The past and present of Fust

Fust’s de facto band leader Aaron Dowdy is pondering deeply, in a way that he does constantly while talking, the consequential responsibility he has over the stories he and his band are telling. And storytelling is central to Fust’s world; people and places, the past, the future and the present, everything all at once you might say.

“I love time out of step, you know, the past, future and present sort of collapsed in on one another.” as Dowdy puts it.

With album number three, the North Carolina five piece is a band looking to move forward by looking deeper into the past. Big Ugly, a record steeped in the landscapes and lore of Appalachia, was put in motion by Dowdy tripping down memory lane with his grandmother, revisiting haunts from her youth and seeing how they’ve survived the passage of time. Or sometimes how they haven’t.

"It started with these trips I was taking with my grandma to West Virginia," he explains, his voice carrying a hint of the South he captures so acutely in his music. "Seeing those places, hearing her stories… it all started to weave together with these song fragments I already had."

Dowdy's songwriting is woven from personal histories and intimate observations. He paints vivid portraits of "holler life," of rusted toys in overgrown yards, and the ghosts of demolished buildings lingering in the memories of those who once lived within their walls.

“It's kind of dirty. It's kind of messy. The lawns are filled with crap. Those were the kind of starting images, what would it look like to piece that all together? Narratives within that world.”

It's a South that's both familiar and unfamiliar, a place where Dowdy makes the past and present intertwine, and where everyday life coexists with the memory of history. Whilst staying true to his grandmother’s stories and his own history, he didn’t want to “write too personal in the songs, I think it makes them uncomfortable down the line.”

That balance of the specific and the generic is a line that the West Virginia-native treads carefully "I'm drawn to the social tensions of the South," he muses, "the contradictions.... it's a region that's often perceived as backwards, yet it produces such incredible art, music, and literature."

Whilst acknowledging there are other possibilities of how you might explore “the American experience”, Dowdy’s focus is on the South: “I grew up in the South and I think it's the most interesting place of contradictions. It has such a strange, troubled past. It has a strange present. It's a present that I grew up totally immersed in, but also in conflict with.”

He's quick to point out that he isn't looking to offer a romanticised or stereotypical view of the area. "All the best people in my life are from the South. I like thinking about tensions, and I like images that produce a lot of tension. The tensions are very social in the South, and I like writing about people.”

Dowdy’s attention to detail and respect for the people and stories of the South is evident throughout Big Ugly. The album delves into the heart of Appalachia, exploring themes of poverty, resilience, and the enduring spirit of its people. Dowdy's lyrics are rich with detail, capturing the sights and sounds of the region with his keen eye for a story. That mixed history and complex present mean these are not postcard images, but rather the lived experiences of people that Dowdy has met and characters we can all see in our own towns.

"They're anonymous figures," he says, "stand-ins for ways of being, for the overlooked and the forgotten.” They are the people who populate the background of history, the ones whose stories are often left untold.

In giving voice to these characters - like Corey, Jody, Amy, Kevin - Dowdy taps into the rich tradition of Southern storytelling. His process of translating these characters and their stories into song is a delicate balance of instinct and craft. "It starts with an impulse, a feeling of what the song should be," Dowdy explains. "Then comes the melody, the image, and finally, the words."

He cites the track "Bleached" as a prime example of this process. "There's a line in there, 'In those days when I was barely happening,' that really captures the theme of struggling with language, with expressing your own situation," he says. It's a line that speaks to the challenges of articulating one's place in the world, a theme that runs throughout Big Ugly.

Another standout, "Jody," grapples with the complexities of growing up in the South, of "losing language or having language be this thing that you're in conflict with, and being able to say the thing that you want to say and say it in the way you want to say it. This idea of difficulty expressing your situation." It's a song that took Dowdy time to get right, but the result is a raw and honest exploration of personal and regional identity. He describes it as "a weird song and it could have been cut, you know, but I sort of needed it." It's a testament to his ability to seamlessly meld the personal and the universal.

Dowdy's music can challenge at times, but in the main it's deeply rewarding, offering a glimpse into a world that's often overlooked and misunderstood. He doesn't shy away from the darker aspects of Southern life, but he also celebrates its resilience, its humor, and its enduring spirit, not lingering on the negatives.

“[I’m not writing about] poverty in the pejorative sense, right, but about living simply and living within your means. That's a phrase I grew up with, you know, ‘don't rise above your raisin’.”

It’s clear that Dowdy's connection to the South is both deeply personal and fiercely intellectual. He's still grappling with its contradictions, history, and place in the American narrative. And through his music, he invites us to do the same.

"I think there's a lot of heart on this record," he says, "but it also challenges the way it presents its themes." It's a statement that could be applied to Fust's music as a whole. It's music that demands attention, that rewards repeated listens, and that ultimately leaves you with more questions than answers.

But perhaps that's the point. Dowdy's not interested in offering easy solutions or simplistic narratives. He's more concerned with exploring the complexities of human experience, particularly as it manifests in the South. And in doing so, he creates music that's both deeply personal and universally resonant.

Dowdy summarises his band's new album succinctly, reminding us that people, places, and history, are all complex things: "If anything, I hope people walk away with a sense of the incredible humanity of these complications, of the South, and of life itself."