I’ve been doing some serious unplugging lately. Between the 4-day, post-Irene power outage and this past weekend’s trip to Chincoteague Island, which has a very high pony-to-Wi-Fi ratio, I’ve been forced to pause, ignore Twitter and reconnect with old musical friends. This was especially important when the power was out, and I needed something that would be comforting in the midst of a crazy storm and its aftermath (for me, “unplugging” still involves listening to music with a battery-operated iPhone speaker dock. I seem to have some technology addiction issues). Where did I turn? The O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, for one. More specifically, the 10th anniversary deluxe edition, which just happened to be my last iTunes purchase before things went crazy. Lighting candles and listening to old favorites like “Down to the River to Pray” and “Po Lazarus,” plus the 14 new tracks that didn’t make the original edition, felt less like weathering a power outage and more like stepping into a time machine with Alison Krauss, Norman Blake and Gillian Welch, bound for Depression-era Mississippi. After a while, Irene-era Richmond didn’t seem so scary. Take a listen below to one of the newly released tracks — the Cox Family’s rendition of “Keep On the Sunny Side,” and buy the deluxe version of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack here.

The Cox Family — “Keep On the Sunny Side”