THE OFFICIAL HOME OF LINCOLN DURHAM MUSIC
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Armed with old bastardized mid-century guitars, hand-me-down fiddles and banjos, home-made contraptions with just enough tension on a string to be considered an instrument and any random percussive item he can get his hands or feet on, Lincoln Durham is a Southern-Gothic One-Man-Band with a heavy amped edge, preaching the gospel of some new kind of depraved music. With driving guttural beats backboning various growling instruments Lincoln gives birth to a sound that transcends genres with his dark, poetic and raw writing style telling tales that E.A. Poe would have been proud of. Lincoln’s musical odyssey began when his grandpa and father put a fiddle in his hands at age 4. He would grow into an accomplished fiddle player winning the Youth Fiddle Championship at age 10. Lincoln afterward followed the path so many musicians have, finding his vice in the seductive, siren-like callings of the electric guitar. Lincoln’s true biography is in his live show. The passion in his sweat drenched, electrifyingly mesmerizing one-man-band show draws you in to feel every scar and drop of blood in his painfully intimate lyrics. It takes something beautifully “off” to get on stage with just hands and feet for a band, driven by a howling voice, and morbidly preach a music that harkens back to Son House and Fred McDowell, infused with the angst of Nick Cave then darkened and colored from the influences of Tom Waits.
EXPLOSIVE SINGER-SONGWRITER LINCOLN DURHAM
RELEASES BRAND NEW RESURRECTION THORN JUNE 30
Buoyant new collection reflects an unprecedentedly difficult time for the entire world and the songwriter’s furious fight out of the mire
Austin, TX – Lincoln Durham crafts personal narratives with equal measures swing (“Powder Keg”) and swagger (“Trouble”). Evidence: Resurrection Thorn. The singular songwriter’s seamless new collection deftly offers sharp songwriting backed by a sharp and seismic rhythm section throughout (“Echo”). “Your rage is boiling up a fever, you’re gonna break like a bullet busted from a gun,” Durham wails on the opening track. “You’re a hurricane, you’re cocaine, a fifty-pound powder keg.”
“‘Powder Keg’ is a love song to the self-destructive, powdered-nosed, fist-first firecrackers living in a pressure cooker,” Durham says. “The song is a tribute to the good-hearted but deeply damaged brawlers who are redlining to keep from looking back or looking in. Some are or were that person. Some are close to the person and left bobbing in the wake or picking out the shrapnel.” Listeners will hear the same scrappy defiance throughout Resurrection Thorn. The title says everything: These are songs framing a prickly and proud phoenix rising from the ashes with fists clenched.
Standout tracks snapshot an uneasy new reality (“Can’t Find No Peace,” “Look What It’s All Become”) in our uncertain world (“Miserable Days”). “These last few years have been unprecedentedly difficult for the entire world in a large and sliding scale of degrees,” Durham says. “This meant loss, gain, delirium, existential crises, gluing fragments and rebirth, of sorts, for me. This album is a reflection of that journey into and out of the mire and a cross section of the raw nerves that were exposed. I’ve recently had a lot of inadvertent core shifts and this collection of songs is the lava that is beginning to flow as a result. It’s the beginning of a new beginning – or so I hope.”
The new collection already has turned heads. “Lincoln paints pictures that evoke myriad emotions,” engineer Chris Bell says. “His songs bear the weight of truth, carrying stories of triumph, loss and redemption and echoing the struggles we all face.” Cue “Did You Find Your Way Home” for evidence. Few songwriters capture hurt and hope as elegantly. Durham says the recording process opened new doors for future albums: “Resurrection Thorn began deep in the lockdowns and was recorded at the musician's homes. I mostly recorded in my home in Austin and then in Boston. It was definitely born out of necessity and was a new approach for me. I think it worked really well and may have birthed a new way for me to record another album or so.”