Like the creeks that run and tributaries that trickle throughout singer-songwriter Ian Noe’s homelands in Eastern Kentucky, water flows throughout his new LP. Thoughtfully and intentionally named, River Fools and Mountain Saints highlights Noe’s storytelling prowess through 12 country rockers and Appalachian ballads, depicting contemporary and historical life in the region.

Water’s in the name, of course — River Fools and Mountain Saints, which is due out March 25 via Thirty Tigers — but water also informs the tales Noe tells and the metaphors of perseverance, sustenance, and strength within them. The major floods that decimated the southeastern part of the state in February 2020 remained close at heart during his writing process, as well.

The album title came to Noe before any of the songs, serving as a concept and a guiding principle. “That landscape and that geography of growing up in Lee County, Kentucky,” he begins, “I've got so much material of things that I can write about, of stories of all these people and just life in general of growing up there.

“You think about the river? It's down here. It’s low. And then you got the mountains up high. You've got everything in this way! You can go all over the place with that type of landscape, and that's how [the writing] starts.”