Photos by Paul Padgett
(Click here to download hi-res photos)

NEWS

• Press Release: The Hillbilly Thomists' Marigold Album Debuts At No. 2 On Billboard's Bluegrass Chart

• BGS 5+5: The Hillbilly Thomists (The Bluegrass Situation)

• The Hillbilly Thomists On CFN LIve (Catholic Faith Network)

• The Hillbilly Thomists, a Band of Dominican Friars from the Order of Preachers, Celebrate the Release of Fourth Studio Album Marigold as They Visit St. Augustine (The St. Augustine Record)

• The Hillbilly Thomists To Release Fourth Studio Album, "Marigold," July 26 (JubileeCast)

• Hillbilly Thomists Bring Bluegrass Music with a Dominican Flair to Seattle (Northwest Catholic)

• The Hillbilly Thomists To Release Fourth Studio Album, Marigold, July 26 (Jesus Freak Hideout)

• Press Release: The Hillbilly Thomists To Release Fourth Studio Album, Marigold, July 26; Band of Dominican Friars from the Order of Preachers, Whose Eponymous Debut Album Reached #3 on Billboard’s Bluegrass Chart

• Thomas Joseph White named Deering Artist (Deering Banjos)

• Hillbilly Thomists founding band member granted title of ‘master of sacred theology’ (Catholic News Agency)

• Friars with fiddle tunes - The Hillbilly Thomists are Dominican friars making bluegrass gospel music (WORLD)

• The Hillbilly Thomists on Bluegrass, Catholic culture and liturgical music (America: Jesuitical Podcast)

• The Music of Heaven and Tennessee: An Interview with the Hillbilly Thomists (Dappled Things)

• Our Help Is in the Name of the Lord video from The Hillbilly Thomists. (Bluegrass Today)

ABOUT

The Hillbilly Thomists, a band of friars from the Order of Preachers, released their eponymous debut album in 2017, which mostly consisted of bluegrass standards and Americana favorites. Much to everyone’s surprise, the album reached #3 on the Billboard bluegrass chart, and a musical hobby for the friars transformed into something broader. Over the next few years they released two studio albums of original music, Living for the Other Side (2021) and Holy Ghost Power (2022), with the latter likewise spending time on the Billboard bluegrass chart and Amazon’s Best Sellers list. In the wake of the release of Holy Ghost Power, the friars embarked on The Old Highway Tour (Summer 2022), taking them through eight cities, from NYC to Cleveland, OH, including a stop in Nashville to perform at The Grand Ole Opry House.

In August 2023, The Hillbilly Thomists retreated to a cabin in the Catskill Mountains to record their fourth and most recent studio album of original music, Marigold. Continuing to draw from the vivid cultural and spiritual landscape of the band’s unofficial patron, Flannery O’Connor, who coined the phrase “hillbilly Thomist,” the friars have put together an album that’s at once old and new, rooted in the rich soil of traditional American music and blossoming into a lyrical meditation on life’s enduring trials and beauty.