COYOTE MOTEL'S FEATURE FILM AND SOUNDTRACK
THE RIVER: A SONGWRITER'S STORIES OF THE SOUTH

PLAYING FILM FESTIVALS NOW!

Our visionary new film The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South is unlike anything you’ve seen. Because it stars us Coyotes, of course, it is a music and performance film, but it’s also a cultural history, a memoir, and a psychedelic experience. In 10 songs and stories, The River explores the lives, lore, and locales along three great rivers of the American South—the Mississippi, the Cumberland, and the Tallahatchie. Conceived and written by Coyote Motel pack leader Ted Drozdowski and directed by Richie Owens of Parlor Films, the crowdfunded film is also the collaborative work of more than 15 Nashville indie artists, including light art creators Darling Lucifer Productions and the aerialists of Suspended Gravity Circus. Our soundtrack album’s official release date is March 19, but you can buy advance downloads now at Amazon and other outlets, and stream on Spotify and other services. And you can check out the film’s trailer and title track, below.

Theater screenings, including March 19 at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville (tickets on sale February 2), are also being scheduled. We intend to perform in conjunction with selected screenings. If you’re an exhibitor interested in showing The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South, please contact ted@coyotemotel.com.

A very special howl of gratitude goes out to our fans and friends all over the world who supported our successful fundraiser and made The River: A Songwriter’s Songs of the South possible. Big hugs and love from all us residents of Coyote Motel. We’ll see you at the movies!

— Ted, Sean, Kyra, Luella and Laurie

BUY CD HERE

BUY CD HERE

buy cd HERE

HERE’S WHERE TO HEAR COYOTE MOTEL LIVE!

THURSDAY, APRIL 11—EASTSIDE BOWL, LOW VOLUME LOUNGE 7 p.m. (free show)

Coyotes must howl at the Eastside Bowl in Madison, returning for the Low Volume Lounge Series. Plenty of parking, plenty of seating, lots of good food and drinks. Where at? 1508A Gallatin Pike S, Madison, TN 37115

SATURDAY, APRIL 13—JUKE JOINT FESTIVAL, CLARKSDALE, MS — all show free to the public!••••••••

SATURDAY, APRIL 13—PARAMOUNT MARQUEE STAGE, CLARKSDALE, MS

Look for us under the theater marquee at 285 Yazoo Ave! Our official festival set, at 11:30 a.m. Bring a lawn chair. Plenty of eats and drinks available on the street from festival vendors!

SATURDAY APRIL 13—DELTA BLUES ALLEY CAFE, CLARKSDALE, MS

We’re kicking the can hard at one of our favorite venues in your Clarksdale: Adhel Henderson’s Delta Blues Alley Cafe, kitty-corner from Ground Zero. Let’s all juke together. It’s an early evening show from 4 to 6:45 p.m. Admission is free, so c’mon by!

SATURDAY, MAY 4—THE 5 SPOT, EAST NASHVILLE, TN—6 p.m. album-release concert

You won’t have to wait this long to hear our soundtrack for The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South, but you can help us celebrate it at this 5 Spot concert, with special guests tba. The club is in the 5 Points entertainment district, at 1006 Forrest Ave. There’s plenty of nearby parking, too.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 22—LIVE RECORDING, CHATTANOOGA PUBLIC LIBRARY, details tba (and hey, it’s Laurie’s birthday!)

LISTEN TO A COMPREHENSIVE INTERVIEW ABOUT THE RIVER HERE: ON WFMU’S SOMEDAY MATINEE

Recently Ted and director Richie Owens were the guests on Gina Frary Bacon’s show on WFMU’s streaming channel, talking about the making, history, and heart of Coyote Motel’s feature film, The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South. If you’d like to hear the archived interview and some cool music, click HERE.

COYOTE MOTEL LIVE ON WDVX RADIO’S BLUE PLATE SPECIAL

Listen to a half-hour live performance from late March 2024 by clicking HERE and scrolling to the 35-minute mark. We play five songs from the soundtrack to our debut feature film The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South. (You can also listen to Fox & Bones’ opening set by not scolling.)

MUSIC ON THE COUCH PODCAST—INTERVIEW WITH TED ABOUT THE RIVER FILM AND SOUNDTRACK, by host vinny marini

Check out Ted and Vinny talking about The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South, on the longest running podcast in the blues world, Music on the Couch. Here’s the LINK. Go to Episode 694.

