Medicine for Living

A visceral connection between a sense of place and the music she makes is at the core of Alexa Rose's debut album, Medicine for Living. A stunning ten-track effort, it finds the 25-year-old singer-songwriter bringing a wellspring of tradition to bear on an enlivening collection of contemporary roots songs. A mostly self-taught musician, Rose picked up the guitar as a teen. "I always grew up with traditional mountain music in my ear and in my community, but I don't think I actualized it's influenced on me until I moved to North Carolina in 2013." It was there, as a music major at Appalachian State University, that Rose was fully exposed to a wealth of old time music, regional stylists like Doc Watson, and most crucially, the ancient folk ballads carried over from the British Isles. "Those traditional songs are presented in a stark way that preserves the stories. It's all about the storytelling," she says. "That really affected the way I started crafted my own songs and how I sang."