The Barefoot Movement

Although one might be inclined to label the Barefoot Movement a bluegrass outfit, the group functions more accurately as a twenty-first-century Appalachian string band. Their music fuses country and folk elements with touches of rock, yielding an Americana roots sound that pairs reimagined traditional songs and ballads with original compositions while retaining an underlying pop sensibility. The ensemble originated during the high-school years of singer, songwriter, and fiddler Noah Wall in Oxford, North Carolina. Wall had only recently started composing her own material when she encountered mandolinist Tommy Norris; the two were then completing their senior year. Their musical rapport proved immediate, and even after they enrolled in separate colleges—Wall at East Tennessee State University’s Bluegrass, Old Time, and Country Music program and Norris at Western Carolina University, where he pursued classical music and recording engineering—they remained committed to assembling a string band. Together with mutual friend Quentin Acres they issued their first recording, the album Footwork, under the name the Barefoot Movement. Shortly before finishing her degree at East Tennessee State, Wall met upright bassist and singer Hasee Ciaccio, expanding the Barefoot Movement to a quartet. Following Acres’s departure, singer and guitarist Alex Conerly joined, enabling the band to tour the bluegrass festival circuit with notable success; their decision to perform barefoot further enhanced their informal, back-porch aesthetic. In 2013 the group delivered its second full-length album, Figures of the Year, and followed it the next year with the EP The High Road, a collection of traditional covers.