ILX Gonna Shine in My Backdoor Someday (new post-Fahey folk for ppl posting in Takoma/Tompkins Square threads Pt II)

though i agree w/la lechera, i'm more and more drawn to instrumental music

also in terms of being a performer it's like go instrumental and you've just cut your chance of embarassing yourself by like 60 percent, easy :)

Hah hah I am not going to read that piece at all. Now, one questions I AM intersted in understanding is why so many people I know seem to have a lot of time for experimental (or at least slightly weird/off/"out there" whatever) films and TV, abstract and conceptual visual art, and similar types of literature but listen to practically zero similarly challenging musicians, instrumental or otherwise?

so should i go see charlie parr? he's playing in my neck of the woods this weekend...

yeah! i enjoy him. some of his stuff is a lot more 'straight' folk/blues but he's a great player. also a big fahey/metzger/lang fan apparently! have you listened to the album Hollandale at all? Extended improvisation stuff, unlike anything else he's done.

would a bunch of jam band people turn up tho? i know he has some crossover with that crowd here in MPLS

i think i only know his name from some stray mentions on the previous thread... dunno about the crowd -- the place he's playing is the standard indie rock venue in denver.

Hell yes go! He's great

oh nice. well if you've never even listened then i'd say for sure! he's pretty captivating

i asked about the crowd because he plays some weird shows here in the cities. (Famous Dave's Blues BBQ Fest?)

well honestly I think he tries to make a living at it and those type of gigs probably pay

but yeah he's the type of guy who could roll in a lot of different situations though, the old timey stuff can really travel amongst crowds so who knows if he gets more of the bluegrass fest/jam band scene...but either way I don't have a ton of time usually for people who seem so explictly retro (though as you say his Hollandale record shows he's more than capable of doing american primitive style stuff) but he really seems to inhabit the songs and has a fire about it that lot of 'old man hat' (hi skot!) don't have haha

for sure. he's not treating the vibe like a fun costume to wear or something

has he ever ridden the rails and slept in a hobo jungle though?

xp that's no way to treat the vibe

i know he's from austin MN (home of spam) and peter lang said his parents were big hormel union people i guess

hmm spam is pretty authentic Americana i guess

the Hormel strike in the 80s (the P9 Labor Union) inspired one of the last American folk songs! :p

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdH-F4PYqwc

wrote a little bit about that new dennis taylor reissue on grasstops -- seriously a very nice record. only the spanish-tinged tune doesn't really do it for me.
http://www.aquariumdrunkard.com/2015/03/25/dennis-taylor-dayspring
also, a steve gunn band radio sesh to listen to: http://folkadelphia.bandcamp.com/album/steve-gunn-folkadelphia-session-10-17-2014

Reports that John Renbourne has died :(

Probably don't talk about him enough on this thread, but what an amazing player & Pentangle is one of my real inspirations

yeah RIP. one of the best. and obviously an amazing acoustic player, but the dude was great on electric too -- check out his playing on Pentangle's "Jack Orion," so killer.

Yeah, sad. RIP. Such a good player.

In less sad news, I just found out that I am getting to open for Daniel Higgs next week. I am a big Lungfish/Higgs fan, but my cohort in Grand Banks is like the BIGGEST Lungfish/Higgs fan, so this is a big deal. Higgs kind of a fringe member of the ILX Brigade musical universe, one which I personally really enjoy. Some wildy enjoyable banjo playing coming out of that man.

I don't hold it against him but one time when I was like 18 I saw his old old band Reptile House at a hardcore show (at the old Trax club, grandavis) and he punched some kid in the face! then maybe 5 years ago I saw him open for the Boredoms and he was very good.

Oh man, that sucks about punching a kid Sleeve. Perhaps a symptom of the times? He does not seem like the kind of guy that would do that, but it is not like I really know him. He seems like a benign weirdo these days.

Also, Trax had the grossest bathroom I have ever used at a show. That place sucked, though I saw a few good shows there. It closed down shortly after I moved into town though. The absolute weirdest show I saw there was Fugazi ('99 or 2000 or something?). There were a bunch of dudes there in a big pack who had obviously just shown up for something to do, and they walked around en masse trying to bait folks into fighting by calling them faggots etc. It was gross/depressing and I kept waiting for Ian to notice and take the dudes to task but instead they just got bored and left.

yeah, keep in mind this was literally almost 30 years ago, they were a weird band for the hardcore kids and maybe people were giving them shit? it's a very distinct memory though.

I spent the summer of 1985 seeing a bunch of hardcore shows there, I think the last thing I saw at the club was an exhausted Sonic Youth on the next-to-last show of the Daydream Nation tour, December 1988.

also I had a dream once that I saw Richard Bishop play there! long after it had closed...

Whoa yeah, way before my time. I missed the whole 80s hardcore boat basically, and never saw Trax in its early stages. Hard to even believe Sonic Youth played Charlottesville, wonder if there is a recording of it somewhere? Sometimes exhausted bands play good shows, sometimes not. How was that one?

Sir Richard is playing here in mid April, I am psyched. Small room too.

