PRESS AND BIO

BIO

Olds grew up in the southern rural hills of Pennsylvania and draws much of his inspiration from the fields, rivers, and woodlands of that area.  His music has been called "gritty, heartfelt and beautiful" and he draws influence from pre-war country music, acoustic folk, and sometimes the old blues of the Mississippi Delta. Olds brings an emotional sincerity that can quiet a room to a hush, and keep listeners strung along on the tales woven within the songs.

Live- Olds switches between banjo, guitar, uke, dobro, and sometimes adds kick drum and snare.

 "Unless you frequent a few small music circles in the 
underground world, you may have never heard of the 

artist Olds Sleeper, but that doesn’t diminish the 

argument one can make for him being one of the best 

songwriters of our generation."--- 

www.savingcountrymusic.com, review of "I Will Follow 

You to Jail, here.

"The point of going ‘lo-fi’, and highlighting the artificiality of a recording, is not, of course, to replace ‘a lie’ with ‘the truth’. What the strategy employed on this record articulates is that truth is contingent, a negotiable value that comes in all shapes and sizes. I get the impression that Olds Sleeper’s kind of truth is the truth of experience; the physically apprehended truth of the body; the truth of sincerity, rather than the truth of argument. The truth of ramming a guitar’s signal through a cable so hard that it starts to bleed, rather than the truth of a ‘fidelity’ that denies the cable even exists; because it’s the ‘cable’, the mediating factors, that keep the lost and wounded characters in these songs in isolation from one another, even as it offers their only hope of connection, and the distortion we hear so liberally applied throughout New Year’s Poem is the ragged edge of their pain. I have rarely heard music that so economically and powerfully enacts a view of the world, and though it is a bleak one, it is not an unrealistic one, and it is not without its compensations. I’m raising a toast to the man who made these songs, although unlike one of his characters, I won’t be drinking it from shotgun shells."

-Oliver Arditi.com  full article

" Not the type of artist that will be making an appearance on the next Gossip Girl, but that is just another reason to dig your teeth into it.  It’s dirty, got guts, dusty jeans and includes a heart of gold on the inside "

-SLowcoustic music-  1/10/10 full article

"Gravel, grit, sweat and spit. Twang, mash, distortion and bash. Meet Olds Sleeper." -

FOLktowne, - full article

"It is said the systemically-morose life the modern American male leads is one of quiet desperation. Olds gives that quiet desperation a voice, and a vehicle in I Will Follow You To Jail. Towns and women, and unresolvable circumstances and sins paint a bitingly authentic picture of a man at wit’s end. It is a soundtrack for the American anti-hero, making you fall in love with the villain, cheer on bad male middle-aged behavior, and see the beauty in otherwise ugly things. . . . . and then Olds plays a bad ass banjo instrumental"-- Triggerman, Saving Country Music, full article

  

"Multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Olds Sleeper has worked long and hard over the years to cultivate a most unusual soundscape of experimental and rustic folk, old soul Americana, and lo-fi minimalist roots."- James Carlson, nodepresssion.com and Indie Examiner - full article and interview

"When it comes to the obscure artist from Pennsylvania that works under the name Olds Sleeper (among others), you get a sense that at any moment, his music could turn iconic, almost like a Daniel Johnston storyline, where even though he continues to remain obscure amongst the general public, amongst a microburst of important or influential artists, he could become a legend." Saving Country Music, full article here.

www.oldssleeper.bandcamp.com

www.oldssleeper.blogspot.com

www.hawkhorses.blogspot.com