Album Review: Long Gone John & TallGrass GetDown 

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• Long Gone John & TallGrass GetDown

(Self-released, digital)

Funny story: I tried my hand at being a hobo once. While I didn't go full bindle mode or end up riding the rail to Arkansas, I let my journalistic curiosity get the better of me, and I accompanied a transient artist I had interviewed to a rail yard to hop on a train.

I only made it as far as sitting in an empty car and smoking a joint with the dude, but when he pulled a beat-up old mandolin out of his rucksack, a strange excitement rose up through me. Some proper, dirty folk music was all that was needed as we sat in that rusted old train car under the sun.

The only problem? The young train-hopper was a much better artist than musician.

If only I'd been living the hobo life with Long Gone John & TallGrass GetDown. The foot-stomping, high-energy folk collective formed in Johnson in 2011 as a trio — known only as TallGrass GetDown then — and regularly roamed the Green Mountains with its hybrid of Americana, ragtime and rust-belt folk. After a few years, lead singer Long Gone John, real name John Freeburn, decided to hop the rails and travel the country, eventually recording his first solo album, Miles Away, in 2018.

While Freeburn was out west, an entire album's worth of TallGrass GetDown material sat on the shelf gathering dust. So when he returned to link up with his original bandmates, Django Koenig and Dave Langevin, there was work to be done. The trio expanded by adding Braden Lalancette, Danica Cunningham and Rick Soszynski, all of Burlington bluegrass act the Wormdogs.

With the folk Avengers assembled, the band headed over to Ben Collette's Tank Recording Studio in Burlington to track the album and breathe new life into the songs, written between 2011 and 2017.

"Bound for Glory" is the perfect opener, both for the band's return and for any prospective hoboes out there. Riding a sepia-toned vibe with shuffling snare, warbling fiddle and gorgeous stabs of country-western electric guitar, the washed-out tones and vocal harmonies effortlessly summon images of America rolling by from the train window.

"Had a heart once / Lord, I lost it / Well, these things get awful hard to find," Freeburn sings.

It's easy for acts that channel antiquated styles to come off like a pastiche or some sort of revue. It's all the more impressive, then, that at no point over the 10 tracks on Songs for Ophelia do Long Gone John & TallGrass GetDown sound anything other than vitally original.

While Collette's production and the excellent mixing work done by Jericho musician and producer Jer Coons help create the record's gritty yet modern sonic palette, it really comes down to the songs. From the frenetic hoedown "Prison Walls" to the dancing-in-the-moonlight playfulness of "Fox & Dove," the band is barreling down tracks they know so well.

Ready to hop on the train? Songs for Ophelia is available now on all major streaming services.