The backcountry rhythms laid down by Iain Rocco’s jangling, cantering guitar and Duke Wicker’s heartbeat bass entwine with swells of churchyard organ and Sarah Skye’s dusky alto: “Singin’ til daylight/ I strum until my fingers bleed/ I didn’t even mind/ I can’t feel a thing/ It feels so heavenly, I never felt so free/ Never felt so far from me…”
One of six nocturnal folk tunes on Crow With No Mouth’s December 2025 debut EP Upside Down House, Skye says “Static Method” is autobiographical.
“[It’s] the story of the time in my life when I ran away from home, moved in with my drug dealer and became addicted to amphetamines,” Skye says with candor. “I was 16 and didn’t come home until about right before my 18th birthday.”
Few songs capture the deceptive rapture of drugs — and an addict’s slow resurgence of empathy — as well as the heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful tune.
It exemplifies the sharp-eyed storytelling, staunch unsentimentality and haunting wordplay that imbue Skye’s songwriting for Crow With No Mouth, launched as a combo by Rocco and Skye in September 2024 and completed with the addition of upright bassist Wicker in December of the same year.
The trio, which plays Snug Harbor on May 13, crafts a rocking brand of hardscrabble folk that Skye calls “hillbilly grunge.” Many of Skye’s lyrics are drawn from life, particularly her struggles with substance abuse and mental health issues.
Despite the weighty issues tackled in the tunes’ unflinching and organic narratives — or perhaps because of them — audiences have embraced the songs’ grit, gravitas, underlying warmth and acceptance of human frailty.
Skye and Rocco are talking via phone from Lost & Found, Rocco’s store in downtown Salisbury. He describes the combination smoke shop, record store and antique/vintage/consignment emporium as “a curiosity shop” — one that hosts open mics on Thursdays and serves as a hub for Salisbury’s tightly-knit music scene. Lost & Found is also the recording studio and practice space for Crow With No Mouth.
Unfortunately, they don’t get much practicing done. Too frequently, when Rocco and Skye convene to play, they get sidetracked into developing one of their embryonic tunes, which are archived on a folder they share on their phones.
“Each practice, we come out with three new songs,” says Rocco, who helps Skye polish her compositions while sometimes writing songs for the band himself.
“When we started Crow, we had an album ready,” Skye adds. “And everybody was like, ‘What the fuck? Why do you have so many [songs]?’”
“It’s a good problem to have,” Rocco maintains.
At an open mic early in Crow With No Mouth’s existence, “Static Method” got the most surprising response when it made an audience member cry. The band wasn’t prepared for their song’s tearful reception.
“At first I thought it was a fluke,” Skye says. Then people cried at subsequent shows and for other songs.
“I was like, ‘That’s an interesting thing to happen this one time,’” Rocco remembers. “But nope, [it happens] about every other show now. It says to me that people are listening and engaging with what we’re doing.”
“I like that,” Skye insists. “I feel like it’s helping people to not feel alone, and [acknowledging] their feelings that are hard to speak about.”
The hatching of the Crow With No Mouth
Both Skye and Rocco have been drawn to music as long as each can remember. Rocco’s father performed with a folk trio and Skye’s mother tours with The Billy Jonas Band, which plays for alternative folk and family audiences. Skye and Rocco also learned how to play guitar from their respective fathers, each of whom were remarkably short-tempered they commiserate.
“It takes the tenacity and boredom of a teenager to … overcome that,” Rocco notes wryly.
Skye remembers writing her first song — about a fly — when she was 5 or 6, while sitting in the backseat of her parents’ car. Later, she would get on stage and sing between her mother’s sets, only to then grow painfully shy in high school.
“My chorus teacher tried to make me sing a song in front of everybody,” Skye remembers. “I cried and ran out of the room.”
After that, she became a self-described closet musician, writing songs for no one but herself. That’s around the time her mental health issues emerged.
“My brain is riddled with these little nasty, horrible bugs that make my life really hard,” she offers. “I battled suicidal ideation from the time I was 12 or 13. I’ve struggled with mental illness my entire life.”
She describes herself at the time as “feral, but not in a menacing way.” Her genetic disposition was exacerbated by trauma and drug use, a situation Skye describes in Crow With No Mouth’s song, “(Only) Medicine.”
Over a fragile skein of strummed guitar and distant percolating banjo, Skye laments, “It’s only medicine/ That’s what they always say/ Replace the pain with Vicodin/ Get my head on straight…”
The apex of Skye’s health crisis is captured in another song, “DNR,” which stands for “Do Not Resuscitate.”
“If I die before I wake/ Don’t you mourn/ Don’t resuscitate/ I was never here to stay,” she sings.
Skye says she tuned a corner at age 23, when she sought help and started taking medication that keeps her thoughts of suicide manageable, even though they never entirely went away.
“I remember crying because I was so happy that I didn’t feel like I wanted to die,” Skye says.
Now 27, she also credits motherhood — she has a son and a daughter — for keeping her on an even keel.
“As a mother, you have to grow up quickly,” Skye maintains. “I’ve become a lot more confident and independent.”
Skye met Rocco at his store when she was in her late teens, then briefly worked there. Lost & Found counts several musical instruments in its inventory, and when Skye picked one up and started playing, Rocco took notice. He told Skye he was interested in playing music with her whenever she was ready to.
“Before we even got together to practice, we had conversations,” Rocco says.
For her part, Skye is grateful for Rocco’s patience and encouragement.
“Iain … steadily believed in me,” Skye says. “He’s such an awesome person. He really helped fuel the fire.”
The pair played a few open mics as a duo before bringing Wicker into the fold.
“Whenever I start a band, Duke’s like, ‘All right, when do you need me to come in?’” Rocco says.
Skye, who’s been writing her entire life, already had a full arsenal of material waiting to be shaped and developed by the nascent band. With a full lineup and plenty of material, the main task that remained for the trio was finding a name.
Rocco suggested Crow With No Mouth, taken from a collection of poems by 15th-century zen master Ikkyu Sojun. Headmaster of the great temple at Kyoto, Sojun rebelled against his holy order’s hypocrisy and went out into the world to write and make music.
“I can relate to his ethos,” Rocco maintains. “It’s like … ‘I can’t fit into this box, but I can still do the work, and do it my own way.’”
Philosophy aside, Rocco also thinks Crow With No Mouth looks cool on a T-shirt.
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Rocco records everything the band composes at his in-shop recording studio. The band is considering putting out a string of singles soon.
One of their newer songs, the rollicking “McLean Getaway,” breaks with the band’s autobiographical themes. The tune, which Skye says came to her like a fever dream, may be about a girl who escapes from a psychiatric hospital.
“It’s one of our less meaningful songs, and one of my favorites,” says Skye, who’s enthused about the variety of meanings and emotions the band can fit into its “hillbilly-grunge” songs.
“I love the journey of our set list, where you go from ‘DNR’ where you’re crying, to ‘McLean Getaway’ where it’s like, ‘Let’s have fun,’” she says.
In the meantime, as the band builds upon its battery of distinctively dark yet uplifting tunes, neither Rocco nor Skye can envision themselves doing anything else. With artistry, empathy and imagination, they vow to continue crafting musical journeys — tunes that evoke an uncertain ramble in the woods, where the shadows lengthen, the path disappears and you realize you need community if you ever hope to come back into the light.
