The folks in Dom Flemons songs are suspenders-wearing. They're bootleggers and they're imbibers. They're lovers and they're workers. They sound older than they should and some of them look older than they should. They feel it. Some are kept preserved by their pure lust for life and the good things in it. These are folks with very simple wants. They'd like a good, hot meal a couple of times a day. They'd like to be surrounded, almost suffocated by family and friends all of their waking time. They'd like for there to be a piano, a banjo or a guitar nearby, at all times. They'd like just enough money to have all of the above uninterrupted. They'd like for there to be pies always in the process of cooling in the windows. They'd like for the pain to be minimum and they'd like for everyone to live to ripe old ages, when they can pass on to a better place, after having been loved greatly, after they've left the mark they always wanted to leave. Flemons, one of the members of the Carolina Chocolate Drops and an active preservationist of overlooked American music and musicians, makes music of his own that he knows full well is indebted to all of those who have come before him. His desire is to carry on -- to become one of those old, wrinkled treasures of a man, still inspiring, still singing and picking as if they had no other choice.