The Young and Restless
Seven local South by Southwest ‘Picks 2 Click’
BY CHASE HOFFBERGER, FRI., MARCH 9, 2012

East Cameron Folkcore
Sat., March 17, 1am, the White Horse

East Cameron Folkcore played the bulk of Sound & Fury: Songs in the Key of Love and Death only once, at the Hole in the Wall last spring on the night of the album’s release.
“We basically evolved past those songs as soon as we released them,” says Jesse Moore, head wrangler for the 10-member ECF, composed of members of Bankrupt & the Borrowers, Bridge Farmers, the Van Buren Boys, Clyde & Clem’s Whiskey Business, Hobomouth, and the Bread. “A lot of those songs weren’t designed to be played live at all. We had to get them out of our system to quantify them in our own grieving.”
Written in memory of Jon Pettis, Moore’s Bankrupt bandmate who died in an electrical fire at the band’s house in October 2009, Sound & Fury is a defining work in Moore’s compositional evolution, a seamlessly articulated tribute tied into an inspiring story about a neighborhood rallying to celebrate a life. Paradoxically, its elegiac message isn’t indicative of typical Folkcore shows, which run loud, rowdy, and rooted in political undertones.
“Some of the songs on Sound & Fury I recorded in my bedroom – alone,” says Moore. “That was more of my own project, and I used the band to get the way it needed to sound. The songs we focused on came through as more of a collaborative effort, and a process of getting everyone’s sound and all their influences into the music.”
In ECF’s case, getting every member’s sound into the music often requires fitting upward of 30 tracks into a single song’s mix. Moore points to trombonist Blake Bernstein’s “Charlene,” one of the songs on the band’s upcoming The Sun Also Rises EP, as having 32 individual tracks.
“It’s crazy,” laughs Moore. “It took us two whole months to just mix this EP.”

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Austin Chronicle’s 2011 Critics Poll

By Chase Hoffberger

1.) East Cameron Folkcore, Sound & Fury: Songs in the Key of Love and Death
2.) White Denim, D (Downtown)
3.) DJ Rapid Ric, Whut It Dew: The Album (Dew Music Group)
4.) Shapes Have Fangs, Dinner in the Dark (Reverberation Appreciation Society)
5.) Shakey Graves, Roll the Bones
6.) The League of Extraordinary Gz, Concealed Weapons 3
7.) A Giant Dog, Trashcan USA
8.) Sorne, House of Stone
9.) The Moonhangers, The Moonhangers
10.) Roger Sellers, Moments

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Kut Song of the Day

By  Paul Carrubba

It really does take a village, or at least a northeast Austin neighborhood, to build a band. The ten (sometimes more)-piece folk-rock collective East Cameron Folkcore is proof. Pieced together out of a wide palette of talent from the neighborhood of the same name, East Cameron Folkcore creates its own brand of big, cathartic, rock-inflected folk music.

The story of East Cameron Folkcore begins with a heartbreaking ending. The group’s leader Jesse Moore was in the band Bankrupt And The Borrowers, an Austin four-piece that was gaining traction in Austin with rootsy, boozy rock until a tragic October 2009 fire killed band co-founder Jon Pettis. Moore and other members of the East Cameron scene weren’t sure if they could go on, but convinced that that’s what Pettis would have wanted, they forged ahead, including a 2009 Bankrupt And The Borrowers Fun Fun Fun Fest performance that became a heart-wrenching tribute to Pettis and featured an early incarnation of what would become East Cameron Folkcore. Moore had already been playing with members of the group as a side-project, but after Bankrupt And The Borrowers fell apart after Pettis’s death, the nascent band came into single focus. Almost constant gigging and energetic live performances have earned East Cameron Folkcore a treasured spot on the Austin scene.

In April of last year, East Cameron Folkcore released its debut full-length, Sound and Fury. Featuring horns, strings and multiple vocalists, it has the loose feeling of a jam session, albeit one with seasoned players. Conceived, in part, as a tribute to Pettis, the record is nakedly honest. Songs like “Happy-Mess,” “Birds Across A Wire,” and today’s song of the day “Hollow Men” are incredibly moving. Some friends may be gone, but there’s still a whole community to carry on the spirit.

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