As we found in Murfreesboro songwriter/explorer Alex Tumbleson’s debut EP, Polly (2021), Tumbleson is steeped in a particular bluegrass-player talent and discipline. This six-track follow-up EP, Philadelphia (self-produced and released January 2024), tests any survival tactics the genre has provided along the way, while navigating a willingness to get into life’s hairy situations and then the acceptance and grace for the times they go awry—a consistent theme in bluegrass.
Opening with “In the Beginning,” Tumbelson stakes a hopeful claim to the influence of Andrew Bird’s musicality, crooning through the minor-chord acoustic guitar and a violin’s harmonious highs and lilts—a “cheers” to a good start, politely weaving what sounds like an ocarina into the emotion.
The EP’s namesake explains our man’s determination late one night on the wharf, set to a tune recalling a television drama show’s ominous piano-scape: Going to Philadelphia / Way across the sea / Gonna be a lawyer like my grandpa used to be / When I step out on the wharf there’ll be no doubt / Gonna make my name before they snuff my candle out.
As a thudding floor tom drives a mesmerizing, dark-country vibe, the title track maelstroms up a tale as old as the feel of the song as a pipe organ and matching, percussively strummed guitar accent the plucked banjo. The young Southern man of prospect who comes into town—new blood.
The country mouse lost his way in the sewers of the town, Tumbleson sings.
The solo-strummed banjo number “Curly” continues in a soulful vein as our player finds himself helpless in Pennsylvania at the hands of a pusher man, or a spook, that got a hold of him for a codependent dance.
“The Drunkards Three,” continues an encounter in similar fashion to “Vine St. Girls” from Polly, covering the fascination with a variety of the dark alleyways of life that bluegrassmen are seemingly cursed to walk, albeit set to an upbeat, parlor strum ditty to help them keep going.
Lyrically, it’s bluegrass-evident Alex has a fascination with life’s locomotions, its uncontrollable, steamrolling predicaments and how they work out. This is the nature of bluegrassmen and how they process. In that fascination’s work comes the discipline and talent needed to run alongside life’s uncontrollable behemoth locomotions that seem to kill others in their path, but without getting killed, going it alone.
The song “Someday Son” sounds a solid, Tyminski-esque, spaciously recorded and plucked acoustic blues while addressing the notion of progressing wisely: You can’t run from life’s past. It takes only so long before dark, Southern religious guilt or familial responsibility kicks in, and we have to keep good heads on our shoulders or these locomotions will suck us right in, under, and back out like we’re nothing.
The last track seems out of place but passively harbors the acceptance that gets us by through the power of the music after some time passes. To make sense of it, it’s to soften such a heavy fall left at “Someday, Son,” the EP could’ve stayed without in dark defeat where the rest of Philadelphia lives, but there’s a noticeable hook of redeeming metronome/bass percussion on the the low E string on his acoustic along with a catchy, minor note, slide guitar indicative of happiness.
The release is a nice little visit from Alex Tumbleson/Barnum Bailey, a story of Southern exploration set to darker, minor-key, back-alley storms with a DIY eloquence in its brevity and a sense of acceptance.
