Photo by Sebastian Evans
Sophomore Matthew DeChant released his debut folk album, “Out the Hollow Tree” on Saturday, Jan. 9, 2021. Of it, he says, “When you live in a suburb, it can be easy to think that there’s nothing mythical, nothing folkloric about where you are — that it’s all just plastic houses built in the ‘50s. But if you dig a little deeper, there’s all sorts of interesting things you can find in the cracks in between.” The album explores what happens when you do look for the mythical in everyday life, right here in Wisconsin. DeChant’s self-given title as “folksinger, song-spinner, shantyman and bard” feels fitting as soon as you start to listen to the music. The opening track is a cover of Peter Bellamy’s “Oak, Ash, and Thorn” — adapted from a poem by Rudyard Kipling — but the rest of the tracks on the album are ones that DeChant wrote himself.