The National Lights

The National Lights is the primary song-writing project of Jacob Thomas Berns. Assisted by the arrangements Ernest Christian Kiehne Jr. (The Bland Allisons, Sonya Cotton), Jacob Thomas sets out on his full-length debut, The Dead Will Walk, Dear, to forgive the past while compounding its wrongs. Stirred by the fiction of the American Gothic, The Dead Will Walk, Dear roughly documents the passions, trials and regrets of a Midwestern murder.

The National Lights marry traditional American folk stylings - acoustic guitars, banjos, mandolins and lap-steel guitars - with beautifully hushed harmonies, and lyrics that owe as much to Flannery O'Connor as to the 1980's slasher film.

Like few of their contemporaries, the National Lights believe that simple music, unabashedly conscious lyrics and restrained vocals remain critical elements of good songwriting.