About Coyote Motel’s live Still Among the Living album:

• Ted Drozdowski leads Coyote Motel through songs from their self-titled 2019 debut, offering a unique hybrid of blues, rock, and roots music. The guitarist imbues opener “Still Among the Living” with otherworldly fretwork and haunting vocals while Luella Melissa Mathes’ ethereal vocals offer a nice counterpoint to Drozdowski’s wiry vox, taking a song like the devastating “The River” into a higher dimension. An appearance by jazz legend Stan Lassiter on the classic “Tin Pan Alley” compliments Drozdowski’s scorched-earth approach to the song. Overall, Still Among the Living captures a truly electrifying performance by a talented band as scary as the wrong end of a .44 revolver. Grade: A BUY! — Rev. Keith A. Gordon, That Devil Music

• Blues is a major component of jazz, and one of the most interesting blues records of the year nods to jazz fusion, even as it incorporates elements of Mississippi juke-joint music. Guitarist, singer and bandleader Ted Drozdowski assembled a diverse cast of players on his band Coyote Motel’s Still Among the Living, which features turns from post-blues singer Luella and veteran Nashville jazz-rock guitarist Stan Lassiter. Luella sings like a disciple of Mississippi-born blues legend Jessie Mae Hemphill, while Lassiter shreds like jazz fusion never went away. There’s nothing particularly avant-garde about Still Among the Living, but it’s a raucous album that should satisfy both bluesniks and fans of fretboard audacity. As often happens in Nashville, conservatism tangles with the progressive impulse on the record, recorded live at The 5 Spot. For all that, it’s an often-surprising effort. If jazz is the sound of surprise, Drozdowski & Co. are doing their best to remain true to the music’s spirit. – Edd Hurt, Nashville Scene

• Multitalented instrumentalist and journalist Ted Drozdowski’s Coyote Motel ensemble blends and mashes up idiomatic references and elements in dazzling, freewheeling fashion. Their latest release Still Among the Living offers eight sizzling selections that run the gamut from autobiographical reflection to fiery social protest, insightful probing and energetic declarations. Drozdowski is the central driving force with his exuberant vocals, jovial personality and sonically flamboyant guitar solos, which merge avant-garde jazz’s experimental edge with heavy metal’s equally unpredictable fireworks. Still, everything’s fortified by a lyrical foundation steeped in the blues sensibility of irony, resilience and response. — Ron Wynn, Nashville Scene

About Coyote Motel’s debut album, Coyote Motel:

• “Altogether, Coyote Motel is a hell of a lot of fun, a near-perfect fusion of blues, country, rock, and folkish elements that shouldn’t work but instead sounds like Drozdowski invented the entire Americana genre. Grade: A   BUY!” — Rev. Keith A. Gordon, That Devil Music

• “Ted Drozdowski is one of the most imaginative guitarists currently exploring the outer reaches of cosmic roots music. [He has] inventive guitar chops, his deep respect for the blues and an off-kilter artistic vision that’s delightfully mad, but also completely organic. ”— Peter Lindlbad, Elmore Magazine

• “Drozdowski conjures up his own mesmerizing hoodoo on Coyote Motel, which is also the name of his new combo. The guitarist ranges here from the moody atmospherics of “Still Among the Living” to the dirty rocking of “Down in Chulahoma” and the punkish intensity of “Jimmy Brown.” What most of the album’s tracks have in common is the way Drozdowski’s six-string excursions venture far out – sometimes into the realm of the psychedelic – while they and the music manage to remain grounded in the elemental immediacy of the blues.” — Nick Cristiano, Philadelphia Inquirer (syndicated review column)

• “Their masterful new self-titled LP. Coyote Motel, is something of a lucid dream woven from cosmic threads of blues and other roots musics, as Drozdowski navigates some challenging emotional territory in his lyrics, from the intimately personal to musings on society as a whole. The music is plenty to take you somewhere else.” — Steve Trageser, Nashville Scene

• “The band’s new record has three things current blues records often lack: great songs, a sense of mystery, and the concept of a record as a work of art in and of itself, and not just as a recorded bar performance.” – Michael Ross, Guitar Player

• “Drozdowski and his Scissormen are adept in walking the line between purism and innovation. The band brings a reckless raw energy that drips with honeysuckle wine and the stifling yet comfortable humidity of the Deep South.  There is mysticism and mystery in the music.” — Joe Wolfe-Mazeres, No Depression

• “Ted Drozdowski is a trippy guitar player.” — Otis Taylor, Blues Music Award-winning guitarist/songwriter

VISIONARY COSMIC ROOTS MUSIC BAND COYOTE MOTEL’S DEBUT FEATURE FILM AND SOUNDTRACK ALBUM — THE RIVER: A SONGWRITER’S STORIES OF THE SOUTH … SoundTrACK OUT NOW; FILM PLAYING AT FESTIVALS!

A deeply rooted psychedelic musical exploration of the lives, lore, and locales along three great rivers of the American South—embracing musical performances, storytelling, light art, aerial dance, and cultural history. The crowdfunded film includes the work of more than 15 Nashville-based independent artists. Soundtrack arrives on March 19, 2024—same date as Nashville premiere.

