Description

Tiki Parlour Recordings is proud to present: Ten Hoedowns to a Disco Beat by Ben Townsend

Physical Release includes gatefold CD & Digital Download

RELEASE DATE: OCTOBER 16, 2026

Also available for Download at BANDCAMP

Inspired by the visionary experiments of Charanjit Singh’s Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat, Ben Townsend’s latest album, Ten Hoedowns to a Disco Beat, reimagines the traditions of his Appalachian upbringing through the pulse of contemporary electronic sound. Originally conceived in collaboration with dance caller T Claw Crawford as accompaniment for square and contra dances throughout Appalachia, the project gradually evolved into something far beyond its initial purpose.

Across ten tracks, traditional Appalachian melodies are transformed through lush arrangements, unexpected reharmonizations, drum machines, and chopped samples. The result is neither a folk record nor a dance album, but a conversation between the two, music that places listeners on a dance floor somewhere between West Virginia and Detroit. Released by the trailblazing folk and experimental labels Tiki Parlour Recordings and Questionable Records, Ten Hoedowns to a Disco Beat translates the communal energy of both the urban club and the rural square dance into an immersive listening experience.

Townsend is joined by a wide-ranging cast of collaborators, including violinist Dina Maccabee, guitarist Matt Metz, fiddler Aaron Jonah Lewis, dulcimer player Sarah Kate Morgan, pedal steel guitarist Paul Martin, Irish folk trio The Henry Girls, and his brother, pianist Jim Townsend. Together, their performances reveal the album’s central idea: that musical traditions can continue to evolve, finding unexpected new expressions through collaboration, technology, and innovation.

Ben Townsend is a West Virginia multi-instrumentalist, producer, and educator whose work explores the meeting point of Appalachian tradition and contemporary sound. Grounded in the fiddle and banjo traditions of central Appalachia, his music draws equally from regional traditions, electronic production, global folk practices, and experimental composition. Rather than treating tradition as a fixed inheritance, Townsend approaches it as a living language, one that can be transformed, reimagined, and carried into unexpected sonic spaces.

A lifelong student of West Virginia and Kentucky old-time music, Townsend’s work is shaped by generations of tradition bearers, including Lester McCumbers, Melvin Wine, Dave Bing, Gerry Milnes, John Harrod, and John Morris. Through his work with The Fox Hunt, Old Sledge, the Iron Leg Boys, the Hackensaw Boys, and as a solo artist, he has explored the connectional power of traditional music in settings ranging from Appalachian dance halls to international stages.

Townsend’s recent work has expanded through collaboration, cross-cultural exchange, and new approaches to sound production. A transformative musical exchange with Gnawa guembri player Mehdi Nassouli of Taroudant, Morocco, through Found Sound Nation opened new pathways between Appalachian music, West African traditions, ambient sound, and modular synthesis. These explorations inform his forthcoming projects, including Ten Hoedowns to a Disco Beat.

Through recording, performance, teaching, and community projects, including the monthly Third Space series he hosts in North River Mills, West Virginia, Townsend continues to explore how ancestral music can evolve without losing its connection to place. His work occupies a space between archive and invention, where old melodies, new technologies, and communal experiences converge.