Erik Huey, aka Cletus McCoy, co-founder of The Surreal McCoys, is releasing his debut solo album, Appalachian Gothic, on January 20, 2023 via Appalachian AF/CEN/The Orchard. While the McCoys were a cowpunk, outlaw country outfit known for their originals and creative mashups such “Whole Lotta Folsom,” Huey dug closer to home for the songs and stories on his debut, mining his own history — he’s descended from four generations of West Virginia coal miners — for the album.
“Eric “Roscoe” Ambel (producer/guitarist) and I wrote “The Devil Is Here In These Hills” for what we thought might grow into 2-3 songs that could be used in a soundtrack — a future TV series based on historian James Greene’s incredible book about the West Virginia Coal Mine Wars called The Devil is Here in These Hills,” Huey says. “As soon as Eric played the opening riff on his Dulcitar, it was like a doorway opened that revealed the entire album.
“My father, grandfather and great grandfather (who came over from Ireland) were all coal miners in the Monongahela Valley and I wrote this song before I’d even finished that book,” Huey says. “So many immigrants from Ireland, Scotland, Italy and Eastern Europe—along with African-Americans from The South—came to mine coal in Appalachia, and this song is an attempt to tell their story and the story of the generations that followed in their footsteps.”
On his first solo album, Huey takes a nostalgic deep dive into the Appalachia of his WV youth while wrestling with the contemporary realities of a hardscrabble region that’s been left behind in many ways. While Appalachian Gothic explores darker themes and raw subject matter such as the legacy of coal mining and the ravages of the opioid crisis on songs like “The Devil is Here in These Hills,” “Dear Dad,” “The Appalachian Blues,” and “The Battle of Uniontown,” it also taps into a defiant streak of optimism on twangy upbeat rockers like “Winona” and the pro-union anthem “Yours in the Struggle.”
Huey mines the Classic Country seam of the ’60s and ’70s on the rollicking “You Can’t Drink All Day” and the torchlit two-stepper “That’s What Jukeboxes Are For,” a duet with alt-country chanteuse Laura Cantrell, then roams into Spaghetti Western territory on the eerie “Death County.” He taps into his inner punk rocker on the swampy and lustful “Lucy”—songs he co-wrote with Ambel (the pair cowrote roughly half the songs on the LP). In a similar vein, Erik’s chugging cover of John Cooper Clarke’s “A Heart Disease Called Love” nods to The Ramones and is highlighted by the jump-blues baritone saxophone of Steve Berlin (Los Lobos).
Appalachian Gothic was recorded at Cowboy Technical Studios in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and produced by rock ‘n’ roots guitarist Ambel (Bottle Rockets, Jimbo Mathus, Yayhoos, Sarah Borges). Along with Eric Ambel on guitar, musicians include Jeremy Chatzky on bass and Kenny Soule on drums, with additional appearances by Keith Christopher (bass), Andy York (guitar), Neil Thomas (accordion), Cody Nilsen (pedal steel), and drummer Phil Cimino. Guests include Steve Berlin and Laura Cantrell.
Coming of age during the early years of punk rock, Huey got into music via on-ramp of The Blasters, X, Jason & The Scorchers, The Beat Farmers, and Mojo Nixon, then wandered upstream along the Hillbilly Highway until he unearthed a couple of old cassettes by Johnny Cash and George Jones — artists he’d first heard as a kid riding along in the cab of his Uncle Jack’s 18-wheeler. Hearing these artists pulled him back to his musical roots.
“This record is a love letter to Appalachia,” he says. “Like so many West Virginians, I had to eventually leave the place where I grew up. As the locals say, I had to ‘get out to get ahead,’ which created a lasting sense of exile. So this album is a homecoming of sorts. It’s a realization that although I spent my life tunneling out, those rugged hills kept calling me home.”
