Big Easy Express

There's music on the train tracks: literally, in this dreamy recording of a train tour undertaken in 2011 by a group of American and British musicians through the southwest of the United States. By day, the members of Mumford & Sons, Old Crow Medicine Show, and Edward Sharp & the Magnetic Zeros chug along through remote areas of the southern States, and in the evenings their folky sounds waft from the stage. This stage is always set up next to the railroad yard of the local train station, where their old faithful vintage train waits at the signals. Director Emmett Malloy combines impressions of the train journey - smoking in the corridor, singing deep into the night - with concert footage. Progress along the route is tracked on a map. The trip takes them from San Francisco to - where else of course - New Orleans, the original "Big Easy." There is no philosophizing about the "bigger" reasons behind the tour; these are no greater or lesser than the dream of every musician to jump, guitar in hand, into an empty carriage of just such an old train. In any event, these musicians have the trip of a lifetime, and their enjoyment is truly infectious.