#james elkington and nathan salsburg

[sinceileftyoublog]

James Elkington & Nathan Salsburg Interview: Poise, Levity, and Easygoingness

Photo Credit: James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg

BY JORDAN MAINZER

All Gist (Paradise of Bachelors), the third album of guitar duets from exploratory, thoughtful players James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg, sounds like what it is: two longtime friends and collaborators playing together, equal parts casual and focused. Since their 2015 album Ambsace, each has been busy, separately and together. Elkington's released three solo albums, played as part of Eleventh Dream Day, Brokeback, and Jeff Tweedy's live band, and recorded with Steve Gunn, Nap Eyes, and many more. Salsburg's dropped a bevy of albums and has played on records by Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Shirley Collins, and others. Meanwhile, the two have come together on four records by Salsburg's partner Joan Shelley, and Elkington produced Salsburg's Psalms, his 2021 album of arrangements of Hebrew psalms. Their duo records, however, are born of the most natural collaboration, each bringing to the table melodies they think--perhaps know--the other will respond to, combining them, and being open to feedback or changing gears entirely.

All Gist, specifically, carries the distinct quality of the Chicago winter during which it was recorded: You can picture Elkington and Salsburg sitting around the kitchen table, each culling from their vast repertoires and tendencies, creating something to warm their bodies and hearts and perk their heads and ears, unaware of any blusters outside. The songs are reflective of their shared artistic interests and inspirations, and they're rounded out by the presence of musical contemporaries with whom each has fostered relationships over the years. Opener "Death Wishes to Kill", which takes its title from T.F. Powys' Unclay, sports lilting guitar melodies that offer an affable sway, along with Wanees Zarour's violin solo. The minimal "Explanation Point" bounces along a groove that sounds bigger than it is, almost gestalt, as Jean Cook's strings and Anna Jacobson's brass shimmer. Moments of percussion come from other instruments like hand drums ("Long in the Tooth Again"), along with Wednesday Knudsen's woodwinds ("Nicest Distinction"), or as part of the sheer tactility of guitar scrapes and textures. The self-reflexive "Numb Limbs" gets its title from the physical aftereffects of playing a song that took forever to come together; you feel the spritely guitar picking and breakneck tempo in your own fingers.

Of course, All Gist has a few interpolations, namely a gentle, quiet, start-stopping version of Howard Skempton's "Well, Well, Cornelius" and a taut, concise combination of two traditional Breton dance tunes in "Rule Bretagne". Easily, the most unexpected song on the album is a version of Neneh Cherry's classic late 80s jam "Buffalo Stance". Oscillating and slowed down to an expanse, one guitarist plays Cherry's lyrical line, the other the song's instrumental melody, making something both recognizable and nostalgic as well as emblematic of the duo's adventurous nature. That combination, indeed, is the gist of Elkington and Salsburg.

Earlier this month, both guitarists answered some questions over email about All Gist, their creative process, covering songs, and their sometimes-overlapping, oft-diverging taste in art. Read their responses below, edited for clarity.

Photo Credit: Joan Shelley

Since I Left You: Why was it time again to make an album together? James Elkington: We’d been talking about it since we made the last one, but the truth is that we’ve both just been too busy. I started making solo records again after the last one, plus I got to produce one for Nathan, and we both help out with Joan Shelley’s records, so it never felt like we weren’t working together anyway. We were just working on projects in a different way. I think that Nathan and I both think there’s something about the duo’s music that is different from the other things we do, so we were keen to get back to it at some point. Fortunately for us, we got an invitation to play at a guitar festival in Chicago, and we used that as an excuse to start working on new material. I should also mention that our wives kept bugging us to do it again.

SILY: How was your collaboration on All Gist unique as compared to your other records together, and how was it similar? JE: We hadn’t played together like this for something like 7 years, so I was interested to see if we could even do it. But our writing together was as quick and easy as it ever was, and in that sense, it was really similar to how we worked before. Nathan has always worked with longer forms than me, but this time, I wanted to follow his lead a bit more in terms of writing longer pieces with less changes and more textures. We weren’t concerned this time with being able to play all of this stuff live, so we left more space for orchestration and overdubs. Nathan Salsburg: We’ve each lived through a world of experiences in the past ten years, musical and otherwise. Now that we’re each squarely into our middle age, I think the poise, levity, and easygoingness that should be attendant on this period of life show up in the music at [the] pitch they didn’t in the past.

