With their 2010 album, Genuine Negro Jig—which garnered a Best Traditional Folk Album Grammy—the Carolina Chocolate Drops proved that the old-time, fiddle and banjo-based music they’d so scrupulously researched and passionately performed could be a living, breathing, ever-evolving sound.

Starting with material culled from the Piedmont region of the Carolinas, they sought to freshly interpret this work, not merely recreate it, highlighting the central role African-Americans played in shaping our nation’s popular music from its beginnings more than a century ago.

The virtuosic trio’s approach was provocative and revelatory. Their concerts, The New York Times declared, were “an end-to-end display of excellence… They dip into styles of Southern black music from the 1920s and ’30s—string-band music, jug-band music, fife and drum, early jazz—and beam their curiosity outward. They make short work of their instructive mission and spend their energy on things that require it: flatfoot dancing, jug playing, shouting.”

Their new album On Leaving Eden, produced by Nashville stalwart Buddy Miller—the go-to guy for artists ranging from Robert Plant to Emmylou Harris—and recorded in his home studio, the Carolina Chocolate Drops illustrate their own adaptability to growth and change as the original lineup expands from three to five players for this recording and their new repertoire incorporates more blues, jazz and folk balladry alongside brilliantly rendered string-band tunes.

They are proud to carry on the tradition of black musicians like Odell and Nate Thompson, Dink Roberts, John Snipes, Libba Cotten, Emp White, and countless others who have passed beyond memory and recognition

“The Carolina Chocolate Drops breathe new life into old traditions. Informed by broad cultural knowledge and ceaseless curiosity, these young musicians extend the rich musical legacy of the North Carolina Piedmont, with all the technique, vitality, and depth of character needed to put it across. What more could you ask for in a string band?” -- Marshall Wyatt, Founder, Old Hat Records

“You start seeing things in sepia tones and even though the music’s being played right in front of you, you expect to hear crackles and hisses as if the sounds were being torn from a salvaged 78.” -- Rick Cornell, The Independent

“...belongs to an era when music was not something to be sold but some- thing from the soul.” -- Jeff Tamarkin, All Music Guide