“At work, one night in 2009, I suddenly thought “What if I tuned the mandolin D/D#, G/G#, G/G#, D/D#, and then piled other acoustic instruments, tuned to the same notes, on top of that?” It didn’t come to me in words like that – the concept just popped in from some other zone. That happens sometimes. As the project developed, it began to sound like a stringband from 1919 trying to play harsh noise, which brought together some genres I love. “Zounds” is a medieval contraction of “His wounds”, referring to the wounds of Christ. “High Lonesome” is just ol’ mountain music from the Appalachians rising up all around where I live, here in Virginia.”