Scott Gilmore and Sarah Vitort are Fox and Bones—energetic offbeat folksters with a retro pop-rock bent who have been setting the world alight with a handclapping, foot-stomping good time since 2016. The indomitable duo has brought their optimistic Americana polish to international stages shared with the likes of Rayland Baxter, The Dead South, ZZ Ward, The Talbott Brothers and Horse Feathers among others.

At Fox and Bones’ core is an unrelenting backbone that represents honest-to-goodness folklore dreams, wrapped in the delectable shine of a duo with a combined 25+ years of songwriting experience. They’re akin to Lake Street Dive, Nathaniel Rateliff, and Shovels & Rope as a relatable, soul-stirring, retro-tinged folk-rock outfit that knows how to shatter a crowd’s hearts and put them back together all in the same utterance. Scott’s powerhouse grit and Sarah’s resonant tone combine with A-grade songwriting chops to create accessible, relatable, and often heart-rending folk-rock music.

Their hardworking artistic output has earned them first place at the 2023 Tucson Folk Festival songwriting contest and second place in the International Acoustic Music Awards, amongst other accolades. The duo also founded Portland’s Folk Festival: an annual, three-night celebration of folk and roots music at the iconic Crystal Ballroom.

VISIONARY COSMIC ROOTS MUSIC BAND COYOTE MOTEL’S DEBUT FEATURE FILM AND SOUNDTRACK ALBUM — THE RIVER: A SONGWRITER’S STORIES OF THE SOUTH … IS COMING SOON!
A deeply rooted psychedelic musical exploration of the lives, lore, and locales along three great rivers of the American South—embracing musical performances, storytelling, light art, aerial dance, and cultural history. The crowdfunded film includes the work of more than 15 Nashville-based independent artists. Soundtrack arrives on March 19, 2024—same date as Nashville premiere.

NASHVILLE, TN — The visionary new film The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South is unlike anything you’ve seen. Starring Nashville-based cosmic roots band Coyote Motel, it’s a music and performance movie, but it’s also a cultural history, a memoir, and a psychedelic experience. In 10 songs and stories, The River explores the lives, lore, and locales along three great rivers of the American South—the Mississippi, the Cumberland, and the Tallahatchie.

Conceived and written by Coyote Motel bandleader Ted Drozdowski and directed by Richie Owens of Parlor Films, the crowdfunded feature film is also a collaboration of more than 15 Nashville independent artists, including light art creators Darling Lucifer Productions and the aerialists of Suspended Gravity Circus. The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South is currently in festival competition and was recently awarded Best Original Feature Soundtrack and Best Experimental Feature laurels by Cincinnati’s Queen City Film Festival. The film is also a finalist at the Warsaw International Film Festival.

“My entire life has been a rehearsal for The River,” says Drozdowski, a noted guitarist, songwriter, journalist, music historian, and the editorial director of Premier Guitar magazine. “I’ve spent decades exploring the obscure corners where great American music heralds from, and I’ve aways embraced the connections between the bedrock of Son House and Muddy Waters, the aether of Pink Floyd, the freedom of Sonny Sharrock and John Coltrane, and the mythical sense of time and place in the songs of the Band and Creedence Clearwater Revival. I’ve woven all of that into both Coyote Motel, which I founded in 2018, and this film.”

The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South was originally scripted as a stage performance, but Covid arrived and the opportunity to recast it as a film crystallized. These songs and the narratives connecting them are a journey along these beautiful rivers, and the river of life, with the music, visuals, and aerial dance adding a kaleidoscopic palette that broadens the film’s emotional landscape to something beyond what words and music alone can convey.

Starting at Nashville’s Cumberland and weaving south along the Mississippi and Tallahatchie, The River introduces viewers to muleskinners, coal miners (Drozdowski’s immigrant grandparents), riverboat gamblers, freedom fighters, and the late musical giants of North Mississippi blues. It also essays the omnipotent, timeless magic of the rivers themselves, and the cities and rural outposts along their endless waters. Coyote Motel—Drozdowski on vocals, guitar and diddley bow; Sean Zywick on bass; Kyra Lachelle Curenton on drums; Luella on vocals, guitar, and percussion; and Laurie Hoffma on Theremin and glockenspiel—cast a sonic spell that’s both otherworldly and deeply rooted.

In “Tupelo,” the tale of flooding that opens the film and soundtrack, an archaic banjo tuning on guitar is the springboard for a swirl of melody and rhythm that captures the power of nature’s wrath. “Keep Me In Your Mind” is a stomping powerhouse about levee camp life, with Drozdowski and Luella trading vocals. “Long Distance Runner,” with its echoes of Pink Floyd and Philip Glass, is a trip from the Mississippi to the demimonde. And in the lead single, “The River Runs Forever,” Luella’s distinctive voice angelically spins the saga of Ernest Willis, who lived for decades beneath the Memphis-Arkansas bridge, gleaning his living from the river.

Along the way, Darling Lucifer’s projections, which recall the legendary Filmore light shows of the ’60s, and Suspended Gravity’s aerial flights in five performances, add transcendent notes of beauty, grace, and surprise—until the film and soundtrack culminates in the title song, which brings its world of ghosts, heroes, villains, and their watery loci to peace, in a soaring, melodic crescendo of guitar, ambient bass, Theremin, and Luella’s voice, resonating like a call from beyond.

“It’s an amazing package,” Grammy-winning music journalist Anthony DeCurtis writes in the film’s notes. “But the impact of The River is so much greater than even the sum of those extraordinary parts. The film is a visionary autobiography grounded in the telling details of Drozdowski’s own personal history, ‘the river of my own life experience,’ as he puts it, but ultimately it becomes a dream journey that teases out why and how music means so much to so many of us.”

To raise funds for the film, Drozdowski and co-producer Hoffma drew on the international fanbase Ted built touring the world with his earlier Mississippi-hill-country-informed band Scissormen and from his lifetime in music. The Arts & Business Council of Greater Nashville also lent support as a fiscal agent, providing an opportunity for tax-deductible contributions. And the film was shot on a Nashville-area soundstage and at various locations where its stories take place. It also draws on still images and historic footage licensed and loaned from various sources.

Drozdowski and co-producer Hoffma drew on the international fanbase Ted built touring with world with his earlier Mississippi-hill-country-informed band Scissormen and from his lifetime in music. The Arts & Business Council of Greater Nashville also lent support as a fiscal agent, providing an opportunity for tax-deductible contributions. And the film was shot on a Nashville-area soundstage and at various locations where its stories take place. It also draws on still images and historic footage licensed and loaned from various sources.

“Making The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South has been an amazing creative experience—full of learning and challenges I hadn’t imaged,” Drozdowski says. “I’m truly grateful to all of our supremely talented collaborators, and especially to our director, Richie Owens, who brought so much insight and dedication to bringing the film as I’d envisioned it to life. His work and the performances of Coyote Motel, Darling Lucifer, and Suspended Gravity are as much as part of the heart and soul of The River and as the people and places in its stories.”