Hogan and Moss

Anderson Fair presents Hogan and Moss.

Original songs with an Appalachian root and a blistering, modern take on vintage mountain music. Dustbowl ballads, stompgrass rides and hillbilly trance. Locomotive picking. Percussive rhythm. Wild harmony. Primitive-modernist music to feed your soul and blow the doors off your Ford.

“Exhilarating, heartbreaking, wild, epic, microcosmic, toe-tapping, head-nodding, gut busting, soul searching…They made us live an extra year of our lives in a couple of hours.”

Jon Hogan’s arrangements of traditional and old-time country songs were inspired by the 1920s and ’30s recordings of artists such as Dock Boggs, Clarence Ashley, Uncle Dave Macon, the Carter Family, Rutherford & Burnet, Cannon’s Jug Stompers and Fiddlin’ John Carson.

Hogan & Moss also perform original music and Hogan’s posthumous co-writes with the late songwriter Blaze Foley. The melodies were commissioned by Blaze’s estate in 2009 from lyrics found among his effects after his death in 1989. They’ve opened for Baskery, New Riders of the Purple Sage and Jonathan Byrd; were presented the Key to the City of El Paso by Mayor John Cook for cultivating American heritage music; and host the annual West Texas Townes Van Zandt tribute at the Starlight Theater in Terlingua each Jan. 1.

Biographies
Jon Hogan has been a full-time folk musician for almost twenty years. He grew up in the American West, immersed from childhood in traditional American mountain, gospel and country music. At age 14 he was playing guitar at bluegrass gigs near Salt Lake City, UT. By 20 he was writing songs and studying old-time mountain music in earnest. Over the past two decades he’s written hundreds of original ballads, love songs, and waltzes rooted in his love of traditional music. He’s also become an engaging speaker on the history of mountain music, helping listeners understand the difference between old-time music and bluegrass, and illustrating old-time’s connection to modern popular genres.

Jon’s musical influences began with Dock Boggs, the Carter Family, Uncle Dave Macon, Rutherford & Burnet and Cannon’s Jug Stompers, as well as Johnny Cash, Keith Whitley, Ricky Skaggs,and grew to include Woody Guthrie, Townes Van Zandt, Danny Barnes, Doc Watson, Norman Blake, Bob Dylan, Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, Jonathan Byrd, and the Carolina Chocolate Drops. He’s also been deeply influenced by Smithsonian Folkways’ 1958 “Mountain Music of Kentucky Vol. II” and the 1952 Harry Smith anthology, also known as the “Smithsonian Anthology of Folk Music.”

In the early 2000s, Jon played in bluegrass bands around the Northwest, including Seattle’s Crown Hill Billies. In 2005, he made an Amtrak stopover in Austin and fell hard for the Texas music scene. Before meeting Maria in 2008, he performed solo in Austin and with his band, the Jinx Street Stompers.

“Locomotive fingerpicking….Elizabeth Cotton meets Maybelle Carter”

Maria Moss grew up in Houston, but spent summers as a child soaking up the music and culture of Eastern Tennessee, where her paternal family roots date to the 1860s. She began playing guitar at age 14, inspired by the music she heard in her beloved Smokies.

On the Gulf Coast, she also developed a passion for Southern folk, self-taught, outsider and visionary art. After graduating from the University of Houston, she had a career as a journalist and editorial consultant. In 2007, while recovering from a serious illness, guitar took center stage in her life, and she found her unique, driving finger-picking style. They met through the Kerrville Folk Festival community in 2008, played some song circles, and quickly recognized an unusual resonance between their individual guitar styles and vocal harmonies.