Joe Westerlund

Joe Westerlund has emerged as an intuitive improviser and composer during the last decade, scoring deep meditative practice over the course of three full-length solo records. Westerlund—a longtime student of Milford Graves—has now spent more than a quarter-century gleaning lessons from folk musicians and avant-garde icons, from close friends and challenging strangers alike. He served as the dynamic backbone of Megafaun, the North Carolina trio of sophisticated songwriting and winning charisma that he cofounded. As a session drummer, he has worked as the pulse beneath the plaintive Americana of Watchhouse, Daughter of Swords, and Jake Xerxes Fussell, and he’s been a textural anchor for the folk abstraction of Califone and Bon Iver. Currently, he tours and records primarily in an improvisational trio, Setting (with Jaime Fennelly and Nathan Bowles), and as a solo artist on Psychic Hotline.