FRESH WIND SESSION No. 19
Zephaniah Stringfield
Recording Dates: 19 July 2023
KNCE 93.5 FM Premiere: 23 July 2023
Substack Premiere: 2 August 2024
With a name like Zephaniah Stringfield, one is almost obligated to become a musician. And, when I first moved to Taos, Zephaniah was one of the people whose names I most frequently heard being tossed around as an exemplar of the folk/singer-songwriter scene in town. Perhaps most well-known for his work in the bluegrass/newgrass group Foggy Memory Boys, of which he’s been a member for the past five years, Stringfield has also been releasing his own solo music since 2015. You can find his three full-length albums, and a few other odds and ends collections on his Bandcamp page.
Raised in California’s Bay Area, Zephaniah first came to Taos on a trip with his parents during his teenager years. For the next decade or so, thoughts of it would return to him. Though he traveled a lot in his early twenties, living in the Midwest and Northwest, Taos continued to stick out to him as one of the most unique places he’d ever been to. As he described it to me, he came to Taos as a lost soul, following a girl out here with whom the romantic flame quickly went out. But, as he said:
“Taos has a way of taking you in if it wants you here. And, the community is like that. You can form strong connections. There’s not as much of a competitive energy. Here, it wasn’t as much about standing out as becoming part of the community. Through those sad, hard, times in the beginning, people showed up.”
Having lived in Taos now for over 10 years, it’s here that his songwriting has really blossomed. In 2023, he received the New Mexico Music Award for Best Folk Song.
All five of the songs that Zephaniah recorded as part of his Fresh Wind session last July were unreleased at the time - and, still are as I share this digitally a year later. As someone familiar with his solo discography, I’m excited about the direction his recent compositions are moving towards. While I hear the influence of songwriters like Townes Van Zandt, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan and even The Tallest Man on Earth in much of Stringfield’s solo material - there is a feeling of him branching out in these new songs, a move towards a more personal style. He described it to me as the “search for his own formula”.
Of the five songs featured in this session, the first three (“Woodchopping Song”, “Ghosts”, and “Lately”) feature Stringfield accompanying himself on the acoustic guitar, and the final two (“Pierrette/Pierrot” and “The Wolf and The Deer”) feature him accompanying himself on the electric guitar instead. The electric guitar songs in particular illustrate the branching out I feel in Zephaniah’s new material. For those living in the Taos area, Stringfield’s Foggy Memory Boys group are playing a free show at Taos Mesa Brewing’s Mothership next Friday, August 9th, with celebrated singer-songwriter Pokey LaFarge.
14: Fresh Wind Session No. 19: Zephaniah Stringfield