Americana’s jailbreak from sleepy town squares and the scratchier bands of the AM dial has been a welcome development in American music. And the renegade traditionalists of Mipso — Jacob Sharp on mandolin, Joseph Terrell on guitar, Libby Rodenbough on fiddle, Wood Robinson on double bass — are doing their part to take three-part harmony and Appalachian influences into new territory. The three North Carolina songwriters have wandered off the path blazed by Earl Scruggs and Doc Watson to find a new clearing for their southern string band sound.
In the process, they’ve kicked up a fuss. IndyWeek heralded the band’s role in the reemergence of southern roots music in North Carolina, crediting Mipso with “expanding the vocabulary of common touchstones” for bluegrass. WUNC hosted live previews of the band’s second album, Long, Long Gone. [While still undergraduates at UNC, the group sold out the historic Cat’s Cradle -- four times.] And all over the southeast, Mipso has been busy playing raucously fun live shows that veer from up-tempo original melodies to madcap acoustic covers of Michael Jackson. The group puts all the energy of a college club show into a form of music that predates clubs. And most colleges.
Mipso has become known for sly original lyrics as much as a distinctive sound. The group’s writing brings fresh wit to old themes. Red Eye To Raleigh, for example, presents a classic tale of heartbreak — with a twist. “My broken heart, every injured ventricle, every aching atrium,” Joseph grins. It’s a songwriting style that is both earnest and knowing, dispensing wisdom with an undercutting wink.
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