In spring 2011, the Portland-based folk outfit Balto released their debut album October s Road to an increasingly vocal, international chorus of praise. The 10-song LP is based on the experiences of Daniel Sheron, who abandoned his life in Moscow, Russia and went alone into Siberia. Against an ever-shifting backdrop of railways and desolate wastes, he tells a story of tragic love, found and lost; all-consuming love, and the story of a man who surrenders to it self-realization, but also danger and harm to himself and those close to him. To record the album, Sheron gathered Balto, a group of men who knew him well, who understood the songs, and who could imbue the story with the kind of intensity and gritty honesty needed to tell it. In a single December day, they tracked nearly all of what would become October s Road. Produced by Balto s mandolinist Andrew Sheron and mixed by Jeremy Backofen (Producer The Felice Brothers), the album introduces listeners to a sound that the band has dubbed, TransSiberian Americana. Balto s core instrumentation Acoustic Guitar and Upright Bass, Mandolin, Banjo, and Rhodes gives the release a unified, traditional sound, yet the content of the songs; the melodies, the atmospheres so rooted in Sheron s experience of the vast spaces of Russia provide a window into a world apart from the familiar.