Dead Man Winter has been around for a few years, but they're new to me. The main guy in the group, Dave Simonett, is also the leader of a group called Trampled By Turtles, which is one of my favorite bluegrass-ish groups. Trampled By Turtles' songs such as School Bus Driver and My Brothers Works for the CIA are entirely worthy of a post here. And I expect one of them will be featured at some point.
But for the moment let's focus on Dead Man Winter. I first heard one of their songs, Destroyer, just last week when oldest daughter Molly was playing a "Happy Folk" playlist on Spotify. The song just jumped off the speakers. So I immediately "did a Shazam" to find out the name of the song and who was doing it. "Dead Man Winter." "Destroyer." I confess: When I first looked I wasn't sure if Destroyer was the name of the song or the name of the group. But I figured it out.
Fast forward a few days. I'm back in Philadelphia. And I found the song and the group on iTunes. And I bought not just Destroyer but the whole new Dead Man Winter album, which is called Furnace and which was just released in January. It's great. From soup to nuts. But, since the first Dead Man Winter song that I heard was Destroyer, that's the featured song today.
I don't know much about Dave Simonett. But I do know that Trampled By Turtles is great. And Dead Man Winter is great. So, well, that pretty much means that Dave Simonett is great, too. Very great. His music is right in the sweet spot of Americana / folk-rock / Grateful Deadish / Old Dylanish / awesomeness.
The bad news is this: I checked Dead Man Winter's sparse website, and although the band is touring now, they're not coming anywhere close to Philadelphia on this tour. If you're in Milwaukee, though, you can see them at the Pabst Theater this Friday (March 10), and, if you're in Seattle, you can see them at the Tractor Tavern on March 23. And, if you do see them, let me know if they're as good as I expect they will be. I have no doubt that they will be.
And with that, here it is: Song 33: Dead Man Winter doing Destroyer.
Addendum: I just found out that Dead Man Winter was just in Philadelphia. They were at The Boot & Saddle (where I've never been) on February 21. I missed it. Shoot!