Biography

Born in rural Indiana shortly after his family moved “west” from southern Virginia to start a livestock feed store, Simon Flory’s music is suffused with the elements of his childhood – days spent in the fields, church sings, gravel roads, and genuine mule drawn molasses.

It takes a perceptive ear to translate these icons of a mythical “Americana” into the daily textures of real human lives, and Flory does it with the sincerity of early country music. His compositions are as much short-story sketches as they are songs, each populated – like the locales that inspire them – with those among us who have few choices.

Flory’s sound evokes voices not much heard on radio airwaves, a stew of early country, gospel, and the best of classic Nashville. Even his guitar playing captures the rhythmic tumble of clawhammer banjo and Appalachian fiddle (on both of which he’s adept), and his vocal phrasing carries inflections from the Carter Family to Eddie Cochran to Hank Williams.

After earning a degree in creative writing and theatre from DePauw University, Flory moved to Chicago and founded the country band Merle The Mule while working as a multi-instrumentalist in an old time duo with teacher Ed Tverdek, and as an employee at the Old Town School of Folk Music. In 2008 he moved to the Ozarks of Arkansas where he worked regionally in bluegrass and gospel groups. He also met and worked with his mentor and friend, the late Donny Catron of the legendary bluegrass band The Tennessee Gentlemen.

His first solo record, self-released Unholy Town, led him to Austin, TX where he continued to work as a solo performer. He eventually found success as one-half of the Kindie group, “The Que Pastas”, and as a multi-instrumentalist for-hire, before co-founding the Austin based country-bluegrass supergroup, “High Plains Jamboree” with Beth Chrisman, Brennen Leigh and Noel McKay. In 2016 they were official showcase artists at Folk Alliance International, IBMA, and Americanafest where Rolling Stone called them, “One of the best things we saw”.

Playing shows around Texas, touring throughout Scandinavia, U.K., Europe, Alaska and the continental U.S., songwriting and studio sessions with the likes of Charley Crockett, Summer Dean, Vincent Neil Emerson, and others eventually led Flory to Fort Worth, TX where his solo career flourished and opportunities in teaching, acting and filmmaking soon followed. His most recent releases, 2019’s Radioville and 2020’s Songs From Paper Thin Lines garnered local acclaim, as did his poetry film, Paper Thin Lines which was officially selected in the Thinline Music and Film Festival and the PressPlay Film Festival.

Also: gardening, trail running, Larry Brown, the Chihuahuan Desert, the incomparable love and support of his partner Anita and their dog Chisos, family recipes, tackling metric verse, discovering old films and new vinyl, native plants of Texas, used paperback books, Earl Hines, mules, a nice hat, a decent pair of boots, and an old soft denim shirt to name a few other things.