Contact: Pati deVries/Devious Planet   Pati@deviousplanet.com    917-751-2532     

 NASHVILLE, TN — The visionary new film The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South is unlike anything you’ve seen. Starring Nashville-based cosmic roots band Coyote Motel, it’s a music and performance movie, but it’s also a cultural history, a memoir, and a psychedelic experience. In 10 songs and stories, The River explores the lives, lore, and locales along three great rivers of the American South—the Mississippi, the Cumberland, and the Tallahatchie.

Conceived and written by Coyote Motel bandleader Ted Drozdowski and directed by Richie Owens of Parlor Films, the crowdfunded feature film is also a collaboration of more than 15 Nashville independent artists, including light art creators Darling Lucifer Productions and the aerialists of Suspended Gravity Circus. The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South is currently in festival competition and was recently awarded Best Original Feature Soundtrack and Best Experimental Feature laurels by Cincinnati’s Queen City Film Festival. The film is also a finalist at the Warsaw International Film Festival.

 “My entire life has been a rehearsal for The River,” says Drozdowski, a noted guitarist, songwriter, journalist, music historian, and the editorial director of Premier Guitar magazine. “I’ve spent decades exploring the obscure corners where great American music heralds from, and I’ve aways embraced the connections between the bedrock of Son House and Muddy Waters, the aether of Pink Floyd, the freedom of Sonny Sharrock and John Coltrane, and the mythical sense of time and place in the songs of the Band and Creedence Clearwater Revival. I’ve woven all of that into both Coyote Motel, which I founded in 2018, and this film.”

 The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South was originally scripted as a stage performance, but Covid arrived and the opportunity to recast it as a film crystallized. These songs and the narratives connecting them are a journey along these beautiful rivers, and the river of life, with the music, visuals, and aerial dance adding a kaleidoscopic palette that broadens the film’s emotional landscape to something beyond what words and music alone can convey.

 Starting at Nashville’s Cumberland and weaving south along the Mississippi and Tallahatchie, The River introduces viewers to muleskinners, coal miners (Drozdowski’s immigrant grandparents), riverboat gamblers, freedom fighters, and the late musical giants of North Mississippi blues. It also essays the omnipotent, timeless magic of the rivers themselves, and the cities and rural outposts along their endless waters. Coyote Motel—Drozdowski on vocals, guitar and diddley bow; Sean Zywick on bass; Kyra Lachelle Curenton on drums; Luella on vocals, guitar, and percussion; and Laurie Hoffma on Theremin and glockenspiel—cast a sonic spell that’s both otherworldly and deeply rooted.

 In “Tupelo,” the tale of flooding that opens the film and soundtrack, an archaic banjo tuning on guitar is the springboard for a swirl of melody and rhythm that captures the power of nature’s wrath. “Keep Me In Your Mind” is a stomping powerhouse about levee camp life, with Drozdowski and Luella trading vocals. “Long Distance Runner,” with its echoes of Pink Floyd and Philip Glass, is a trip from the Mississippi to the demimonde. And in the lead single, “The River Runs Forever,” Luella’s distinctive voice angelically spins the saga of Ernest Willis, who lived for decades beneath the Memphis-Arkansas bridge, gleaning his living from the river.

 Along the way, Darling Lucifer’s projections, which recall the legendary Filmore light shows of the ’60s, and Suspended Gravity’s aerial flights in five performances, add transcendent notes of beauty, grace, and surprise—until the film and soundtrack culminates in the title song, which brings its world of ghosts, heroes, villains, and their watery loci to peace, in a soaring, melodic crescendo of guitar, ambient bass, Theremin, and Luella’s voice, resonating like a call from beyond.

“It’s an amazing package,” Grammy-winning music journalist Anthony DeCurtis writes in the film’s notes. “But the impact of The River is so much greater than even the sum of those extraordinary parts. The film is a visionary autobiography grounded in the telling details of Drozdowski’s own personal history, ‘the river of my own life experience,’ as he puts it, but ultimately it becomes a dream journey that teases out why and how music means so much to so many of us.”

To raise funds for the film, Drozdowski and co-producer Hoffma drew on the international fanbase Ted built touring the world with his earlier Mississippi-hill-country-informed band Scissormen and from his lifetime in music. The Arts & Business Council of Greater Nashville also lent support as a fiscal agent, providing an opportunity for tax-deductible contributions. And the film was shot on a Nashville-area soundstage and at various locations where its stories take place. It also draws on still images and historic footage licensed and loaned from various sources.

 Drozdowski and co-producer Hoffma drew on the international fanbase Ted built touring with world with his earlier Mississippi-hill-country-informed band Scissormen and from his lifetime in music. The Arts & Business Council of Greater Nashville also lent support as a fiscal agent, providing an opportunity for tax-deductible contributions. And the film was shot on a Nashville-area soundstage and at various locations where its stories take place. It also draws on still images and historic footage licensed and loaned from various sources.

