Joseph Decosimo - Billy Button (Dear Life)

The Slow Music Movement
Jul 29
2 min read

This is the cover for Joseph Decosimo's, Fiery Gizzard album. It shows a faded, time worn black and white photograph of a waterfall surrounded by trees. Text at bottom reads "Fiery Gizzard" and "Joseph Decosimo." Natural, serene mood.

I can't lie, I mostly have one eye on the future when it comes to music, I like to see traditional forms given a modern sheen or twist. Folk music is one of the more recalcitrant genres, but I give it a pass more often than a lot of styles due to its timeless nature, but only when there is serious quality and depth to the artistry, and Joseph Decosimo, who is equally adept on both fiddle and banjo ticks those boxes.

The boy is living and breathing the southern and Appalachian life through jam sessions, mentoring, writing a Phd and also sharing his knowledge as an educator on various programs. He's also got an LP dropping in August, having decided to open his address book and invite some old faces and friends to help him realise his vision with these fiddle and banjo interpretations.

Joseph Decosimo sits outdoors on a chair playing a banjo, wearing glasses and a casual shirt. The background is a blurred forest, creating a serene mood.

The track starts in unhurried, country folk fashion but unusually with a quivering drone and distant piano abstractions providing a casually twisted backdrop until Decosimo brings the vibe back down to earth with his reassuringly familiar banjo picking that will settle the purists' nerves. Undeterred the fiddle gets in on the sonic abstraction by dropping in some playful squeals when not supporting Decosimo with more traditional sequences.

It takes Decosimo the best part of a minute to start his rendition of "Billy Button", a track that he first stumbled across in true folkloric fashion from old pal Jake Xerxes Fussell. It's a peculiar tale where perfectly delivered tongue twisting moments melt into pleasant, childlike simplicity, and country life blurs into toad licked surrealism, the various levels glued together by Decosimo's affable vocal, the twinkle in his eye and consummate playing. Progress be damned for a moment, I'm taking a trip down memory lane.