[Cover photo features Viv & Riley]
Washington, DC’s Free Dirt Records is celbrating 20 years of impacting the modern Roots music landscape with a new release, The Long Memory: 20 Years of Free Dirt Records, arriving November 6, 2026 on their label. The album will officially be released at the 2026 Brooklyn Folk Festival.
It brings together twelve unreleased tracks from the label’s vault. These tracks include unreleased demos, b-sides, and live cuts from Willi Carlisle, Cinder Well, Kaia Kater, and Viv & Riley, alongside brand-new material from newly signed artists like Nathan Evans Fox and Liv Greene. There’s also older, archival recordings from early Free Dirt breakouts like The Wilders.
Label head Jonathan Een Newton explains:
I feel like we have one foot in the mainstream of the music industry and one foot firmly outside—DIY, radical, independent.
The first single from this new compilation is out now: “The Long Game” from Viv & Riley and Rachel Baiman. “The Long Game” was written by the late Jim Miller, and it originally appeared on Western Centuries’ 2016 debut, Weight of the World. In a poignant twist, Vivian Leva of Viv & Riley’s recently deceased mother, Carol Elizabeth Jones, herself a noted Appalachian musician, used to play with Jim Miller in an old-time band.
Viv & Riley say about the song:
‘The Long Game’ is a song written by our departed friend and mentor Jim Miller, an incredible singer, songwriter, and member of fellow Free Dirt band Western Centuries. It contains a constant stream of Jim wisdom, written from his perch a few decades down the line. After Jim’s passing, we found ourselves listening to this song again and again because it feels like Jim speaking to us from beyond. When we were first starting out playing together as 18 year olds and Viv was signed to Free Dirt, Jim invited us out to open for Western Centuries and it was a formative first touring experience. We still feel so proud to share a label roster with him on Free Dirt and it feels fitting to share this song as a part of celebrating 20 years of Free Dirt, a label that has greatly shaped the direction our lives have taken. This version was recorded as part of the first sessions of our collaborative project kissing other ppl with another dear friend and member of the Free Dirt family, Rachel Baiman. It is particularly profound for us because Jim and Viv’s mom made music together during their formative young musical years. We lost Viv’s mom, Carol Elizabeth Jones, earlier this year, like Jim, far too soon. We imagine them singing together once again, somewhere we can’t yet see. But we hear them all the time.
TRACKLIST
1. Liv Greene – I Can’t Know (Demo)
2. Rum Drum Ramblers ft. Pokey LaFarge Brick by Brick
3. Viv & Riley and Rachel Baiman – The Long Game
4. JP Harris – Walk On By
5. Allison de Groot & Tatiana Hargreaves – Cumberland Gap
6. Kaia Kater – Part of an Echo
7. Willi Carlisle – Railroading the Great Divide
8. The Montvales – Carolina (Trio Version)
9. The Wilders – I’m Going to Memphis (Live)
10. Caleb & Reeb – Old Friends
11. Cinder Well – One Morning in May
12. Nathan Evans Fox – Reckoning