That's awesome! I've been LOVING Tangier Sessions.

i love lungfish a lot, and could totally see how their sort of weird hypnotic cyclical riffs and incantations thing would translate to a more folk context but never checked out higgs for some reason, partially because he seems to have such a scattered discography of small release stuff, where's a good place to start?

I really like "Ancestral Songs" and "Metempsychotic Melodies". Also, "Hymnprovisations" is all solo banjo I believe, maybe the closest thing to what this thread focuses on generally, but I haven't listened in a while (I get them confused a bit). Keep in mind, he doesn't ape Asa Osbourne's playing that frequently, i.e., the circular riffs don't always show up. A lot of his playing is wild, like Bill Orcutt/way out Metzger kind of stuff.

xps I have a very poor quality Walkman recording of the SY show, LOL. they were ragged but fun. BALL opened and Kramer was passing around a bag of wine (out of one of those boxes).

I gotta get Tangier Sessions!

Hah cool. Still haven't heard Tangier Sessions, just gonna go into that show cold and hear the songs live.

I have a very poor quality Walkman recording of the SY show, LOL
ysi?

I'd like to join the Nathan Bowles fan club after seeing him in Steve Gunn's band. That dude's got it.

No doubt

La Lechera, have you checked the Nathan Bowles and Scott Verrastro duo record on MIE? I think you would really like it. Nathan is definitely tackling a lot of approaches successfully, great musician.

I think Nathan's latest solo record is fantastic. The vocal sections on it kind of seemed veering on gimmicky to me but still it's super solid and enjoyable.

Eh, I know what you mean, but when you see Nathan live those songs are 100% effective "in the room" so to speak. He did some very cool non-lyrical vocalisations within the context of the songs last time I saw him and that took the effect, for me, was that it took those songs into the realm of a really cool and engaged "performance", if that makes sense. I mean, my town is lousy with old-time-oriented and "bluegrass" bands singing in all kinds of styles (many of them unnaturally "old timey" and gimmicky for sure), and on the surface Nathan is singing similarly, but when you compare them in practice (via seeing it live I guess) you really feel the difference. I am of course quite biased cause I really like what Nathan does (and of course you are into it to Evan), but I have gotten to a place with a lot of folk/singer-songwriter/bluegrass/old-timey stuff where is goes down to that age-old scenario: I know the stuff I like when I hear it, and dislike a whole lot of it, but can I truly explain why to someone? Not really.

middling review for Ryley Walker on Pitchfork

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20215-primrose-green/

Yeah, I'm sure it is much more effective live and I definitely strive to not think about it too hard and otherwise just enjoy it if I enjoy it, but in general that kind of thing is much more dangerous in a cartoony/roleplaying way in the vocal department than it ever is in the instrumentation/composition department. So when these artists are conjuring these themes and tones through instrumental pieces it's way less distracting to me than when they do so with vocals. Again though, in this case I really like the record!

xpost

What's funny about that Ryley Walker review is that it happens to touch on a very very similar point that I'm trying to describe regarding Nathan Bowles.

Well, it is certainly "safer" to eschew vocals altogether if you are a good instrumentalist/musician, as it eliminates one barrier to/critical barometer for whether or not the music is succeeding on some substantial level. I of course am a huge fan of instrumental music. Still, there is something inherently brave about singing (to me). Certainly it isn't a good idea for everyone, but these two cases seem to justify it pretty easily (though Ryler is a different case and I am not into all the vocals honestly). I mean, in Nathan's case, he is covering/interpreting songs from an era, and he and his cohorts in the Black Twigs are pretty invested in providing a platform for that material, so from my viewpoint there aren't to many other ways for those songs to really be played "convincingly" than in the ways he is playing them, unless you do a complete genre overhaul and do the songs in a modern way.

Yeah it really all comes down to how on the nose you're being with the era styling you're attempting to conjure and replicate. Also what's fashionable right now determines how much those stylings stick out and potentially feel gimmicky.

for me, the more trad stuff in the bowles/black twig/pelt universe really works because of the overall context of what these musicians do -- even if they're playing "john hardy" or something pretty straight one minute, you know there's a deep drone around the next corner. it's a nice blend they've got going.

Yeah, that blend is definitely nice. As far as era-styling goes, to me it is helpful to look at some of these songs/approaches similarly to hymns: I mean, you can take "Silent Night" out for a spin in various guises, but generally it doesn't work if you play it too far from "solemn/dignified".

lol now I am imagining a really upbeat, scat-style version of that, perhaps done by Cab Calloway or Bing Crosby

Hah me too! Well, for me it is a disco version ....

La Lechera, have you checked the Nathan Bowles and Scott Verrastro duo record on MIE? I think you would really like it. Nathan is definitely tackling a lot of approaches successfully, great musician.

― grandavis, Monday, March 30, 2015 8:09 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark

no but i will! i loved the drumming but also i thought his presence was amazing.

That Bowles/Verrastro record is a percussion duo record, but very very musical. I have a good live set too, but I don't have it posted anywhere right now I don't think.

I just realized in the same week:

April 21 - Sir Richard Bishop
April 25 - Marc Maron

Gonna be great, never seen Bishop, plus really interested in seeing Robert Millis opening - Sublime Frequencies and Dust-to-Digital compiler and cover designer.

Seeing Bishop tonight will report back!

Enjoy!