Cardinals At The Window
Art by James Madison Mitchell
Cardinals At The Window was compiled by three North Carolina natives with deep ties to the region: musician and community organizer Libby Rodenbough, New Commute founder David Walker, and music journalist Grayson Haver Currin, with crucial support from Shirlette Ammons, Martin Anderson, Anna Morris, Cory Rayborn, and Rusty Sutton. Sylvan Esso’s Nick Sanborn, Alli Rogers, and Asheville native Clay Blair provided free audio engineering work. The compilation is functioning in tandem with a direct-relief effort launched by musicians, artists, and Western North Carolina residents Ryan Gustafson (The Dead Tongues) and Hunter Savoy.
“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,” says Rodenbough, a Madison County resident who was on tour in Massachusetts with The Dead Tongues when the storm hit her home. “It was instant, the way people signed on. They also feel what I feel, that these mountains are the cradle of some deep and ineffable magic.”
Cardinals At The Window crisscrosses genres, scenes, and state lines, as so many friends were eager to donate new music to the sudden cause of this enchanted region. There are entirely new songs from MJ Lenderman, The Go-Betweens, Sharon Van Etten, Little Brother, Sylvan Esso, the Mountain Goats, Hotline TNT, Six Organs of Admittance, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, Archers of Loaf, Flock of Dimes, Chuck Johnson, Real Estate, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, and many more.
Long providing crucial community support in Asheville and working directly on social justice issues impacting a rapidly changing city, BeLoved Asheville has redirected all of its resources to direct relief for those impacted by Hurricane Helene. Since 1978, the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina has provided crucial relief and resources for 18 counties in the state, with special focuses on education, cultural and natural resources, and the basic needs of citizens in its region. Founded in 2017 in the now-flood-ravaged Madison County, Rural Organizing and Resilience, or ROAR, is doing direct work on the ground to keep people fed, housed, and clothed and to begin the long process of cleanup and rebuilding.