Steve Howell & Fats Kaplin Breathe New Life into Early American Song on Know You From Old

Steve Howell & Fats Kaplin Breathe New Life into Early American Song on Know You From Old

Acoustic Blues, Folk

Release Date: November 7, 2025

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​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.

Tracks:
01. Black Dog
02. San Francisco Bay Blues
03. Buffalo Skinners
04. Bugger Burns
05. Gospel Plow
06. Blue Ridge Mountain Blues
07. The Cuckoo
08. Cold Haily Windy Night
09. The Escape of Old John Webb
10. One Kind Favor
11. Shawneetown
12. But Not For Me
13. Mood Indigo
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Website: 
steve-howell.com