SILY: Was there a lot of improvisation in the process of combining the different instrumental motifs you each brought to the recording session? JE: Because we don’t have a great deal of time to work together, we find things go much quicker if we come up with rough musical sketches by ourselves and then present them to the other. Nothing is ever written in stone, and the level of trust is very high. Anything Nathan suggests for one of my ideas is going to improve it. Both of us are more concerned with coming up with something that sounds cohesive and keeping the ball rolling than having any personal agenda for how this thing should be, and we always leave enough space for us to be surprised by what we end up with. I rarely have any idea what Nathan is playing, but I like how it sounds when it’s finished. We did experiment with recording something completely improvised and liked the results, but it sounded like a different record, so we didn’t use it. Maybe that’ll be the next one.

SILY: How or at what point in making each song do you determine whether it needs more musical accompaniment, from other instruments and/or players? JE: That’s a good question, and I’m not sure I have an answer, but the plan seems to be to write a piece that can stand by itself for the two guitars, record that to our satisfaction (which is nearly always the first take we can manage that has all the right parts), then start throwing other instruments at it to see what sticks. Most of that approach is me in my studio adding things and then taking them off again. There are certain pieces where, as were writing them, we can hear that a solo instrument would sound great in a certain part. Wannees Zarour’s solo in "Death Wishes To Kill" was like that. There are songs, like "All Gist Could Be Yours", where for a repeating chord sequence to have the effect we’re going for, its going to need a lot of support from other instruments, and we talked about that as we were writing it.

Cover art by Chris Fallon

SILY: Do you have a backlog of other people's songs you think might be fun or fulfilling to cover or reimagine as a guitar duet? What makes a song fit for a cover from your two artistic voices? JE: Well, I’m a little concerned that there’s a potential novelty aspect to our doing a lot of covers, but maybe it's okay. We certainly didn’t go out of our way to think of any for this record. Nathan suggested "Buffalo Stance" early on just because he loved the song and all the parts. I was resistant at first, just because I thought there wasn’t enough there for us to work with harmonically, but there’s so much good stuff going on with the synths and the bassline in that tune that it became more a process of picking and choosing what aspects of the song we wanted to shine a light on, at what time. Our Smiths cover from the last record is like that, too. It switches from the guitar line to the vocal depending on where we’re at or what seems to be most important, so I suppose we have a system for doing this. I think the only criteria we have for picking a song is whether one of us really really likes it and the other one can get their head around it.

SILY: "Death Wishes To Kill" takes its title from a T.F. Powys novel you both read. Do the two of you tend to recommend books, films, albums, etc. to each other a lot? Do you ever find you're about to recommend the same thing to one another? JE: I was going to write that we don’t have a huge amount of overlap, but I’m remembering going to his house when we hadn’t known each other long and being confronted with what appeared to be a wall of my own books. Its not as if we like exactly the same things, but there are some writers and records that we both like that NO-ONE else I can think of likes, so when Nathan suggests a book, I usually get to it pretty quickly. I think Nathan was reading the Powys novel, Unclay, and sent me a screen shot of one of the passages in the book with the caption "this is for you" underneath. He also sent me a link to an Australian liquor store commercial from the early 90’s because he knew it would make me laugh for a day and a half, and it did. NS: I remember we made common cause over Max Beerbohm not long after we met—Zuleika Dobson, maybe—but yeah, we each have some preoccupations that the other couldn’t give much of a shit about. Like, I can’t say mid-century British horror movies do a whole lot for me. I’m remembering when Jim spent the better part of an hour trying to explain the appeal of U.S. Maple, and I can’t say he succeeded. And Jim couldn’t care less about rural American string-bands of the late 1920s. But when we have an overlap—Unclay, say, or the totally under-appreciated Yorkshire singer-songwriter Jake Thackray, or Alan Partridge—and yes, these overlapping things do tend to all be English—it’s always stuff we’re super, super jazzed about.

SILY: Can you tell me about the cover art for All Gist? NS: The artist’s name is Chris Fallon, an old friend of mine from when I lived in New York City 20+ years ago. He’s a phenomenal painter, and I love his figures, his palette, and the scenes/settings that he dreams up. I asked him to create a portrait of us, and this is what he did. He’s never met Jim and hasn’t seen me in quite a few years, but I feel like he nailed something of Jim’s and my dynamic, equal parts earnest, bizarre, silly.

