New Weird America

New Weird America is a music scene that emerged in the early 2000s. The term was coined by writer David Keenan in the August 2003 issue of British music magazine The Wire as a play on Greil Marcus's phrase "Old Weird America" from his book Invisible Republic which referred to music ranging from Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music to Bob Dylan. The movement is inspired by the folk music of the 1960s and 1970s, while encompassing psychedelic folk genres such as free folk and freak folk.

The term was coined by David Keenan in the issue 234 (August 2003) of The Wire, following the Brattleboro Free Folk Festival organized by Matt Valentine and Ron J. Schneiderman. It is a play on Greil Marcus's phrase "Old Weird America" as described in his book Invisible Republic, which deals with the lineage connecting the pre-World War II folk performers on Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music to Bob Dylan and his milieu.

The Brattleboro Free Folk Festival was the summit gathering of the free folk scene that was largely centered in Massachusetts, Vermont, and Connecticut. The festival included Dredd Foole, Sunburned Hand of the Man, MV & EE, all members of Charalambides in different configurations, Jack Rose, Chris Corsano, Joshua, and Paul Flaherty — most of whom operated out of the Pioneer Valley area. The scene drew on a wide range of musical influences, which Keenan summed up as "acoustic roots to drone, ritualistic performance, Krautrock, ecstatic jazz, hillbilly mountain music, psychedelia, archival blues and folk sides, Country funk and more." Adding, "ask any of these musicians where the initial energising spark for the New Weird America came from and they'll point you right back to Dredd Foole's epochal 1994 solo album, In Quest of Tense."