The Low Anthem's folk revival comes to Kennett Square with free concert

Any band whose genesis can be traced directly to a baseball field has instant credibility with me.

And so it was for Ben Knox Miller and Jeff Prystowsky, who bonded on the diamonds of New England's wooden bat leagues after working together as late night DJs at Brown University in 2002.

It was there that their mutual love for music was confirmed and their collaboration spawned. They played together in a range of formats before being joined in 2006 by Virginia's Dan Lefkowitz, whose efforts were prominent when they debuted as The Low Anthem with "What the Crow Brings."

In 2007, Lefkowitz was replaced with Jocie Adams, a NASA scientist who firmly entrenched The Low Anthem as the most interesting band in America (Knox Miller is a renowned Hudson Valley painter and Prystowsky is an accomplished jazz bassist and yes, baseball historian).

The story goes that the band was looking for a clarinet player while recording "Coal Mountain Lullaby," the final track on "Crow," and called Adams over in the middle of the night, plied her with bourbon and then told her she'd need to learn the song in five minutes. She's been a fixture ever since.

In some ways, the band members' disparate backgrounds are a metaphor for the band's sound, which while predominantly melancholic moves back and forth between traditional hymns, Tin Pan Alley folk, and even southern gospel.

On its sophomore effort "Oh My God, It's Charlie Darwin!"  released this summer, the band brings up the energy at times, like on the foot-stomping “The Horizon is a Beltway” or the rollicking “Home I’ll Never Be,” a Tom Waits standard purported to have been penned by Jack Kerouac.

In a live setting, the band is known to swap any number of unorthodox instruments from song-to-song, producing a thrilling nuanced noise that manages to remain simple at the same time. It's a stage that's earned them invites to some of the biggest summer festivals, including Bonnaroo and the Newport Folk Festival.

On Sunday, Aug. 30, they stop by Kennett Square's Anson B. Nixon Park for a WXPN-sponsored free performance.