Jesse James DeConto (The Pinkerton Raid)

indie rock · americana · folk

The Pinkerton Raid is the recording and performing project of Americana and folk songwriter Jesse James DeConto, based in Durham, North Carolina. DeConto spent about two decades as a journalist, reporting for newspapers in Ohio, New Hampshire and North Carolina and later covering climate and environmental justice for The Nation, Civil Eats and In These Times, before working in music full time; he won an Environmental Justice Reporting Award from the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources in 2019 and wrote the book This Littler Light: Some Thoughts on NOT Changing the World. The project has released six full-length albums, including Where the Wildest Spirits Fly (2018), the winter covers set Jagged Vacance: Winter Songs by Other People, and The Highway Moves the World (2022), which David Wimbish of The Collection produced at Arbor Ridge Studios in Chapel Hill and which draws on DeConto's parents, siblings, spouse and children. Recording lineups have featured Scott McFarlane on drums, Jonathan DePue on bass, Garrett Langebartels on electric guitar and DeConto's brother Steven on guitar and percussion. A seventh album, If You Love Somebody, Tell Them, is co-produced by DeConto with Wimbish and James Phillips of Bombadil and is due 2 October 2026; its fourteen songs begin with the birth of his first child on Earth Day 2001 and move through climate disaster, economic strain and political fracture. The band was an official showcase artist at Folk Alliance International in 2025 and has appeared at festivals including Mile of Music, AVLFest and Cosmic Songwriter, sharing grassroots bills with Carsie Blanton, Tommy Prine and River Whyless. Its live sets lean on audience singing, a habit built over nearly three years of leading barroom sing-alongs of protest songs from the 1940s onward.

Past shows