The follow-up to Johnson’s lauded Balsams album, The Cinder Grove delves further into the compositional possibilities of the pedal steel guitar.

This halcyon collection of tracks draws on a wider palette of sounds, adding strings and piano, to dive deeper into the sound bath of Johnson’s meditative music.

The Cinder Grove is a profound, affecting statement on the nature of loss and irreplaceability as well as a major addition to the canon of Johnson’s increasingly seminal work.

“Chuck Johnson is a pedal-steel guitarist who embraces the liquid, oceanic possibilities of his chosen instrument. On The Cinder Grove he has a simple, yet profoundly effective modus operandi - setting streams of notes afloat and listening for the way their resonances commingle with strings and piano
(the latter played beautifully here by Sarah Davachi).”

9/10 Uncut

“Follow-up to 2019’s Balsams further expands ambient pedal steel’s possibilities, adding strings, and piano for aural succour akin to Alice Coltrane’s Wurlitzer drones.”

**** Mojo

"The Cinder Grove, Johnson’s second album for pedal steel guitar...its five absorbing pieces not only contemplate the spate of intensifying natural disasters but also the rising costs the musicians say are pushing their peers out of Oakland. A eulogy for landscapes that are still being razed, The Cinder Grove and its luxuriant tones hold fast to hope for what comes next."

-- The New York Times

1. Raz-de-Maree
2. Serotiny
3. Constellation
4. Red Branch Bell
5. The Laurel