About
Justin started playing ragtime and country blues guitar at the age of sixteen after being given a broken Goya with two strings which he played for a week straight till he got it fixed and found that you could do way more with six strings than two. After a few years of playing old songs from the 20s and 30s and living out of shacks and cabins in the country, he discovered such modern music as Palace Brothers and Songs: Ohia and began to appreciate the beauty in simplicity and space he found in that music. By 2002, this sensibility resulted in a record of songs called Sandrock Hilton, named after the trailer that sat on the ridge near his treehouse in the woods in Amesville, Ohio. Justin continued to make and record music in rural settings (barns, shacks, empty farmhouses) and released Traveler's Rest in 2004. After moving to Colorado in 2006, he made Ten Dollar Guitar which, typically, was recorded on dirt roads and fields from the tailgate of his car. After driving down to Guatemala in the winter of 2007 to write and record, Justin got the opportunity to play 15 dates with the Avett Brothers across the country to large audiences and had his first experience playing with a band. In the fall of 2008, a new band fell together naturally in Ashland, Oregon. The group recorded The Love & The Mystery in the summer of 2009 and were on tour in August on the west coast in support of that album.