 “Making The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South has been an amazing creative experience—full of learning and challenges I hadn’t imaged,” Drozdowski says. “I’m truly grateful to all of our supremely talented collaborators, and especially to our director, Richie Owens, who brought so much insight and dedication to bringing the film as I’d envisioned it to life. His work and the performances of Coyote Motel, Darling Lucifer, and Suspended Gravity are as much as part of the heart and soul of The River and as the people and places in its stories.”

 To find out more about The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South and Coyote Motel’s three previous albums, visit coyotemotel.com. You can also follow The River on facebook.com/scissormen, on X at twitter.com/CoyoteMotel, and on https://www.instagram.com/teddrozdowski/

 Other websites:

• facebook.com/parlorfilms

• darlinglucifer.com

• suspendedcircus.com

Ted has been writing and consulting about music for 45 years. His work has appeared in a wealth of publications, from international magazines to newspapers to liner notes to genre encyclopedias to the Grammy and Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame Induction books. He is currently editorial director at Premier Guitar. This is some of Ted’s more recent writing about artists for that magazine:

• R.L. Burnside: https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/25453-forgotten-heroes-rl-burnside
  
  
  

• Joe Satriani: https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/26665-joe-satriani-dont-even-think-about-it
  
  
  

• Otis Taylor: https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/25400-otis-taylor-music-for-ghosts
  
  
  

• Chrissie Hynde/The Pretenders: https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/24979-chrissie-hynde-if-it-gets-politegame-over
  
  
  

• Sonny Sharrock: https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/24636-forgotten-heroes-sonny-sharrock-s-footprints-on-the-moon
  
  
  

• Lucinda Williams: https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/23806-lucinda-williams-ghost-whisperer

  
  

• Start Playing Slide Guitar Now: https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/26244-dust-that-broom-a-newbies-guide-to-slide

• Cedric Burnside: Lion of Mississippi Hill Country Guitar: https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/27890-cedric-burnside-lion-of-mississippi-hill-country-guitar

• Mike Baggetta: It Mike Baggetta’s Music Was a Superhero, It Would Be Mr. Fantastic: https://www.premierguitar.com/artists/if-mike-baggettas-music-was-a-superhero-it-would-be-mr-fantastic

• •Black Keys: Dan Auerbach Summons the Ghosts of Mississippi Blues: https://www.premierguitar.com/artists/the-black-keys

Ted’s Gear

Here’s a close-up look at some of Ted’s favorite gear (more to come):

A Visionary Autobiography: Ted Drozdowski’s

The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South

The way that culture works is that we are all immersed in our individual experiences, but we also swim in the deeper currents of everything that surrounds us. Sometimes we’re aware of those currents, and sometimes we’re not. Sometimes they just carry us along, and sometimes we are permitted glimpses of their significance and their meaning. The most profound stories get told, however, when artists examine both themselves and the world around them in ways that truly reveal the forces that have made them who they are.

That’s exactly what Ted Drozdowski has done in The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South, the extraordinary film he has made with director Richie Owens of Parlor Films. Anyone who is even cursorily familiar with the music Drozdowski has created over the years with his bands Coyote Motel and Scissormen understands his devotion tto the raw power of the deepest American music. His coruscating slide guitar cuts directly to the bone, and then cuts deeper.

 With The River, the boundaries between Drozdowski’s own passions and their fertile sources evaporate. He and Coyote Motel perform ten gripping songs that are enriched by Drozdowski’s evocative, spoken chronicles of the Mississippi, Cumberland and Tallahatchie rivers; indelible visual images of the haunted Southern landscape; gorgeous, sensual performances by the aerialists of the Suspended Gravity Circus; and the swirling light-show projections of Darling Lucifer.

 It’s an amazing package. But the impact of The River is so much greater even than the sum of those extraordinary parts. The film is a visionary autobiography grounded in the telling details of Drozdowski’s own personal history, “the river of my own life experience,” as he puts it, but ultimately it becomes a dream journey that teases out why and how music means so much to so many of us.

 “I wanted to absorb it all,” Drozdowski says at one point about the multitude of sounds that have fired his imagination along the ways of his life. The River plays as if he satisfied that desire, and now, with a naturalness suffused with rapture, he inevitably expresses it with every note and gesture. But, as so often turns out to be the case with compelling tales, the story is not only his. Best of all, if you care about the music and its origins to any degree whatsoever, you will discover much about yourself as you travel along Drozdowki’s powerfully emotional journey of exploration.

– Anthony DeCurtis, author of Lou Reed: A LIfe, contributing editor Rolling Stone, distinguished lecturer, creative writing, the University of Pennsylvania