Jud/Jude/Judith Brothers

Jude Brothers sails toward a new shore with Dogwood Maiden Voyage. Created in living rooms, recording studios, and train tunnels between Tennessee and Arkansas, it's an adventurous album that's every bit as eclectic as its world-traveling creator. Here, Jude's vision of freethinking folk music — a multicultural sound that truly knows no borders, inspired by a vast array of global folk, sacred music, and pop songs— is given a lush update with string arrangements and vocal harmonies, shining new light on an artist who's always evolving. 

Jude's songs are rarely linear. Instead, they explode outward in unexpected directions, exploring left-hand turns and detours before returning to their original paths. Caught halfway between the free-form, the freak-folk, and the finely-crafted, they tell stories about the complicated paths we take toward self-discovery, the push-and-pull between the desire to belong and the perpetual feeling of otherness, and the growth that emerges during times of barrenness. "You can sit with an old southerner on the porch and they’ll be telling you a story, and there are 17 different tangents," Jude says. "That's how I make music. I take all different plot lines and weave them together."

For years, Jude approached the recording process the same way they'd approach a gig. "Just set up the mics in a pretty place, blast through a few takes, and release a live-sounding rendition of each song," they explain. Critically-acclaimed albums like 2017's & the Concrete Dragonfly and 2023's render tender/blunder sunder shone a light on that process, highlighting the honest, human imperfections of a live performance. For Dogwood Maiden Voyage, though, Jude wanted to try something different. They'd already spent years on the road, playing solo shows both abroad and domestically. This felt like the right time to not only challenge themselves with fleshed-out arrangements and creative collaborations, but to embrace the fiddle music they'd been hearing around the world, too.  

"There's something about the way that instrument can make people dance, but also make them weep," Jude explains. "I'm ceaselessly amazed by fiddles, and that's why they are on the album. I wanted to collaborate with other musicians and build a more lush sonic landscape that listeners could more fully lose themselves in, while also staying true to myself in terms of valuing my imperfections and idiosyncrasies as a musician."

The collaborative process began in Springfield, Missouri, where Jude recorded the album's foundation of acoustic guitar and harp at Kabong Studio, operated by fellow songwriter Grady Philip Drugg. Strings and vocals were added later, at Slacker Recording- fellow Gar Hole Records artist Jack Studer’s studio in Hampshire, TN. Back home in Arkansas, a trio of hauntingly gorgeous acappella songs — including a traditional Ozark murder ballad— were tracked in the Winslow Train Tunnel with experimental “microfolk” musician and field recorder Chaz Knapp. The entire process took three years, funded by Jude's shifts at a local coffee shop, fueled by “near delusional levels of self belief”, and guided by a desire to break new ground. 

Even during its most orchestrated moments, Dogwood Maiden Voyage remains an organic record, a wall of sound shaped by acoustic instrumentation from fiddle player Patrick Mcgonigle and upright bassist Geoff Henderson. "Whenever someone would ask if I wanted an electric guitar or a synth on any of these songs," Jude remembers, "I would say, 'No, this is a ship made of wood.' I imagined a ship made of a living dogwood tree, carrying these disparate factors between different worlds." 

The dogwood tree is one of the album's central metaphors, representing a connection point between life and death. For Jude, the natural world has always been a refuge, ever since their schoolchild days in Springdale, AR. "When I was young, my dad built my mother a tunnel of wild grape and wisteria in the backyard, and we called it the fairy fort," they say. "That was where I spent some of the best parts of my childhood. It was where I ran away to." Songs like "Wisteria" — a transportive and atmospheric track, laced with echoing vocals and cascading shimmers of harp — take Jude back to that place, evoking the comforts of Mother Nature. You can literally hear the hum of the great outdoors during "Small Gods & Grief Portals," where Jude sings over a background of buzzing insects, chattering birds, and other twilight sounds. There's a youthful playfulness to "Treat Me Like A Tree & Love Me For My Crookedness," which merges the instrumentation of a country-folk fiddle song with nature imagery, cascading harp and articulate wordplay. Equally articulate is the album's 11-minute epic, "Handsome Little Fountains & Little Ancient Mountains," which tells the story of two fragmented pieces of the self who meet up in the afterworld, trading stories about their recollections of life on earth. The song's melody nods to the traditions of classic American roots music, while the narrative sinks its roots into heady, modern-day territory. It is there, caught between contrasts, that Jude does their best work.

"I've always occupied a space between worlds, in many facets of my life," Jude says. "I'm between multiple truths at the same time." 

Throughout Dogwood Maiden Voyage, Jude indulges in childlike fantasy as an adult, encouraging fractured pieces of identity to communicate with one another. Much of that fantasy takes place in the woods, surrounded by trees, protected by the natural world that Jude's music so wistfully evokes. There's grief and darkness here, but there's light, too, like a forested landscape that's beginning to embrace spring after a long winter. Dogwood Maiden Voyage makes room for both sides of that divide. It's an album of multitudes — a record for all seasons.

-Andrew Leahey