Music from the mountains.
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Good people! Please join us Saturday March 30 for “Mark Donato and Steve Koester: Singing at Graveside.”
I will share the stage with the fantastic Tyler Wood on keys. We did this duo once before and it went to some good places.
Outsider is the debut EP from Iris Clementine, a 17 year old singer-songwriter from Woodstock, NY (and frequent Two Dark Birds contributor). Her rich voice centers these 6 explorations of the ups and downs of romance, family, friends, and finding your spot. Rich, melancholic, beautiful , hopeful , with a bit of dark undertow. For fans of Mazzy Star, Phoebe Bridgers, Fleetwood Mac. Recorded & mixed by Todd Adelman, Kevin Salem and Alan Weatherhead.
A night of music, food, drink and community on the mountain with Two Dark Birds and <0>.
We’ll be playing outdoors at The Pines on June 18 with the fantastic Steve Almaas (Suicide Commandos, Beat Rodeo).
I'll be flying solo Thursday May 11 at the Avalon Lounge in Catskill NY with one of my all-time-faves Sandy Bell.
Ticket and show info: www.theavalonlounge.com
A selection of songs from all five releaes. Explore more Two Dark Birds music here.
“Bow, the latest luminous and ambitious collection of poet-grade and quietly experimental folk music written by Steve Koester and performed by his loose assemblage of Catskill cronies.” - HV1
“Strange and beautiful… It’s a record heard best with a beer in hand beneath a star-punched sky.“ - Nylon
“…poised, structured, self-aware, ambitious.” - DVEIGHT
"...there certainly is a magic to it, a kind of backwoods witchery that the only the best of the style can really capture. Steve Koester, creative force behind Two Dark Birds and formerly of Maplewood and Punchdrunk, is one such luminary. His forthcoming album Bow (the third from Two Dark Birds) displays that spiritual connection to the land in a way his previous works have only touched on." - Culture Collide
“Bow is brimming with pastoral energy and light. There's a quiet dignity to the songs, no grand or elaborate veneering.” - Chronogram
“…a masterful soundtrack to self-reflection.“ - Men’s Vogue
“…one of this year’s most subdued and moving releases.“ - The Big Takeover
“In Koester’s songs and in his delivery, you will hear the imprint of the broken-but-not-beaten American Bard, from Parsons and Van Zandt to Tweedy. Koester takes on the populist challenge of the form: how to be at once folk-accessible and lit-deep, how to wed image to experience and emotion without ever getting too fine or too poetic for the idiom. Koester hits the mark again and again, especially when exploring darker themes and archetypal narratives in songs like ‘Lake Algonquin,’ ‘Ryder Hollow’ and the inspired hill-folk haiku of the title track. It’s also an album of subtle and spiritually inflected love-and-loss songs, such as the standout track ‘Song for Clementine.’” - Woodstock Times
“Steve Koester is a folk singer whose darknesses and frailty are worn on his sleeve, the kind of sorcery you get from living a life in old mountains like the Catskills. He’s got a beautiful album out called Songs for the New.” - yvynyl
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All songs by S. Koester © Herr K Songs | Homepage photo by Sam Erickson. Most others by Charlie Gross | Design by LTL MTN