was really the music kind of calling me back and to playing again.
“And then I decided to come to Eureka Springs where there was a hotbed of young musicians
and a nice little vibrant scene for a town of 2000 people. There's a lot to do here. Even during
the winter months when it's not [tourist] season, we were able to still get together. We partied all
winter long and had a pretty good time. So I started working on these songs and just started
recording.”

While Eureka Springs doesn’t have the music making name-brand of some of the towns he’s
called home like Nashville and Austin and even Shreveport, LA, Eureka Springs remove from
the spot new paths in Stubblefield’s songwriting. Stripping back songs to just strings and vocals,
with a modern touch here and post-modern flourish there, Stubblefield takes on the place-out-
of-time aesthetic of the small mountain town where it was made.
Recorded in his home studio over the course of a winter, the songs of Darkness Falls Fast have
the intimacy of a campfire singalong and the craft of a man that has been writing and recording
for over three decades. Augmented by mandolin from Alex Hawf of Front Porch, plus bass and
violin, EP builds rich textures from minimal ingredients, lending every note the space it needs to
breathe and flourish. Never overcrowded, each has the room to follow its own path.
“I came to Eureka and started meeting people and began working on these songs in my studio
by myself,” Stubblefield explains. “And then one by one would just bring the next picker in to
play. It started with Alex Hawf on mandolin, and then I got his brother Dylan Hawf to play fiddle.
And then I had two different banjo players [Chris Corvella and Chucky Waggs] play on two
different songs. And then I got a buddy of mine named Dominic to do harmonies on a song.”

Anchored by Hoot Ridgeway’s mournful bass the ends result is an album that reflects the place
that it was made. There is lightness and dark, valleys and peaks, tumult and peace. From the pastoral vibes of the Carter Family’s “Wildwood Flower” to the murky murder-y vibes of “Devil and Me”, Stubblefield and crew traverse the poles of the American musical psyche.
On the manic and mournful “Revengin’ the Death of Charlie Sapp”, a track originally recorded
by Starlings TN, we ride fast down the path the retribution. “Cold Frosty Mountain” is an
instrumental both psychedelic and traditional, a vigorous rush of Americana. “Go Get Your
Boots On” channels the classic, catchy peaks Billy Joe Shaver’s catalog, while “Darkness Falls
Fast in the Hollow” descends into the fog-covered horrors of the deep woods.
Stubblefield and Hawf approach production and mixing with an almost ghostly touch, each
instrument levitating like a haint above an unmarked grave. There is a transparency in the way
the music floats through space, in the way attention is focused from one player to the next without losing the image of these bodies out of time inhabiting the physical plane.
“Some of these songs I think are really good and they deserve a second chance, a second life,”
says Stubblefield. “So it kind of goes into different places.”