In the tradition of Jimmie Rodgers, and with one eye on the 19th century, the other on the 21st, Andru Bemis has traveled America by train for several years, singing from his heart and mind and honing his self-taught skills on guitar, banjo, fiddle, pump organ and "banjolele."

   In the process, he has earned the admiration of thousands of fans, one by one, and the respect of almost every musician he's met along the way. This is as close as Wepecket will ever get to recording a "star." His cover of "Crawdad" makes it brand new, with a rollicking, raucous chorus of voices and instruments that injects a new spirit of enthusiasm into an oft-overlooked folk standard At the same time, "Just Like Huck Finn" is destined to be a folk standard for generations to come, with its natural evocation of gentler times and a simpler life.

   Garrison Keillor once said of Andru, "the ability to play such a beautiful song is a rare gift, and a power of which I can only dream." The Birmingham (AL) Weekly calls him a "modern-folk, Midwestern miracle of music ... (with a voice that) is pretty and ravaged, sounding as though 50 Appalachian winters have run him ragged."