The name Tin Roof Echo comes from a time when Asheville-based singer-songwriter Joe Hooten was a teenager hiking the Appalachian Trail. One night, he sought refuge from the rain in an open shelter with three walls and a metal roof, and the sensory overload of water pinging above and the smell of summer in the mountains stuck with him.
“It was such a memory for me,” Hooten says. “When I started the process of coming up with a name for this musical project, I realized that most of the songs I was writing, and still do, are about memories that incorporate experiences and feelings I’ve had, so the name Tin Roof Echo was quite fitting.”
The latest incarnation of this ethos is Flowers Falling, slated for a Friday, Aug. 16, release. Hooten describes the album as “essentially 10 love letters written to and about places, things and people that I’ve called home.
“To that effect, ‘home’ is a constant premise I write about and a theme that is fairly dominant in this album,” he continues. “But I challenged myself to expand that definition and explore how ‘home’ can shift with time and circumstances.”
The version that arises in “The Land of Apathy” captures the current political climate in the U.S. and contains such personally relevant lines as “Now here we are on the eve of election/God knows we failed all the test corrections/so why does it feel like we’ve got another chance?”
“[I’m] still hanging on hope, always the eternal optimist — even in the darkest of moments,” he says of his most overtly political track. “That song wasn’t written out of convenience; it was written out of necessity.”
Helping flesh out Hooten’s Americana sound to new rich heights in an all-star group of collaborators. Graham Sharp (Steep Canyon Rangers) contributes what Hooten calls “this spooky banjo riff” for “Everything That’s Green.” And Matt Smith (Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters; Amy Ray Band) lends pedal steel to multiple tracks as well as dobro on “Sick About It.”
Elsewhere, legendary North Carolina singer-songwriter David Childers offers up his auditory talents, and Hooten’s longtime friend Dulci Ellenberger wrote what Hooten calls “some amazing vocal pieces” that appear on several cuts. Also in the mix is Jay Gonzalez of Drive-By Truckers, who plays Hammond B3 organ throughout Flowers Falling and even performs on a saw on “The Land of Apathy.”
“I’m telling y’all — it never hurts to ask. What’s the worst someone’s going to say? ‘No?’” Hooten posits. “I’m glad I can handle ‘no.’ I’ve been told that a lot. My timing sucks, but sometimes it pays off, and I believe it really does on Flowers Falling.”
Tying it all together is producer/engineer Kevin Boggs — whose mere presence marks a deviation from Hooten’s usual self-recorded approach. He says choosing to work with Boggs was “the easiest decision” he made while bringing Flowers Falling to fruition. But that “letting go of the reins” was the most difficult aspect.
“With music, there has to be a level of trust there or I can’t do it,” Hooten says. “I’ve had to move away from situations where trust was an issue, but with Kevin, it just felt like the logical step for me. He helped ease that uncertainty I had when I decided to break from that self-imposed DIY code I’ve been following for years. Kevin’s an incredible player, a true creative force and an all-around awesome guy. I’m thankful for all his attention to this project.”
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Bird by bird
Joshua Carpenter and Asheville go way back.
The Charlotte native moved west in 1999 and became a regular at Vincent’s Ear, the modest-sized music venue on North Lexington Avenue, that featured a wealth of local talent as well as touring acts like The White Stripes and Cat Power before they outgrew such spaces. While that business is long gone, Carpenter is still friends with musicians he connected with at that artistic haven 20-plus years ago and privy to numerous reminiscences as they pine for the past.
“Vincent’s closed in 2004 and, it’s kind of crazy — like, everybody who used to go there is still talking about this, essentially, coffeehouse. It seems like old people sh*t,” says Carpenter, who moved to Marshall in 2023. “That was my introduction to the Asheville music scene, and it kind of hadn’t felt the same since.”
In the years that followed, the multi-instrumentalist played in Floating Action for over a decade, has been a member of multiple bands based in the Triangle region of North Carolina and continues to lend his talents to groups led by such local friends as Emily Easterly, Wayne Robbins and Jeremy Boger.
As the 2010s rolled on, Carpenter says he “started to do the solo thing a little more earnestly.” And though the COVID-19 pandemic “derailed that for a while,” he’s back on track after releasing albums in 2022 and 2023, as well as a new duo group with Finn Maguire Cohen, his former bandmate in the Triangle-based ensemble The Nein from 2006-10.
“We just remained friends, and he decided he wanted to try to put something together,” Carpenter says. “We had some songs laying around, and we wrote some songs together, and that’s what that record is.”
The result is Carpenter / Cohen, whose self-titled debut collection of dreamy indie rock was released on June 28. Between the two collaborators, they play every instrument on the album — an impressive showcase of their musical prowess, but also somewhat out of necessity due to availability and budget restraints.
“He just had a kid, and I have a little girl. Everything is crazy — nobody has any time anymore,” Carpenter says. “We’re all getting older and being more responsible, so all the recording sessions are spread out.”
The friends spent a weekend writing in December 2022, and the following weekend — with Carpenter’s new recording rig in tow — they met up at a house in Boone owned by one of Cohen’s friends. Nestled among inspirational natural beauty, the duo had a productive couple of days. And while follow-ups were rare and difficult to schedule, they managed to get their desired results in a mere two additional sessions.
“We would [write and record] things here and there on our own, in between, but not too much,” Carpenter says. “We wanted to be in the same room for doing most of the stuff.”
Track highlights include “Flying Fish,” which Carpenter wrote about young right-wing politicians, and “Barstool Variations,” whose imagery of a bar being placed on a barstool appeared to Cohen in a dream. Upon telling Carpenter about it, he was encouraged by his bandmate to build a song around the oddball visual.
Overall, the collaboration proved fruitful for both artists, and Carpenter says they’ve already started plotting out their next batch of songs. But first, the Asheville debut of Carpenter / Cohen takes place Saturday, Aug. 17, at 8:30 p.m. with a record release show at Citizen Vinyl.
“We’re focusing on getting some live stuff together,” he says. “It’s such an ordeal to put a band together when you live, like, three hours apart. Just logistically, it’s kind of a nightmare. But we’re doing it.”
To learn more, visit avl.mx/e0s.
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