The ten remarkable songs of Unsung Passage are long-distance distillations of experiences, of events lived and places seen and pondered and ultimately poured into reflective anthems for our harried times. Gustafson recorded these songs much as they were written-during short summer sojourns away from the road, when he and a quartet of friends could gather in the Chapel Hill studio The Rubber Room for two-day sessions. Longtime North Carolina confidants and collaborators James Wallace, Jeff Crawford, and Casey Toll form the rhythm section, while Mountain Man’s Molly Sarlé harmonizes softly and adds a filigree of unexpected flute. Other friends offer fiddle and percussion, cello and extra guitar, softly padding songs that stand as statements unto themselves.
