Thanks to KTAL Community Radio, all five of the Old-Time Pharmaceuticals got to perform and broadcast live from the Las Cruces Farmers and Crafts Market this autumnal Saturday morning! We had a world of fun bringing music to the joyous bustle of the market, and if you want to join in, you can listen to a rebroadcast of the pop-up tent revival at https://www.lccommunityradio.org/archives/live-from-the-market-guest-musicians-old-time-pharmaceuticals.

Happy fall, everybody! While we’re putting together the next full album, Sing a Little Too Loud and Long, here’s a teaser track from our early recording sessions: “The Sidheóg.”

Across almost all cultures, the simultaneously beneficent and brutal powers of nature have been, at one point or another, represented as nature gods or spirits—fickle and powerful, beautiful and dangerous. The Middle East has the jinn; Greece has the daimones; Scandinavia, the huldre; Japan, the kami; Ireland . . . well, Ireland has the sidhe, or sidheóg. All of these mythologized beings facilitate reverence and terror in the face of a dually nurturing and hostile reality, which struck Pat as a natural source for a song: so, here’s “The Sidheóg.”

The Old-Time Pharmaceuticals have three newly official additions to our base ingredients! Coming soon to new shows and at least one new album, we have

• Jim Carlile on bass, mandolin, guitar, and vocals;
• Stephanie Liu on flute; and
• Spencer Taylor on bodhrán and pennywhistle.

We really look forward to vibrating your eardrums as a full band.

We’re excited to share that work on the second Old-Time Pharmaceuticals album is underway! For the next collection of songs, we’ll be bottling the spirit of a harvest-time jam session in a hay barn, with a goodly set of folktales and ghost stories thrown into the mix. The tentative release date is late summer/early fall 2023, and as more details firm up, we’ll keep you posted!

The UK Songwriting Contest results are in, and the folk finalist section is crammed full of great songs! Some of our favorites are Scott Cook’s “Say Can You See” (https://www.scottcook.net/tunes), which deservedly won the category; “Alaska,” by Anna Renae (https://soundcloud.com/annarenaemusic/alaska); and “Errand Lasses and Buffer Girls,” by Pamela Ward and Paul Cherrington (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlgDymg_KzI). If you’re in the mood for some more fantastic folk music, check ‘em out!  

(Old-Time Pharmaceuticals song “Joan and Victor Jara” is also in the finalist mix, but you’ve already heard that one, right?)

Contentedly filled with holiday chocolates and the last of the canned goods from the pandemic’s beginning, we bear glad tidings as 2020 sputters to a close: Roots & Honey has now spent five straight months on the Folk Alliance International Radio Charts, including a brief peek, gopher-like, into the top 40! It’s been an honor to keep company for so long with so many of our musical heroes, especially if we ignore the dates they released their albums.

Our deepest thanks go out to the surprisingly large number of folk DJs willing to open an unsolicited package stamped “Old-Time Pharmaceuticals.”

Roots & Honey reached #43 on the Folk Alliance International Radio Charts for July 2020! It’s an honor (and a little surreal) to be keeping company with folks like Gillian Welch, Indigo Girls, and Yo-Yo Ma.

July 2020

Six weeks after the album release, every track on Roots & Honey has gotten radio play!

As people who get excited about arbitrary numbers, we’re happy to share that Roots & Honey has now gotten airplay on 10 radio shows!

-“Music in the Air” on WWOV 101.1 in West Virginia
-“Catskill’s Café” on WIOX 91.3 in New York
-“Music You Can’t Hear on the Radio” on WPBR 103.3 in New Jersey
-“Tue Am Mix” on WFHB 91.3 in Indiana
-“Womenspace” on WFHB 91.3 in Indiana
-Power Folk (Podcast)
-Mostly Folk (Podcast)
-“The I, the IV, and the V” on WJCU 88.7 in Ohio
-“Folk Odyssey” on WIOX 91.3 in New York
-Blues and Roots Radio (Podcast)

We might be pinned down by the pandemic, but the songs can travel!

Bill Golembeski of Folking.com wrote a fantastic and insightful review of Roots & Honey–check it out at https://folking.com/old-time-pharmaceuticals-roots-honey-own-label/. Alongside poetic commentary on Roots & Honey, Bill offers encyclopedic knowledge of the folk music world, and his review just might introduce you to multiple great bands!