The Dead South formed in Regina, Saskatchewan, in 2012 when two grunge musicians, Nate Hilts and Danny Kenyon, decided to start a stomping bluegrass band, and bandmates Colton Crawford and Scott Pringle learned banjo and mandolin from scratch to do it. This episode follows how outsiders with no traditional training turned a punk approach to acoustic instruments into a sound one reviewer called black grass.

We trace the self-released EP, the Devil Duck Records debut Good Company, Road Gold certification for 25,000 tickets, Crawford's burnout and return, Kenyon's engineering day job, the music video for In Hell I'll Be in Good Company that went viral two years after release, Juno Awards for Illusion and Doubt and Sugar and Joy, the 2020 allegations against Kenyon and the label's pause, the covers project Easy Listening for Jerks, and 2024's C ...