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

James Elkington & Nathan Salsburg - First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, October 22, 2015

Head over to Aquarium Drunkard to read my conversation with six-string kings James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg, whose brand-new All Gist (out now on Paradise of Bachelors) is one of my favorite records of 2024 thus far. These guys aren't just extraordinary guitarists, they're also very nice dudes.

As mentioned at the tail-end of the interview, Jim and Nathan are planning some live Gist gigs in the coming months — their first real tour since 2015! To get prepped for that, check out the above video from back in those days, expertly filmed by Elkhorn's Jesse Sheppard. If you're a guitarist, it'll be fun (and perhaps frustrating) to see how casually Elkington and Salsburg dispatch these intricately detailed tunes. Unfair!

And how's about Aquarium Drunkard?! We're a couple weeks into the new age, with memberships rolling in fast 'n' furious. Tons of killer stuff going up on the regular, including terrific High Llamas and Shabaka Hutchings interviews, a Lagniappe Session from the Reds, Pinks and Purples, a fresh Bandcamping column ... and so much more! If this is the kind of thing you dig, consider pitching in.

[dustedmagazine]

James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg — All Gist (Paradise of Bachelors)

In this third album of guitar duets, James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg perform a complicated sort of dance, their separate instruments executing, light and agile motifs, sometimes in concord, other times slightly out of sync. The melody refracts through their separate interpretations, so that you often feel like you’re hearing it from multiple angles or doubled with an echo. Though some of the songs have a twinge of melancholy, most of them explode with joy. Their two instruments chase each other like dogs at happy play.

Elkington and Salsburg pick up their musical conversation after a long hiatus. Ambsace, their last collaboration, came out in 2015. But like the best reunions, this one is free of awkwardness. They treat each other with warmth and respect throughout. The guitars tangle but never step on one another, each player leaving space for the other.

The pair also makes judicious use of other talent to bolster and deepen their sound. The opener “Death Wishes to Kill” gets a firm grounding from Nick Macri’s acoustic bass; he lends a steadiness to this playful tag in thumps that resonate and mark time without staking too prominent a place for themselves in the sonic mix. But even more striking is the wild skirl of violin that Wanees Zarour adds, wheeling around the guitar line in a throaty emotional timbre. Zarour played on the last Elkington/Salsburg disc. He is a Palestinian-American multi-instrumentalist and academic who teaches at the University of Chicago.

“Nicest Distinction” shows how the foundation that Elkington and Salsburg lay down can be opened up and expanded.  It begins in stately ritual, a madrigal with a little blues introduced in the way the phrases end with a vibrating bent notes.  It’s just the two of them for a good long while, one strumming splayed chords, the other picking a melodic path in and among the meditations. Yet this long piece kicks into a gallop towards the end, with wild tom-tom fill and woodwinds played by Wednesday Knudsen.

All Gist will likely be lumped into the folk category, being acoustic and not quite modern. Still there is really only one actual folk tune on it, the mortality-shaded frolic of “Rule Bretagne,” based, per the title, on the music of seagoing France. Well, maybe not. “Explanation Point” digs pretty deep into country blues, the notes sliding and tumbling down a sunlight rambling path. Here, as elsewhere, melodic lines zing off each other then carom back for a moment of concord.

But really, the most interesting cuts veer the furthest from conventional folk. “Well, Well Cornelius,” originally written for piano by the British composer Howard Skelton, offers a radiant procession of chords framed by the regular architecture of picking. It is serene and unhurried and really quite beautiful. So, is “Buffalo Stance” a Neneh Cherry song you might remember for its pop-locking hip hop beat and strobe lit video. These artists distill it down to melody—a tune you might not have focused on the original, very different version—and transform the cut into a gentle, bucolic ramble. Ironically, in the video, Neneh introduces her song with an aside of “how melodic” which feels like sarcasm, but these two guitarists heard it there all along. Just lovely.

Jennifer Kelly

[parkerbombshell]

Strange Harvest June 9

Strange Harvest 9pm EST bombshellradio.com Archival Shows available on bombshellradiopodcasts.com Strange Harvest (9-10pm EST) digs into new issues and reissues for your monthly round up of sounds few others are playing. In an ideal world, you’ll find something to change your life. Short of that, you might just discover a new passion. Join us: https://bombshellradio.com/   #newmusic #independentradio #newmusicnow   AC/DC: Hells Bells Liraz: Haarf Camera Obscura: We’re Going to Make it in a Man’s World James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg: Buffalo Stance The Durutti Column: Finding the Sea Billions of Comrades: 1480 Leonidas and Hobbes: What is Space Big|Brave: Canon in Canon Sparks: Tryouts for the Human Race Deep Purple: Lazy         Read the full article

[adsmusiconstellations]

Joan Shelley - The Spur (The Spur, 2022)

Official Video / http://www.joanshelley.net / https://www.noquarter.net

Directed by Jacob and Moses Forman.

