Susto Play Gears & Guitars Festival with Barenaked Ladies

South Carolina band supplies jolts of lyrical honesty

The South Carolina band Susto take their name from a Spanish word for a kind of spiritual crisis or rupture. A state of panic and feeling lost. A cosmic freakout with folk-religious implications. It’s a concept lifted from Latin American culture, but the name suits the band’s music, which has lyrical dark streaks that suggest the experience of someone who nearly came apart at the seams, but found his way back from the brink with a bundle of world wisdom and insights.

Susto’s music can sound like Mumford & Sons, the Avett Brothers, Jackson Browne or the Wallflowers, with a gently worn country-rock texture and a whiff of road-weathered Americana. The tempos aren’t ever agitated, nor are they so slow as to be despondent. Pretty harmonies pop up, along with mellow organ, slide, acoustic guitars and brushes on the snare drum. But singer Justin Osborne takes things to a more extreme and real place with his lyrics, a zone where redemption and even survival are not a given. His songs have a kinship with bands like the Hold Steady, Drive-By Truckers and Deer Tick, bands that map out the ways that individual searchers can get shipwrecked on the rocks or pulled out to sea by the forces of mass religion and substance abuse in contemporary America. I spoke with Osborne last week as the band continued between stops on what amounts to one epic tour for 2017. The band did a string of dates opening for the Lumineers earlier this year, and they’ve done a number of dates headlining as well.

“We’ve been on tour all year this year, but we were on tour all year last year,” says Osborne. “It’s been rigorous.”

Susto bring their music to Winston-Salem as a part of the Gears & Guitars festival. They’ll be opening the bill with Edwin McCain and Barenaked Ladies at 7 p.m on Sunday, May 28 at Bailey Park in Winston-Salem. The festival is a four-day event in downtown Winston-Salem. The festival runs Friday, May 26 through Sunday, May 28. Corey Smith with Eric Dodd and Muscadine Bloodline play Friday. Collective Soul and Tonic play Saturday.

The road is a near-constant reality for some bands. And the dislocation can become its own state of being for some artists.

“I love it that the road never ends,” sings Osborne on “Wasted Mind,” a song that brings to mind My Morning Jacket, Jerry Jeff Walker and Hiss Golden Messenger. “Hustling through cities but we never even really arrive,” goes one line on the same song, capturing the romance of rootlessness.

The band released its second record, & I’m Fine Today, at the start of this year. One of the things that strikes me about Susto is the way that Osborne comes out swinging with his lyrics. Many of the first lines on these songs are arresting if not startling. They conjure scenes of desperation, ecstasy, nightmares, substance abuse and faith.

“You could be comatose in a parking lot,” goes the first line on “Far Out Feeling,” the first song on the record. It’s a song filled with conditional, hypothetical statements like that. And then it takes a turn toward the concrete.

“My mom’s on her knees saying prayers for the afterlife, while I’m living in heaven on earth,” sings Osborne.

The second track, “Hard Drugs,” opens with these lines “I had a dream that we were doing hard drugs in a street alley.”

The third song, “Waves,” opens like this: “Is there anybody in there/Smoking weed with God?”

And the fourth track gets you with its title alone: “Gay in the South.” It’s a song that seems to allude to the complexities of being raised in a conservative Christian family and growing apart from the faith, watching people’s identities come in conflict with their upbringings, etc. But these aren’t simple stories about being strong and staying true to yourself. It’s all more complicated than that. “Tell the truth, unless you think you should lie,” sings Osborne, a line which would seem funny if simple self-preservation didn’t demand some degree of falsehood in certain settings.

It’s almost as if Osborne is a songwriter who subscribes to those bits of interpersonal advice about making a strong first impression. His lyrics are a little like a powerful handshake, a hypnotic stare, or a bold pair of cowboy boots that catch your attention.

“It’s like the opening scene of a movie or the opening line of a book,” says Osborne on the subject of his carefully tailored opening lines. “There are different tactics that you use to kind of keep people interested and to help people get into your story, Also it’s a statement. It’s you setting the tone of the song and letting people know right off the bat: ‘Okay, strap in.’”

With lines that question the existence of heaven, and others that echo N.W.A. with regard to law enforcement, the lyrical intensity is a bit of a litmus test for listeners. Osborne says he wants to see if people are ready to go with him, to hear and discuss the meat of the songs.

“I want to make sure that I can have a conversation,” he says.

Osborne, 30, grew up in South Carolina and has been playing music in bands since he was 18. During a study-abroad stint in Cuba, Osborne found himself playing in a band in Havana. Part of the reason he was in college toward the end of his time as a student was to get subsidized loans so he could fund the recording of an album, says Osborne.

It was a period of privation and uncertainty.

“I was lost. I had kind of just ended this slow regression from Christianity. I was coming to terms with my own atheism,” says Osborne. “I was really broke, so I was doing cheap drugs with my friends.”

You can hear it all in the songs — the apostasy, the struggle, and the mind-altered searching. Some artists would more cautiously calibrate the amount of sharing, figuring that the confessional candor might spoil the mood for certain listeners. But Osborne and Susto let it loose.

“Ultimately, being honest and being real trumps being protective of your audience,” says Osborne.

Susto open for Edwin McCain and Barenaked Ladies on Sunday, May 28 at 7 p.m as a part of the four-day Gears & Guitars Festival at Bailey Park in Winston-Salem. For more information visit gearsandguitarsfest.com.