Jon Hogan and Maria Moss play scorch folk: Carter Family and Appalachian trad, blues, gospel and Gypsy swing, mixed with tilted arrangements of songs by Tom Waits, Amy Winehouse, Prince, James McMurtry, Townes Van Zandt and the Butthole Surfers. Part soul croon, part folk-punk, part 1930s valentine, it snaps with mad harmonies, fast, ferocious Mother Maybelle-style picking, upright bass and an archtop-guitar rhythm chop that’s like a driving wheel. It’s uplifting and dark, modal, modern, and haunting.
“Authentic music….the song as timeless narrative device.”
Houston Chronicle
“…mixes Hogan’s originals with vintage tunes like “Mill Room Blues” and “Coo Coo” about as seamlessly as even Gillian Welch & David Rawlings could.” Houston Press
“Exhilarating, heartbreaking, wild, epic, microcosmic, toe-tapping, head-nodding, gut busting, soul searching…They made us live an extra year of our lives in a couple of hours.” Navasota Current
”….strumming maniacs, possessed by old-time music. It’s as though if you touched them they might electrocute you.” Missoula Independent
Hogan & Moss played 240 shows in 2016, touring a dozen states and in Ireland, Belgium, and the Netherlands. They’ve been main-stage performers at the Zihuatanejo International Guitar Festival, Official Showcase Artists at the Folk Alliance International conference, and were featured in the 2015 Houston Cinema Arts festival. They were awarded the mayoral Key to the City of El Paso for preservation of American heritage music, and do an annual residency at Schreiner University for the Texas Heritage Music Foundation. Jon Hogan has a series of posthumous co-writes with the late cult songwriter Blaze Foley (who’s been covered by Willie Nelson, Merle haggard, John Prine and Lyle Lovett), commissioned by Foley’s family from lyrics found after his death.
They just released a CD of originals songs, “In Dreams I Go Back Home.”
“A record with boundless energy, with fire, with spirit, with truthfulness. It’s this lost American truth, in an age where there is almost no authenticity.” Jonathan Byrd, producer, who’s among the Chicago Tribune’s “Top 50 Songwriters of the Past 50 Years.”
