At its best, the Americana movement nurtures a healthy balance between some timeless and precious forces: the regional vs. the national, the wisdom of elders vs. the zeal of youth, and the role of the individual artist vs. the collaborative collective. So when I saw a few months ago that North Carolina songwriter Laurelyn Dossett was releasing her first solo album, after the age of 60, in cahoots with one of the state’s most important contemporary artists, I felt all those forces in play.
The album - a new 12-song set called How Many Moons - is an independently released knockout and an artistic statement that deserves to transcend its home region’s gravity and the limited vision of the radio charts. Thus an invitation to the accomplished Ms. Dossett to be part of String #373.
In a stroke of good timing, thanks to Americanafest, I was able to meet and visit with that producer - MC Taylor, the mastermind behind the Durham based roots band Hiss Golden Messenger. He’s only put his toe in the water of producing other musicians, but his esthetic - a signature mingling of pastoral chords, open-air atmosphere and bracing rhythmic feel - seemed a good match. “He's like the groove master,” Dossett says. “And I don't speak groove, so it was really great for him to do that.”
When I encountered Taylor, I asked him how he felt about the collaboration, and he said this: “Laurelyn has always occupied a really special but unsung place in the world of North Carolina music. She’s been kind of a den mother to the musical scene around Greensboro. And I just think she’s a deep soul and has lived a life and written a lot of really special songs that are very intimate and connected to her.”
That’s lovely testimony that bolsters what I’ve learned gradually over the last 20 years, from a distance, about Laurelyn. Years ago I picked up a couple of CDs by her folk band Polecat Creek, built around her vocal duo with Kari Sickenberger. I was aware of Dossett’s win at the 2004 Chris Austin Songwriting Contest at MerleFest.
I think I first heard her sing live on a program with Bela Fleck and the NC Symphony during the World of Bluegrass in Raleigh about a decade ago. She joined banjo-playing NC troubadour Joe Newberry for a lovely performance of what we might call formal folk. I came to understand that this was reflective of her years writing for and singing with an innovative theater company in Greensboro called the Triad Stage. She tells us for example about an original retelling of the epic Beowulf set in Appalachia. And her work on The Gathering: A Winter’s Tale in Six Songs garnered writeups in some of the nation’s biggest newspapers and magazines.
Along the way, Laurelyn’s song “Anna Lee” - which she re-cut for How Many Moons - was picked up by the late great Levon Helm for his 2007 Dirt Farmer album and then his live Ramble at the Ryman album that followed. We talk about that as well as her song “Leaving Eden,” which became the title track of the Carolina Chocolate Drops final album. She and CCD alum Rhiannon Giddens grew close as Greensboro neighbors and collaborators on Triad Stage productions.
Recently, as I researched the story of emerging traditional banjo player and ballad singer Murphy Campbell, I came upon Laurelyn, who is working with her as a musician and mentor, along with banjo player Riley Baugus, a top tier old-time musician who’s been part of Polecat Creek.
We learn in the interview how all this came to be for a woman who didn’t start recording and playing a circuit as a youngster. “I came to this career accidentally and later, you know,” Dossett says. “I was 40 before I made a record with Polecat Creek.” So it’s not your typical recording artist story.
Dossett was born in Alabama, and her father’s work in military medicine brought her family to Pennsylvania, where she attended high school and college. Later, her husband's career in journalism wended though Knoxville and then to Greensboro, where Dossett was based for decades and where she raised a family. Now she’s single and living on land she acquired a few years ago in Stokes County, with a view of the Smoky Mountain foothills.
How Many Moons came about as Dossett pondered that for all her playing well with others, she didn’t have a project with her own stamp on it. And besides, “I just wanted to,” she tells us. “And I also had some songs that have never been recorded that I felt like I really wanted to hear in a more produced setting and with collaborators that I really appreciated.”
Taylor agreed to come on board, and they set up in Durham to record. The results show a ton of imagination in the writing and the music-scape, from the muscular stride of opener “The Vision And The Call” to the frustrated passion of “War, WV” and the ambient humidity of the mysterious “Run To The River.” Her imagery - avian, celestial, organic - weaves elegantly with the studio musicians' calm atmospheres. Like some of the best roots music, it’s not going to land in your feed with a lot of hype and hoopla but it’s fresh and real and punchy enough for a road trip.
As for Laurelyn’s feelings here in the fall of 2026: “I'm just happy to have it out there and happy to still be doing it.”
