The Woodsheep’s newest album, a concept album titled Old Time Pigeon, pays tribute to their musical roots while bidding them farewell.
While The Woodsheep’s musical style leans more toward eclectic and indie rock, they got their start in folk music at The Kentucky Center for Traditional Music, where they all met.
“We’re really steering away from that (folk) as a band. We are doing a lot of experimental pop music now,” said Andrew Preston, one of two lead singers for The Woodsheep. “I wanted to pay a really nice tribute to our roots and do real folk songs.”
With the idea for the concept album stemming from the Magnetic Fields record 69 Love Songs, it was hard to narrow down Old Time Pigeon to a mere 25 songs. The original plan for Old Time Pigeon was to do a 50-song record, but for the purpose of time and accessibility was scaled back to 25, with a bonus 26th song. Preston made the song selection from a list of over 80 songs based upon the varying vocalists and his personal favorites.
The primary band featured on Old Time Pigeon is The Woodsheep with several other artists featured including Sarah Kate Morgan, Leanna Price, Wyatt Smith, Raymond McLain, Scott Miller and many more.
“I’d like to really just call it quits for folk music for a while and really just focus on original stuff, so I thought that would be a good time to have a huge thing to say ‘Hey, we really love this style. We studied it and here’s a bunch of it, but we’ll be done with it for a while,’” said Preston.
Old Time Pigeon releases September 20. There will be a release show at the Fuzzy Duck.