A stray cat runs away and leaves behind her name in the aether, waiting to sing and play.

A pause in the routine. The shorter days of 2020’s Autumn call for music to be played in a living room. Gather together writers, singers, piano players, string strummers, a drummer.

Singer, arranger and songwriter, Erin Dalton (arr. for Amythyst Kiah, Bill & The Belles) with husband Andrew Gibbens, drummer (of previous band projects this mountain, Amythyst Kiah, Listener), join in melodic and harmonic rhythm with fellow singer-songwriters Isaac Ratliff (Sorrel, Florencia & The Feeling) on electric piano with some smooth BGVs, and Phil Ling (Tree Hollow) on bass and reverberating guitar. But then, like a Charlie Maples cat, Phil moved to New England. In steps multi-instrumentalist Taylor Green (also formerly of this mountain, Amythyst Kiah, and currently Mind Modes) to hold it down on bass.

Charlie Maples mines the classic jazz catalogues, calls out with the Rhythm and the Blues, and flirts with the wavelength of Michael McDonald. The band’s members represent combined decades of musical exploration, performance, touring, composing, and recording in genres ranging from jazz, classical, folk, and hip-hop, to R&B, old time, rock, and ambient.

Like the namesake feline, Charlie Maples was born in East Tennessee.