[bandcampsnoop]

6/30/17.

Paradise of Bachelors is a label I immediately trust.  Nap Eyes, Itasca, The Weather Station, and Gun Outfit have all been mentioned here.  I have noticed the label has a penchant for folk-like guitar gods.  James Elkington might be the best among this group on PoB.

Elkington’s pedigree (just look at the list of people he has worked with) is amazing and speaks to his skill.  But these songs are something else.  I’ve mentioned that I’ve become a sucker for late 60s British folk in the vein of Fairport Convention or Tudor Lodge (Steve Gunn and Snails currently ply this sound well).  It looks like “Wintres Woma” will take its rightful place as a great British psych-folk influenced record.  While you’re at it check out the Nathan Salsburg/James Elkington album on PoB.

Elkington is British but calls Chicago home.

[bibliotekr]

Lytter til... "Fleurette Africaine" by James Elkington, Nathan Salsburg https://ift.tt/1TE3L6S

[groupiesmusic]

James Elkington’s New Old Sound

From the March 2018 issue of Acoustic Guitar | BY BLAIR JACKSON An English guitarist who has been living in Chicago for many years, playing in bands and also working with the likes of Richard Thompson, Steve Gunn, Nathan Salsburg, and Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, James Elkington has reinvented himself as a singer-songwriter and quite extraordinary fingerstyle guitarist on his debut […] from Acoustic Guitar http://ift.tt/2FDJGyb via http://ift.tt/1OigGcV

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

Joan Shelley - The Colony, Woodstock, New York, September 23, 2022

Joan Shelley went on a quick east coast tour last month — and thankfully, Eric from NYC Taper was on hand to record the opening night up in Woodstock. It is stardust, it is golden. Thank you, Eric! And thank you to Joan and her ace band, featuring Nathan Salsburg, Nick Macri and James Elkington. They sound great, of course, with a setlist full of favorites old and new. The Spur, Shelley's latest LP, is another masterpiece — if you haven't checked it out yet, you must. And if you're anywhere near Louisville, you'll definitely want to attend the Spur album release show in a couple of weeks.

[dustedmagazine]

Joan Shelley — The Spur (No Quarter)

Joan Shelley recorded her sixth full-length record in the late stages of pregnancy in rural Kentucky during the COVID-19 lockdown. It’s the kind of situation that focuses a person on essentials, on home and family and clean, uncluttered music. Even so, while this latest collection of songs is earthy and grounded, it is far from sparse. These are lovely, gracefully-shaped tunes, embellished, as needed, with guitar, strings, keyboards, acoustic bass and percussion. They have a wonderful clarity to them, but not a hint of austerity.

Many artists struggled to make music during the lockdown months, grappling with anxiety and isolation that made creativity difficult. Shelley found a workaround, enlarging her world without straying far from the patch of land she and her husband, Nathan Salsburg, inhabit. She joined a weekly songwriters’ group and tested many of these songs with other musicians. She reached out to collaborators, like Bill Callahan and the author Max Porter, to shake up her lyric-writing process. She brought in James Elkington to help with production and arrangement, and he, in turn, enlisted a slew of Chicago-based artists to play on the songs: Nick Macri on bass, Lia Kohl on cello and Spencer Tweedy on drums. Living amid goats and chickens but connected to a wide-flung community of artists, Shelley found an equilibrium between the space and solitude she needed to concentrate and the ongoing conversation with the world that artists require to keep the ideas flowing. 

Thus, there is both warmth and quiet in this collection of songs, which range from country folk to blues to rowdy, twanging rock. On the subdued side, the Bill Callahan-assisted “Amberlit Morning” is a clear highlight, its regular lattice-like picking underlined by blues-y bends on electric. Callahan shadows Shelley’s water-pure soprano, as the rattle of hand drums builds space and urgency between verses. “Breath for the Boy,” written with Max Porter, is piano-based and more modern sounding, Shelley finding a cool, breathy timbre that’s nearer jazz than country. The title track sidles and slides in a blues-y way; Shelley takes on a gutsy, twangy tone. 

