Jon Crocker"s beard has been growing nicely since he started touring as a folk musician. "I remember the day well," he recalls. "I was in Wyoming, and this old guy at the end of the bar said that it was a state law that all musicians had to have a beard as a sort of identifying feature. I believed him and immediately drew one in with a sharpie so as to avoid trouble." On Crocker"s newest release, the beard is nearly out of control. The singing turns to growling at times, then to moaning, then to a tender whistle. The dull guitars and buckets bang like a good axe against spruce; the songs climax and take you down the canyon in a flash flood. "These songs are not so much about death as they are about life, and also about wagon wheels and fictional saints. There"s something for everybody," Crocker says. "Except for Pietists. They"ve got no business listening to my music." Not only did Crocker play all the instruments on the album, he also produced, engineered, and mixed it. But he doesn"t want to take all the credit. "It has nothing to do with me. The beard deserves credit for all of it."