On Wednesday morning, the link for Cardinals at the Window, a flood-relief compilation of previously unreleased music from dozens of artists, went live on Bandcamp.
The 136-track list has an ambitious range, featuring live tracks from bands like R.E.M. and Phish alongside new songs from Sharon Van Etten, Little Brother, and Sylvan Esso, and original covers, including a Waxahatchee cover of Gillian Welch’s “Wrecking Ball” and a Watchhouse cover of Neil Youngs’ “Harvest Moon.”
Put together by a trio with ties to Western North Carolina—Libby Rodenbough, David Walker, and Grayson Haver Currin—proceeds from Cardinals at the Window will be split evenly between on-the-ground relief organizations Rural Organizing and Resilience (ROAR), the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina, and BeLoved Asheville.
The process of quickly compiling the sprawling, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink musical roster, Rodenbough told the INDY, “astounded us, but it really grew legs of its own.”
“We started asking folks about it on the Saturday after the storm and by the following Wednesday I had lost track of everybody who’d signed up,” says Rodenbough, who lives in Madison County. “I think it has something to do with how this area gets sneakily into people’s souls, even if you’ve just passed through.”
The project’s title is a nod to long-held spiritual associations with the cardinal as a harbinger of hope. All of the proceeds will go to relief efforts, organizers say, with funds disseminated through a tandem fundraising campaign, Cardinals at the Window.
Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida on September 26 before tearing through Georgia and the Carolinas. Western North Carolina—and in particular, Asheville and its surrounding counties—suffered the brutal compounded effects of previous heavy rainfall, communication and road outages, and mudslides. At least 121 fatalities are confirmed across the state, with many people still unaccounted for, particularly in hard-to-reach rural areas.
Helene is now the third-deadliest storm the United States has seen this century, behind Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Maria in 2017. The release falls on the day that Hurricane Milton, which some expect to be the “storm of a century,” churns toward vulnerable populations in the Gulf of Florida and is predicted to make landfall.
“In the aftermath of a ‘natural disaster,’ it’s important to situate this manifestation of ecological collapse within a history of inequitable exploitation of land and people,” Rodenbough said in the press release. “This is a region that has suffered in the name of human progress for a long time. I hope we’re going to take this opportunity to start building a different kind of world in Western North Carolina and beyond.”
Many of the artists featured on the compilation are from Western North Carolina, such as Indigo De Souza, Angel Olsen, Karly Hartzman (Wednesday), and Ryan Gustafson (The Dead Tongues). De Souza, who lives in the hard-hit area of Marshall, shared images on social media of the interior of their home caked in feet of mud. On X, the Wednesday band account posted that they recorded their track contribution on their phone in Asheville “during the storm before anyone knew how bad it was cause there was no phone service.”
And although the compilation features artists from all over, the heart of the music is firmly grounded in North Carolina, underscoring the state’s vast musical talent, with contributions from the likes of American Aquarium, Superchunk, The Avett Brothers, Iron & Wine, Sylvan Esso, Sonny Miles, Magic Tuber Stringband, Eric Bachmann, Little Brother, H.C. McEntire, and dozens of other Tar Heel bands. Artists from outside the state pay tribute to North Carolina in tributes, like Tennessee musician Adeem the Artist’s cover of the Elizabeth Cotten classic “Freight Train.”
Beyond this compilation, North Carolina has seen numerous musical fundraising efforts pulled together, including an October 21 Sturgill Simpson concert in Cary; an October 26 concert in Charlotte featuring Luke Combs, Eric Church, Billy Strings, and James Taylor; and an October 29 concert headlined by Ben Folds in Wilmington.
“There were just so many folks who, like us, had witnessed the destruction of these holy places from the outside and felt their hearts trying to break out of their chests,” Rodenbough said in the press release. “They also feel what I feel, that these mountains are the cradle of some deep and ineffable magic.”
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