Release: Steve Howell & Fats Kaplin - Know You From Old

Artiest/Band: Steve Howell & Fats Kaplin Album: Know You From Old Release: 7th November 2025 Label: Out Of The Past Music Format: CD/LP/DL/Digital Genre: Acoustic Blues / Folk For his fourteenth album release, Steve Howell is joined by multi-instrumental maestro Fats Kaplin, in taking a deep dive into traditional music spanning songs with their origins stretching back to the thirteenth century and up to the 1950's.......►►►

For his fourteenth album release, Steve Howell is joined by multi-instrumental maestro Fats Kaplin, in taking a deep dive into traditional music spanning songs with their origins stretching back to the thirteenth century and up to the 1950's. An artfully rendered mix of blues, Appalachian and British traditional music, western, gospel, folk, and jazz, the blending of the acoustic instruments and authentic execution of the music provides a journey to the crossroads of musical history by way of a variety of classic American stories proving their endless beauty and perpetual importance. The clear musical kinship of Fats and Steve provides a texture to the music that is deep and wide, along with the mix of acoustic guitar, fiddle, mandolin, banjo, and bouzouki tones recalling past times.

“It is safe to say Howell is now at the top of his abilities to play the music of the spheres in a downhome bundle of reality. An American beauty.” Bill Bentley, Americana Highways

For decades, guitarist and singer Steve Howell has been a devoted interpreter of early American music, known for an understated style and deep reverence for the blues, folk, and jazz traditions. Longtime collaborator Fats Kaplin is a multi-instrumentalist of rare versatility, whose fiddle, mandolin, banjo, and bouzouki have graced stages and studios alongside some of roots music’ s most respected artists. Together, Howell and Kaplin form a duo steeped in tradition yet alive with spontaneity, approaching old songs not like relics from the past but as living, breathing stories still worth telling.

On Know You From Old, the pair digs deep into the soil of early American song, unearthing a variety of gems and breathing new life into them, with warmth and wisdom. This lovingly crafted collection traces a path through rural blues, ballads, gospel spirituals, and early jazz - the roots from which modern American music grew. 

Recorded with a keen ear by Jason Weinheimer at Fellowship Hall Sound in Little Rock, Arkansas, the album feels like it was captured on a back porch or a parlor many moons ago. Howell’ s seasoned vocals and fingerstyle picking recall the lineage that runs from Blind Lemon Jefferson and Mississippi John Hurt to Dave Van Ronk and Doc Watson, while Kaplin’s instrumentation weaves a tapestry of sound steeped in old-world character and grit.

The album opens with “Black Dog,” a driving Kentucky rag first recorded in 1930. Howell’s surehanded guitar work and seasoned vocals breathe fresh life into the song, setting the tone for more deep musical roots to come. “Buffalo Skinners” follows with a vivid retelling of an 1873 plains buffalo hunt, blending stark frontier storytelling with Kaplin’ s atmospheric fiddle, conjuring wide-open spaces and the hardships of the Old West. “The Cuckoo” - a centuries-old ballad with origins in the British Isles - highlights the duo’ s ability to honor tradition while making it their own, with Howell’s picking and Kaplin’ s fiddle creating a haunting soundscape.

A stirring version of “Gospel Plow” links this collection to the deep well of sacred song at the heart of early American music, while the duo’ s stripped-down reading of Gershwin’ s “But Not for Me” and contemplative take on Ellington’ s “Mood Indigo” showcase jazz sophistication in the album’ s roots fabric. 

Across each track, Howell and Kaplin reveal how the threads of folk, blues, Across each track, Howell and Kaplin reveal how the threads of folk, blues, gospel, and jazz mix to form the rich tapestry of American music. Davis Coen

WEBLINKS

• OS: www.stevehowell.ws
• FB: www.facebook.com/steve.howell1

DISC: 1

1. Black Dog

2. San Francisco Bay Blues

3. Buffalo Skinners

4. Bugger Burns

5. Gospel Plow

6. Blue Ridge Mountain Blues

7. The Cuckoo

8. Cold Haily Windy Night

9. The Escape of Old John Webb

10. One Kind Favor

11. Shawneetown

12. But Not For Me

13. Mood Indigo

Betsie Brown, Blind Raccoon, betsie@blindraccoon.com

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