Jesse James DeConto

indie rock · americana · folk

Jesse James DeConto is an Americana and folk songwriter based in Durham, North Carolina, who records and performs as The Pinkerton Raid. He came to music full time after roughly two decades in journalism, working for newspapers in Ohio, New Hampshire and North Carolina and later writing on climate and environmental justice for outlets including The Nation, Civil Eats and In These Times; in 2019 he won an Environmental Justice Reporting Award from the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources, and in 2020 he began reporting for the North Carolina news startup Cardinal & Pine. He holds degrees from Cedarville College, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke Divinity School, and is the author of the book This Littler Light: Some Thoughts on NOT Changing the World. Under the Pinkerton Raid name he has released six full-length albums, among them Where the Wildest Spirits Fly (2018), the covers set Jagged Vacance: Winter Songs by Other People, and The Highway Moves the World (2022), a record about parents, siblings, spouse and children that David Wimbish of The Collection produced at Arbor Ridge Studios in Chapel Hill. Recording lineups have included Scott McFarlane on drums, Jonathan DePue on bass and DeConto's brother Steven on guitar. A seventh album, If You Love Somebody, Tell Them, is co-produced with Wimbish and James Phillips of Bombadil and is due 2 October 2026; DeConto plays vocals, guitars, ukulele and bass on it, and its fourteen songs trace family life from the birth of his first child on Earth Day 2001 through decades of climate and political upheaval. He was an official showcase artist at Folk Alliance International in 2025 and has played Mile of Music, AVLFest and Cosmic Songwriter. The live show leans on communal singing, an outgrowth of the band's long stretch leading barroom sing-alongs of protest songs from the 1940s onward.

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