Working from Athens, GA, Don Auber is a musician and songwriter in the folk tradition. His songs are roads, ditches and byways through the human heart--traveling laments, murder ballads, braggadocios, cautionary tales, rue-laden hymns, all drawing from the well of American music and literature.

A hoarder of stories, a disciple of roots music, here lay his trunk of musings, broodings and oddities. 

 

 

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Monday
Jan232012

Appalachian Heart Liner Notes

Songs are like ramshackle cars with half-blind drivers: destination or disaster is equally plausible but who brings you to the end of the line, man or machine? Some songs are the '56 Pontiac that gets you home from the bar, all without headlights on a dark winding country road. Everyone says the car is magic but  silently you also know Dumb Steve is an exceptional drunk driver. Who knows how it worked out. Some songs lack brakes, some refuse to start and others never run out of fuel. Some people hate a vehicle that asks anything of them at all. Words can fail but music rarely does. Maybe only Beethoven can always get you home.

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Thursday
Sep082011

New Album. Free Download. Adventures in lo-fi appalachian-gothic indie folk

Ok, as promised, here it is. 

Runaway slaves on the underground railroad. A reluctant assassin fails his conscience. Paranoid bootleggers at work on the mountain. A young punk makes his stand. An abused wife keeps the pact with her god. The outcast seek shelter and the defiant shake their fists in Appalachian Heart, the debut album from Athens, GA songwriter Don Auber. 

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Monday
Jul182011

The Lost Splinter Belly EP

While working on finishing up mixes for the upcoming solo album, we received a big surprise here in the attic. Recordings of my old band, about half an album's worth from the winter of 2009 have surfaced. Seemingly Lazarus-like, only the story isn't as confusing or implausible. 

As they say, context is everything. This is how I remember it.

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Thursday
Jun092011

Two new tracks, an upcoming album, the effects of solitary confinement

We are hard at work here in attic, but there is little else to do since we have nailed the trap-door and windows shut to avoid the army that is marching by, gathering recruits. A big thanks to everyone who downloaded the Big Fish EP and in advance of the upcoming album release we've added two more tracks to round out those tall tales: "When the Birds Come to Feed," and "August 12, 1978." The former being a lament on the anxieties, annoyances and grim realities of anyone who chooses the hobby of becoming a prophet. The latter is an old bedtime story my grandmother used to tell.  

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Thursday
Apr072011

The First Forty-Nine

The project here is thus: a wrangling and jailing and occasional execution, if warranted, of the numerous songs that have been running around my house these past several years like some legion of squawking chickens. There's no place to sit down anymore and I have to eat standing up. Most of the time I sleep on the porch. It's gone on long enough.

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