Mike Farris pays tribute to flood-torn Nashville on new EP

AMERICANA, blues and gospel singer Mike Farris will release a six-song EP on 26th October to commemorate and celebrate the rebirth of Nashville, a city and its surrounding communities devastated by a "1,000 year" flood on May 1, 2010. 'The Night The Cumberland Came Alive' was recorded just weeks after the flood. The EP features an all-star cast of musicians including Sam Bush, Kenny Vaughan (Marty Stuart), Ketch Secor and Gill Landry (Old Crow Medicine Show), Byron House (Robert Plant) as well as Ann, Regina and Alfreda McCrary (The McCrary Sisters). Said Farris, "Stylistically, pre-war American music has long been a passion of mine. Before the flood, we'd been searching for songs that would evoke the struggle and the victory of the working class, a sound rising up out of flesh and bone, of spit and spirit. But then, as a city, we were hit square in the gut by this unbelievable flood. And that sound meshed with the spirit of resurrection we saw rise up all over this area. When we gathered in that historic church to lay it all down, what happened was beyond our imaginations."