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Jack Torrey and Page Burkum are The Cactus Blossoms, brothers from Minnesota who deftly apply the sounds and approaches of early country and rock n’ roll into moving contemporary songs.

The singer/songwriter duo recently released Easy Way, the followup to their 2016 debut You’re Dreaming. On the new record, they expand on the intimate acoustic sound of their first album with an electric production reminiscent of 60s Nashville and Los Angeles as heard in artists like Roy Orbison, The Byrds, and Duane Eddy.

To fill out the new sonic palette in their live sets, The Cactus Blossoms added eldest brother Tyler Burkum on guitar, cousin Phillip Hicks on bass, and another set of brothers, Jake Hanson and Jeremy Hanson, on guitar and drums.

I caught up with them near the start of their tour at the Bowery Ballroom in New York to see how they created this amalgam of old and new music.

The Cactus Blossoms (brothers Jack Torrey and Page Burkum) perform at Bowery Ballroom to promote their new album, Easy Way.

Bassist Phillip Hicks (right) helps Tyler Burkum troubleshoot an amp issue during soundcheck.

 

Eldest brother Tyler Burkum’s Jerry Jones double-neck baritone fills in the layered vintage sounds on the new record.

Page and Jack work out the setlist for the night’s show in the green room.

The band kills some time before going onstage.

The band performs a song, “Adios Maria,” from their first album, as the encore.

This photoessay is the fifth installment in On The Road, a series of visual essays that explores the creative lives of notable musicians, onstage and off.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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