All these are subtle, surpassingly pretty songs, but you really get a sense for Shelley as a songwriter in “Like the Thunder.” It’s the disc’s rocking-est tune, a muted rollick in its twining country guitars. Its call and response swells, and as it goes on, you can imagine it interpreted by other artists—louder, more distorted rock bands, contemplative singer songwriters, brassy soul bands, even. It is such a good song that it almost immediately suggests other possibilities, which take nothing away from the way it’s presented here. If Shelley wanted to write for country stars, she could. She’s as at good at making songs as she is at interpreting them, and that’s pretty good. 

Jennifer Kelly

[northcountryprimitive]

North Country Primer #7: Raymond Morin, Pittsburgh. PA

Originally published at North Country Primitive in May 2015

The seventh installment in our North Country Primer series features Pittsburgh-based guitarist, Raymond Morin, who many of you may also know as the head honcho of the excellent fingerstyle blog, Work & Worry, a key inspiration for our own humble efforts. While Work & Worry has gone on the back burner for the time being, Raymond has been finding plenty more guitar-related activity to keep him busy - as well as repairing and building them as part of his day job, he is also organising regular gigs for like-minded musicians passing through Pittsburgh and, alongside David Leicht, playing as one half of acoustic duo Pairdown - more of which below.

Tell us a bit about yourself and the musical journey that took you to a place where you concluded that playing an acoustic guitar on your own was a good idea...

I grew up in an old mill town in northeast Connecticut, pretty removed from anything interesting.  I initially started playing music just because it was something to do when the weather wasn’t conducive to skateboarding.  My girlfriend at the time - now my wife - had a guitar sitting under her bed, and I asked her to show me some chords.  Her dad jokes that because he originally taught her the chords that she passed on to me, he’s the one who basically taught me everything I know!   I originally put down the pick back in my band days, when I played in a sort of chamber-pop group called The Higher Burning Fire.  I guess my initial thought was that it would distinguish the sound of my playing if I picked with my fingers and came up with the most physically demanding chord shapes I could think of, stuff that I couldn’t imagine other guitarists going to the trouble to execute.  As I developed as a “fingerstyle” player, I came to the logical conclusion that not only could I play somewhat orchestrally on my own, but there was a tradition of doing this thing on acoustic guitars, which had their own exotic appeal, and travelled a lot more easily than electrics plus amps. What has influenced your music and why? I loved alternative and college rock in high school, R.E.M., Morrissey and The Smiths, Jane’s Addiction etc, but I always had Simon & Garfunkel and Bob Dylan rattling around in my head, from when my parents used to listen to the oldies radio station on family trips.  I got really into indie and post-rock for a few years after high school, stuff like Unwound, Fugazi, Tortoise, June of 44, Boys Life, etc.  When I started playing acoustic guitar and fingerpicking more, I started digging deeper into the older  stuff, in addition to writing my own songs, and naturally found my way to my longtime favorites: Bert, Davy, John Renbourn, Martin Carthy, that whole generation of players just never ceases to enthrall me. So in addition to the records that I was listening to, I was lucky enough to befriend a few players over the years that have continued to have a massive influence on the way I play and perceive music.  The first is a great friend of mine named Matthew Goulet, who I met when I lived in Boston.  I was a year or two into exploring British folk and blues music, and Matt had all of that stuff down cold, but was also an exceptional ragtime picker.  As a guitarist, that was a big door to have someone open for you!  Within a couple days of meeting Matt, I knew that I would never be happy until I learned to play like him, and I’ll be damned if I’m not still trying.   The second biggest influence on the way that I think about guitar playing is probably Milo Jones, a criminally under-known guitarist from Boston and another good friend.  I can’t begin to describe how deep Milo’s music goes, he’s a very accomplished player and singer who has a pretty unique vision, a harmonic sophistication that’s unrivaled in the “solo guitar dude” world.  More rooted in jazz, I guess.  His YouTube videos are great, and you can listen to a ton of his recorded music on his Bandcamp page. The biggest influence is my ongoing partnership with David Leicht. We play as a fingerstyle duo called Pairdown.  When I first moved to Pittsburgh and met Dave, we were both plying our wares as solo singer/songwriter types, he was fingerpicking just a little bit… I think initially we both just liked each other's lyrics, and we just got on really well together.  In the time I’ve known him, Dave has become a real master at composing for the acoustic guitar, and it’s a huge challenge for me coming up with parts that are worthy of being attached to his songs.  He has also become a fantastic fingerpicker in his own right.  He can play Ton Van Bergeyk’s Grizzly Bear for crying out loud.  That ain’t easy. What have you been up to recently? Well, I have a young daughter who is at the top of the priority list these days.  I manage and do repairs at a musical instrument shop called Acoustic Music Works here in Pittsburgh, so that’s the full-time gig.  It’ll be three years ago this summer that I started learning to build acoustic guitars, so that takes up a lot of my time, just exploring that and honing that craft.  I’m very fortunate to have access to a lot of insanely nice acoustics at my job, stuff like Collings and Bourgeois, some fancy luthier-built stuff and my share of old Martin and Gibsons, so I take a lot of notes. Since I started at AMW, I’ve also been presenting a lot of guitar-oriented concerts at the shop.  When I was writing about guitar music for workandworry.com (still online, but kind of dormant these days, with everything else going on) I got to speak to a lot of these guys whenever they had a new record in the works, and now I’m able to give them a cool place to play when they’re on tour.  Pittsburgh is not exactly known as a raging guitar soli town, you know?  But we have a good time, and I’ve been able to get cash into everyone’s pockets, which I know wasn’t the case at a lot of the places that these guys and gals used to play when they passed through.  If you’re reading this blog and are planning a tour that passes through Pittsburgh, feel free to hit me up about a gig at raymond@acousticmusicworks.com. Other than that, we’re currently gearing up to record a new Pairdown LP, which is very exciting.  Some of our best guitar-work so far, for sure, but also some of our coolest songs.  We have a couple real epics on our hands, some real dynamic tunes that have lots of twists and turns… so we’ll probably record that starting this summer sometime, maybe early in the fall.  

