North Carolina duo Mark Kilianski and Amy Alvey reflect contemporary life through old-time music

When Mark Kilianski was in high school, in North New Jersey, he played in a Bon Jovi/Journey cover band. “We were called Bon Journey,” he tells me over the phone from his parent’s house, where he’s been spending quarantine. Listen to the latest self-titled full-length from Kilianksi’s folk, Americana, and old-time music duo Golden Shoals, however, and you’d expect his high school band to have paid tribute to another New Jersey music legend, The Boss. 

While never sounding exactly like Springsteen, Kilianski and his bandmate Amy Alvey use old song forms to reflect contemporary American life at a time when the U.S. could use a good hard look in the mirror. That includes the old-time honky-tonk and hillbilly on songs like “Everybody’s Singing” and “Old Buffalo” to the country rock of “Love from Across the Border.”

On “Border,” Kilianski sings, “He said, ‘Sorry for the inconvenience’ / She said, ‘Hey man, stick it up your ass’,” echoing the level of discourse in Trump’s America, where to-mask or not-to-mask is the question of the day for many facing untold existential crises. For their part, though, Kilianski and Alvey keep their priorities in order with a “tender heart and a tough mind.” 

Throughout the record, Kilianski’s guitar picking remains athletic and tasteful, whie Alvey’s fiddle work stays liquid. Their voices join Johnny and June-style, or maybe that’s Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, later in the record with the waltz-time song “New Friend.” And while never overtly political, the album cleaves topical — how could a song like the jump-jazz styled “(Who’da Thought) Thinkin’ Bout The Good Times (Could Ever Make You Feel So Bad)” not be about quarantine? 

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As a kid back in Jersey, though, Kilianski wasn’t exposed to much of the kind of roots music he would go on to play with Golden Shoals. Growing up, he was more interested in heavy metal — nu-metal, especially. He calls listening to that music an emotional release, and it inspired him to play guitar. How does a heavy metal kid from Jersey end up playing folk, bluegrass, and Americana? “A long, kooky road, my friend,” he says.

Kilianski and Alvey, who sings and plays fiddle in Golden Shoals, met while attending Berklee College of Music. “That’s where each of us, individually, fell in love with bluegrass and old-time music,” Kilianski says. By the time Kilianski was in college, he’d developed an interest in jazz. But it was the populist, jam-anywhere nature of folk, bluegrass, and Americana that appealed to him. “At Berklee, I met fiddle players and banjo players, and was like, OK cool, I finally have someone to try out this music with.” 

Referring to old-time, folk, and bluegrass music, Kilianksi says, “One of the things I really like is it’s acoustic.” It’s also very social music that you can play at a party with friends, over beers, “and you don’t you don’t have to set up a drum kit and get your amp and all that stuff,” he continues.

Soon, Alvey and Kilianski were playing music together, calling themselves many different names, using Asheville, North Carolina, as home base for a while, but otherwise living life on the road. The duo only just recently changed their name to Golden Shoals from Hoot and Holler. 

“I think it helps that we got into the same music at the same time,” Kilianksi says. “We were both very intimidated by the people who had been doing it for a long time. We both kind of sucked at it together. We were able to grow together in the music as well. I’ve grown as a person from having her as a friend.”

In addition to preparing for the release of their new album and with live music on hold on account of the Covid-19 pandemic, Alvey and Kilianksi have passed the time learning the ins-and-outs of the online music industry, like Spotify and social media, through which you can target and reach untold audiences all over the world. 

“We really do want to get back on the road because it’s something that we love to do,” he continues. Moving forward, though, he says, “we’re going to take a schematic approach and tour a little bit less. Covid changed everything.”

Kilianski also sees the band continuing its trend toward the political. Given the state of the world, he feels it’s nearly unavoidable. But no matter what, Alvey and Kilianski will write political songs the Golden Shoals way. 

“When you go the political route, it’s really easy to veer off into preachiness,” he says. “We don’t want to do that. We don’t want to preach to people. We want to say what we have to say, but we don’t want to come like we tell people what they have to think.”

Golden Shoals’ self-titled release is out now on Free Dirt Records
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