This is an Americana-rock travelogue. For anyone who's ever had a backpack, a credit card and a country to head off to.

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ROCK: Americana, ROCK: Folk Rock



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"Jake Armerding is the most gifted and promising songwriter to emerge from the Boston folk scene in years," reports the Boston Globe, and with his third release, the Americana-rock travelogue _Walking On The World_, its author makes good on that promise.

A smattering of wildly different influences -- mainly, classical violin, bluegrass fiddle and 1980s pop-rock songwriting -- has made Armerding comfortable in pretty much whatever genre he chooses. The son of newspaper columnist and bluegrass singer/mandolinist Taylor Armerding, Jake was raised on good music and good writing. In high school he began to get into the songwriters of the 1960s, picking up the guitar, mandolin and, finally, the writing itself. His first effort, which appeared at age 14, was "pretty awful." But the songs improved -- by the time he graduated Wheaton College (IL) in 2000 with a degree in English, he had sold a thousand copies of his debut CD, _Caged Bird_, and the following year saw him land a coveted prize: the title of Best New Artist of 2001 from one of the best-loved folk radio stations in the country, WUMB Boston.

Armerding gave Nashville a shot that same year; he chafed against the scene and was back in Boston eight months later, but he had a new album to show for it. _Jake Armerding_, a collection of folk-pop songs written in Music City, was released nationally by Nashville independent Compass Records in 2003. Over 200 radio stations spun the record, and Cleveland Country Magazine opined, "If you're willing to back an emerging new talent, look no further than Jake Armerding's impressive debut." He went on to land the Newport, Kerrville and Falcon Ridge Folk Festivals, logging some 300 performances over the next three years.

Armerding tried hard to limit himself to folk but had no luck -- the songs he began writing for his next project showed traces of rock, Celtic and 1950s-era country music. "I think genres are for record stores, and unfortunately, record stores are dying out," he comments. "But good music is good music, wherever it comes from." The new album features Dan Dugmore on pedal steel, John Doyle on guitar and friends Aoife O'Donovan (of Crooked Still) and Mark Erelli on backing vocals, along with Armerding on vocals, guitar, violin and mandolin. _Walking On The World_ refuses to be labeled; over the course of eleven songs, Americana, country, rock, folk, pop and bluegrass all have their say.

But it is what they call good music.