[Cover photo credit to Dominic Cicala]
From the Dirt is an Americana band from central Maryland featuring Dan Kenny (songwriting, guitar, vocals), Jeff Karn (mandolin, harmony vocals) , Eddie Dickerson (fiddle), and Megan Leigh (harmony vocals). They take in Bluegrass, Celtic, Americana and Rock & Roll influences to craft their music and their themes often range from heartache, to addiction, love, loss, and loneliness.
From The Dirt’s new album, Colored Edge of Memory, will arrive on June 27th, 2025, and was Produced and recorded by Jerry Brown (Doc Watson, Lucinda Williams, Watchhouse / Mandolin Orange, Steep Canyon Rangers) at The Rubber Room studio in Chapel Hill, NC. Guest musicians on the album include Joseph Terrel (Mipso) on guitars, Joe MacPhail on drums and keys, Rick LeFleur (banjo), and Robbie Link (Townes Van Zandt) on upright bass.
Today, we’re very pleased to premier the track “Afterwards, On The Greyhound”, here on Wildfire Music + News. It will be released this week on May 16th, 2025.
“Afterwards, On The Greyhound” is a gentle track that captures the hush of a softly spoken internal conversation that fits well with the setting and idea of the song. The speaker is traveling on a Greyhound bus, observing their fellow passengers with their implied personal dramas motivating their travel, and ruminating on their own reasons for boarding that bus. All the instrumentation is handled with a light touch, with a focus on a rhythm that also fits well with the idea of a roadtrip song. The Production, too, is careful to pick out harmonies and reflective flourishes, but doesn’t break the spell of quiet contemplation. It’s perhaps this understated quality that is the most welcoming to the audience, inviting them into the story of the song.
Lyrically, “Afterwards, On The Greyhound” is not just very detailed in a way that captures the feeling of real-life travel, but jumps between the details of fellow passengers and the visuals of travel in an impressionistic way. That gives a feeling of direct experiences to the audience, not just the feeling of listening to a story, and leaves them with the texture of human life to consider. We get iPhones, blankets, and the wide swath of characters on the bus, with just enough information to leave us wondering about the rest. But as the song develops, we also become aware that the most mysterious passenger is not the recovering gambler, or the woman on the phone with a lawyer, but the narrator themselves, who simply poses questions surrounding someone they have left behind. This relationship context, one that suggests loss and pain, becomes the quiet undertone to the journey, and all the other passengers become part of the narrator’s drama.
Daniel Kenny says about the new song:
Have you ever rode a Greyhound for any considerable distance? You see some stuff…A Greyhound trip is where a bunch of lonely people are alone together, each running away from something; to something… There’s no better place in America to people-watch and wonder what somebody’s going thru.
From The Dirt’s first album, Bright Against the Blue was released in 2021 and features guest appearances by members of Mandolin Orange and Mipso. It carries the award-winning song, “Let’s Go Home”, a story about “the intersection of family and synthetic opioids.”
