Haw is the name of a river, a modest tributary of the Cape Fear, flowing rocky and swift through 110 miles of Piedmont North Carolina, wending Southeasterly past abandoned and repurposed textile mills, rickety hippie homesteads, and red-clay farmland fringed with pine forests. Haw is also one of a few names for a small Siouan tribe that once resided in the river's valley and may have alternately known themselves as the Saxapahaw or Sissipahaw. M.C. Taylor, who wrote these songs, once lived hard by the Haw with his wife Abigail and their son Elijah, but he doesn't live there anymore. Having followed the slipstream to the relative bustle of nearby Durham, North Carolina, he has composed a new clutch of tunes that conjure the half-remembered dreams of peace promised by our pasts.