Joseph Decosimo

About the show

Joseph Decosimo is a multi-instrumentalist (fiddle, banjo, droney things), singer, and leading interpreter of traditional music from Southern Appalachia, where he grew up and learned from the region’s last master musicians. Based in Durham, NC, Joseph is a powerful champion of traditional music—a responsive artist who makes his genre accessible and draws musicians from Durham’s rich traditional, experimental, and indie communities into his orbit to make music that NPR All Song Considered praises as “pushing the sonic boundaries of old-time music ... gorgeous.”

Dear Life Records and Free Dirt Records have released his projects. He performs with Cleek Schrey and Luke Richardson in Beehive Cathedral. He has contributed to recordings by Hiss Golden Messenger, Wye Oak, and Jake Xerxes Fussell. A PhD, National Old-time Banjo Champion, and blue ribbon winning fiddler, Decosimo has toured the US, Canada, and UK with the prize-winning Old-time band the Bucking Mules.