Rand Reynolds: Press

Rand Reynolds seems intent on keeping his side of the street clean and clearing away the wreckage of his past. This is a man who is not afraid to admit what he did wrong, and then make public gut-wrenching amends through his music. You will hear brutal honesty similar to Johnny Cash’s pleadings near the end of his life.

Every song that Rand Reynolds records seems to be an invitation to witness a past disaster or share in a future hope in Rand’s life. Sometimes I feel like he’s making a deep confession and it’s me listening behind the screen. Other times I feel he is asking me to watch his back and bolster his courage.

His guitar playing is unrestrained with emotional timing shifts, changes in intensity and muscular bending of notes. His playing is in honest partnership with his vocal skills… You will experience firsthand the raw emotion that Rand Reynolds is so bravely putting down. Rand has already produced an impressive body of work. After becoming familiar with all of it, I am amazed at the consistent brutal honesty and high emotional content.

The Hillbilly Noir music genre is a neo-realistic movement embracing country roots musical styles with contemporary language and themes. It is an incestuous marriage of rockabilly and folk, and is a unique musical reflex away from current corporate-directed country music labels. Unlike alternative country formats, Hillbilly Noir falls further back (both musically and lyrically) into the hills and hollers of the Scot-Irish who originally spawned popular county music of the pre WWII era. Primarily acoustic based, it is defined by tone and character: sparse instrumentation, minimalistic by nature, dominated by minor chord changes and drones, and saturated with unrelenting deep pounding hypnotic rhythms. Hillbilly Noir musically alludes to thick shadows of dark somber passions and despair in graphic detail, much like its noir film counterpart. Its physical settings for songs can be either urban or country, but the bleak lyrical themes revolve around jealousy, alienation, addictions, erotic ambivalence, moral ambiguity and death.