NOW AVAILABLE FOR WORLDWIDE ALL MEDIA LICENSING.

The visionary new film The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South is unlike anything you’ve seen.

Starring Nashville-based cosmic roots band Coyote Motel, it’s a music and performance movie, but i t’s also a cultural history, a memoir, and a psychedelic experience. In 10 songs and stories, The River explores the lives, lore, and locales along three great rivers of the American South—the Mississippi, the Cumberland, and the Tallahatchie.

The film has already been selected for multiple festivals, and has won awards for Best Experimental Film and Best Original Soundtrack. The soundtrack recording was released on March 19, 2024 when the movie has its hometown premiere at Nashville, Tennessee’s historic Belcourt Theatre.

The crowdfunded, 68-minute feature was conceived and written by Coyote Motel bandleader Ted Drozdowski and directed by Richie Owens of Parlor Films, and is also a collaboration of more than 15 Nashville independent artists, including light art creators Darling Lucifer Productions and the aerialists of Suspended Gravity Circus.

Starting at Nashville’s Cumberland and weaving south along the Mississippi and Tallahatchie, The River introduces viewers and listeners to muleskinners, coal miners, riverboat gamblers, freedom fighters, and the late musical giants of North Mississippi blues. It also essays the omnipotent, timeless magic of the rivers themselves, and the cities and rural outposts along their endlessly flowing waters, with grace, beauty, and surprise.

THE SONGS INCLUDED IN THE PERFORMANCE ARE:

  • Tupelo – 6:01
  • Black Lung Fever – 4:46
  • Keep Me In Your Mind – 3:17
  • The River Runs Forever – 3:27
  • Long Distance Runner – 7:11
  • Trouble – 3:02
  • Homegoing – 4:09
  • Still Among the Living – 4:30
  • Down in Chulahoma – 3:55
  • The River – 6:16