Luke, Jake, and Ryley Crowe make up the foundation of the Wishbone Breakers; a family band raised in Freedom, Wisconsin and later transplanted individually to other corners of the Fox River Valley. Some of Break Even was recorded at their childhood home, dubbed “The Cheese Factory”, a quaint two story home on a rural plot of land Northeast of Appleton. The geographic region is Midwestern farmland-picturesque; just rubbing the edge of the American corn belt. The colorful patchwork of agricultural terrain and grazing land turns to somewhat of a sub-zero desert in the winter; reminiscent of The Jayhawks’ “Hollywood Town Hall” cover photo perhaps- keeping in mind that the townships of Hollywood, Minnesota and Freedom, Wisconsin mirror each other in many ways; not least of all geographically. It hardly seems like coincidence then that the Wishbone Breakers fell under the spell of hard twang- cementing their conception of music in a rich history of misfit country kids that got the hell outta green acres and made their own kinda noise.

The group is led by Luke- the middle child with a fluttering vibrato and a whimsical perspective of pain. Jake and Ryley, the older and younger siblings respectively, sandwich Luke’s croon in the kind of sweetness that’s really only ever evident in blood harmony. As multi-instrumentalists, the three brothers have a knack for complimenting one another’s musical moves in a way which might also be attributed to blood-intuition. Their charm is built on brotherly kinship; a natural energy that disarms audiences and pulls them in. What you hear on Break Even- their first full length album- is an assemblage of compositions informed by the Crowes’ collective affinity for the folk idiom and the singer/songwriter tradition. And much like other modern outlaw troubadours, the Wishbone Breakers turn the simple concept of folk-rock into a grandiose exercise in arrangement and orchestration; helped along by the production artistry of Sam Farrell, the beautiful cavernous Refuge chapel of which they used to record much of the album (and of which is also less than a mile East from our own recording facility; kissing the shore of the Fox River), and a large cast of additional musicians including (but not limited to) Dusk’s Julia Blair and Ridley Tankersley, Appleton’s piano maestro Alex Drossart, trombonist Renee Millard, and the Crowes’ youngest brother Antone. The album was mastered by long-time Crowe brothers collaborator and bandmate Paul Mirenda, and its cover artwork designed by our own Amos Pitsch; incorporating Luke, Jake and Ryley Crowe in the dawn of their youth, staring down the long creative road ahead- with Momma Crowe in tow.