Or Would I Leave This World Unknown? Salt For Salt and Bone For Bone.

 

On Saturday, David Lamb of the folk band Brown Bird succumbed to leukemia in Providence, Rhode Island. He was only 35.

Their music has always seemed displaced in history to me, as if you would expect to see them in grainy black and white footage at some deep south dance hall, the roof and walls shaking in time to their irrepressible rhythms. Frail humans making thunder on earth for the gods to hear. The entranced audience would dance and twirl, the air growing dense and humid with gallons of sweat as the beat gets darker and the gravel in his voice unpaves every civilized road in your soul.

I guess all I missed was the old voodoo woman in the corner, rolling out the bones and seeing the years abruptly cut short each time. But his music will live on along with the beaming joy he took in performing.

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