Jonathan Byrd - Cackalack
  • Chicken Wire
  • Wild Ponies
  • I Was An Oak Tree
  • Reckon I Did
  • New Moon Rise
  • Dungarees Overalls
  • Father's Day
  • White Oak Wood
  • Scuppernong
  • Cackalack
Biography
Esse Quam Videri. “To be, rather than to seem.” The only one of
the original thirteen states without a motto, in 1893 North Carolina finally adopted one that implies, “We don’t need a motto. We Are.”
I’m a seventh generation North Carolinian. My granddaddy’s granddaddy’s granddaddy was born in Caswell County in 1795. Jonathan Byrd is my given name. I Am.
Cackalack was recorded live in a converted garage on a sunny afternoon in Toronto with no headphones, no listenbacks, no separation, and no overdubs. Why Toronto? I had money in my
pocket, the gold and platinum record-producing Ken Whiteley at my disposal, some of Canada’s best and busiest musicians available and in town, and enough North Carolina in my mouth for all of us.
‘Cackalacky’ is a colloquial term for Carolina, and nobody knows where it came from. It just is. It’s the cackle of a chicken, a train on the tracks, the crackle of split oak in a barbecue pit, and laughter.
North Carolinians love to laugh. John Showman’s fiddle cackles out “Cackalack” like the crack of a starting gun at the top of this record. I feel like we laughed our way through the session, and if you listen back to the 3 and ½ hours of raw recordings, we just about did.
These songs are memoirs, photographs from my family album. There are a lot of building materials here. Chicken wire. Roofing tacks. White Oak Wood. There are real places. The Outer Banks, where wild ponies still run. Cape Fear, the namesake of the hospital where I was born. Rockwell, where I played Amazing Grace for my father’s ashes. And 95 South, a great river of humanity that brings me back home from a hard tour.
I’ve played festivals, won awards, and shared the stage with people more famous than I am. If you turn this over, you’ll find that information. My hope is that you will instead put this down right now and listen to the record. Because Cackalack is about who I am. Not who I seem to be.
Jonathan Byrd
7
  • Members:
    Jonathan Byrd
  • Sounds Like:
    Doc Watson, Hank Williams, Townes Van Zandt, Ryan Adams
  • Influences:
    Doc Watson, Hank Williams, Townes Van Zandt
  • AirPlay Direct Member Since:
    06/14/12
  • Profile Last Updated:
    01/23/24 20:32:31

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