The New Zeitgeist

      Bio

Since meeting as singer-songwriters at a Chicago open mic in 2011, Hudson Valley, NY-based husband-and-wife duo The New Zeitgeist has been steadily building a reputation for tempting harmonies and lonesome spirituals, which have been said to “harbor the spirits that dwell in the hidden hollows of Appalachia” (Country Standard Time). Their musical collaborations have included English rock and folk drummer Dave Mattacks, (Fairport Convention), highly regarded Boston bassist Richard Gates, and Austin City Limits Hall of Fame steel musician Lloyd Maines. Their 2017 album, Myths and Mortals charted in the Top 50 albums on the Folk DJ charts in 2018 and the duo was included in the Top 200 folk artists of 2017.

Jen Reilly’s vocal-driven Country Gospel roots influenced by growing up in the Church and the Iron Maiden-inspired riffs and 60’s pop sensibility of Eddie Bluma combine to produce what Steven Wine of Associated Press calls "real roots music that connects Dublin and Austin…like nothing else being heard in roadhouses or pubs." 

Jen Reilly considers herself an amateur folklorist. Much of the band’s formation and collective inspiration is derived from the sense that the stories in music connect us deeply to our ancient human roots, and likewise, our present human connection. The band name’s meaning, “the spirit of the times,” plays off our relationship with time, stemming from a lesser-known T.S. Eliot passage,

 “no poet, no artist of any art, has complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. And the poet cannot reach this…without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living.”

Their second record, Myths And Mortals, released in 2017, explores these origins of the oral folk tradition, and features Austin City Limits Hall Of Fame steel guitarist Lloyd Maines. Touching upon outlaw and rock ballads and drawing from suspenseful and captivating stories of fairies, earth, and work, it features 19th-century poems that reaches into our current socio-political times. 

In 2018 and 2019, musical trips to the Northeast and a series of transformative life events led to Jen and Eddie calling Woodstock, NY home. They lead a monthly curated Gospel Music community jam in Woodstock, NY, folk workshops as Artists in Residence in Searsport, Maine, and currently perform locally, joined by bass player Karl Krauss and Woodstock-based percussionist Bill Pfaff.