Keys, the forthcoming collaborative album from Bill MacKay and Nathan Bowles, showcases the duo's deep knowledge of folk traditions and their congenial improvisational coalescence. Performing only a handful of times before embarking on this project, Bowles and MacKay together play like a seasoned old pair of pickers, with an uncanny ability to bolster each other's expression through sympathetic and expansively spiritual notes.
On the third single, "Dowsing", a favored rural pastime gives this contemplative instrumental its name. The song expands upon an initial banjo riff sketching the melody, followed upon by guitar, requinto and organ. An ideal soundtrack companion for lonesome wanderings (in or out of your head), "Dowsing" features a video counterpart documenting a trip of Nathan's through the wintertime forests of North Carolina, a slide-show carousel of still life stasis, lit by the long beams of the season and seemingly vibrating with the rejuvenation of the season ahead. Keep searching through time and desolation and trust in your dowsing rod – there’s riches to be found, if one can persevere on.
Keys is available on April 9th! Listen/watch "Dowsing" using the links above.