Americana Highways presents this premiere of Cole Quest & the City Pickers’ “7-11 / Foggy Mountain Rock,” from their debut EP, Self [En]titled, due to be available on April 16 via Omnivore Recordings. Incidentally, Cole Quest is Woody Guthrie’s grandson. The EP was recorded in person at Conveyor studios in Brooklyn in January 2020, produced by Steve Rosenthal and Michael Graves; engineered by Jason Borisoff; mixed during the pandemic by Tom Camuso, and and produced by Rosenthal. The core band is Cole Quest on dobro; Christian Apuzzo on guitar; Mike Mulholla on banjo; Matheus Verardino on harmonica, and Larry Cook on bass. The album also features Sam Reider on organ and Wurlitzer; Sean Trishka on drums; and Erik Alvar on bass.
All the right tension and bluegrass thrills come fully alive in this instrumental by Cole Quest The energy hearkens to the very core of our natural soul.
This song is part original composition and part traditional Bluegrass tune. I originally wrote the melody for ‘7-11’ as a Dobro instrumental. Over time, I realized that I wanted my first original dobro instrumental composition to incorporate an homage to the first dobro player that inspired me, Uncle Josh Graves. Naturally, Foggy Mountain Rock fell right into place. One night late at a bluegrass jam, I introduced the song to our banjo player, Mike Mulhollan. He immediately took to it and made the track his own with some very expressive ways of displaying the melody. When we went into the studio to record the EP, it dawned on me that this track, while originally focused on the dobro, had been adopted by the banjo and that the arrangement of the track needed to reflect that. As I listened to the finished product, I realized a vision for this song had finally been completed. Enjoy!” —Cole Quest