Award Winning Documentary ‘The River-A Songwriter’s Stories Of The South’

Award Winning Documentary ‘The River-A Songwriter’s Stories Of The South’ is now available

The visionary, award-winning feature film The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South, is now available on streaming networks and on DVD at Amazon and other retail. It is currently streaming at Night Flight Plus and Hoopladigital.com with Google Play and others to follow. The soundtrack is also available at Amazon and Bandcamp.

The crowdfunded feature film was conceived and written by award-winning journalist and musician Ted Drozdowski and stars his cosmic roots band Coyote Motel as well as the light artists in Darling Lucifer Productions and the aerialists of Suspended Gravity Circus. The director is Richie Owens, Dolly Parton’s partner in OwePar Entertainment.

The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South has won accolades at festivals around the world, including Best International Feature Film at the Polish International Film Festival and Best Score and Best Experimental Film at Cincinnati’s Queen City Film Festival, and was an official selection at the Red Dirt Film Festival (Oklahoma) and the Clarksdale Film and Music Festival (Mississippi). The cast and crew of the crowdfunded film are all independent artists from Nashville.

In 10 songs and stories, The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South explores the currents of life and history along the Mississippi, the Cumberland, and the Tallahatchie rivers. With Ted (who narrates) and Coyote Motel as guides, you’ll meet a rich cast of characters: freedom fighters, grifters, levee camp workers, immigrant coal miners, the legends of North Mississippi hill country blues, and denizens of the spirit world, as well as the landscapes surrounding these mighty waterways.

“The River”

Anthony DeCurtis, the Grammy-winning author of Lou Reed: A Life and the former VH-1 news director and Rolling Stone editor calls The River “a dream journey that teases out why and how much music means so much to so many of us.” Ron Wynn, in The Nashville Scene, called the film “a song cycle about a history that continues to unfold–visually stunning.” And in Australia’s Rhythms Magazine, Anne McCue offered this: “A catalyst, a source of poetry, light, and music.”

Ted has been a music journalist and historian, as well as a world-touring guitarist, vocalist and songwriter, over four decades. His work has appeared in a wealth of publications, including Musician Magazine and Rolling Stone, and he has been an editor at Musician and the Boston Phoenix. He is currently editorial director of Premier Guitar, the world’s pre-eminent guitar magazine.

My entire life has been a rehearsal for The River,” he says. “I’ve spent decades exploring the obscure corners where great American music heralds from, and I’ve always embraced the connections between the bedrock of Son House and Muddy Waters, the ether of Pink Floyd, the freedom of Sonny Sharrock and John Coltrane, and the mythical sense of time and place in the songs of The Band and Creedence Clearwater Revival. I’ve woven all of that into both this film and Coyote Motel, which I founded in 2018.”

For more information on Coyote Motel and to hear the title track from The River: A Songwriter’s Stories of the South, visit HERE