[Dogwood Winter] isn’t just period music, historical music. This is music for underneath the freeway overpass, for the corner bar, for the bus stop. Inspired by old timey music, Roach takes the pains and stories of today, using the same bluegrass, country, and folk traditions to explore the heart of where we’re all struggling now.

There's a sad beauty, a bittersweet melancholy that runs through the songs [on Dogwood Winter], as pure and welcome as an Appalachian spring.

... Roach is a deep woods troubadour with a cunning wit and a southern gothic spiritualism that sounds older than voodoo. His music is parochial and far flung at the same time, witchy and unabashedly romantic ... He's a shitkicker poet with voice that crackles, pierces, smokes and then smoothes it all over with a shared shot of hope.

Is there a genre for cosmopolitan hillbillies? Mountain-bred troubadour, A.J. Roach makes his home in Cali now, but his moonshine grumble and spooky backwoods lyricism harkens back to a world so remote and gorgeous that he makes Iron and Wine sound like a soundtrack for subdivision construction.

This is quite simply the best singer-songwriter album of the year that you probably haven’t heard about... this will definitely make my best of the year list and find a home amongst the short stack of CDs that I never get around to shelving.

A.J. Roach’s solo debut album Dogwood Winter isn’t flashy. It isn't upbeat. Nor is it complicated. It’s simply beautiful, focusing on emotion, family, and matters of the heart.

It’s easy to get lost in [Roach's] stories of people, places and times we’ve never experienced.

[Roach] is a soulful storyteller with the ability to paint landscapes and personal experiences with his masterful lyrics.

Lyrically these songs are incredibly inviting to the lover of sad songs. They are more than pieces of music, more than songs, they are stories to be shared across the campfire, at the dinner table, and in the front yard of the church after the service.

The songs on the album ... are so carefully structured and so organic that it's hard to fathom why Roach isn't bigger than he is.