What are you listening to right now, old or new? Any recommendations you’d like to share with us? This would be a good time to score some cool points, but I’m afraid my music listening has no agenda, rhyme or reason behind it.  Lately it’s lots of Mastodon, First Aid Kit, Sturgill Simpson, John Renbourn, Steve Gunn, Phil Ochs.  I got to hear what I believe are the final mixes for the new James Elkington / Nathan Salsburg duet record, those guys are incredible.  Their first one, Avos, is easily one of my favorites from the current generation of guitar players, and Nathan’s solo stuff is nothing short of breathtaking.  I’d recommend that anyone who wants to hear great guitar playing listen to Milo Jones.  I also love LOVE the ragtime playing of John James, and Stefan Grossman has been reissuing James’ Kicking Mule LPs on CD over the last couple years.   The guitar nerd bit: what guitars do you play and what do you like about them? Is there anything out there you’re coveting? My main guitar is a custom by Trevor Healy, who builds acoustics and electrics in Easthampton, MA as Healy Guitars.  It’s called his RM model, it’s a small jumbo (16” lower bout) and this particular one is 25” scale, with an Adirondack spruce top and Cuban mahogany back and sides.  I’ve had this guitar for over three years now, it sounds wonderful and it just gets better and better, all the time.  Your readers might now Trevor from the Beyond Berkeley Guitar CD that came out on Tompkins Square a few years ago, he’s a great fingerpicker in addition to being a great luthier.   I also recently built myself a ladder-braced L-00 sized guitar, a copy of the new Waterloo WL-14 that Collings came up with.  Those are based on the old Kalamazoo KG-14s that Gibson built for the catalog/department store market during the depression, something like a $15 guitar at the time.  Mine is a really dry sounding guitar, with a very quick and immediate response.  It’s great for the really snappy ragtime and country blues stuff, but honestly pretty much everything sounds awesome on it.  It has a really chunky “V” neck, which scares off a lot of people, but I love it. I’m around hundreds of brilliant guitars all day at work, so a certain amount of self control is required.  One day I’d like to build myself an OM-45 out of one of the sets of Brazilian rosewood that I have, or better yet, have Trevor build it! Banjos: yes or no? For sure!  Corn Potato String Band from Detroit just played at my shop a few weeks ago, and they had a two-banjo version of “Nola” played in harmony… totally blew my socks off! What are you planning to do next? I’ve got a bunch of guitar building commissions and other projects lined up, pretty much through the end of the year, so between that and the new Pairdown record getting recorded, I’ve got my work cut out for me.   What should we have asked you and didn’t? Nah, I’ve gone on plenty.  Thanks, keep up the good work!

Pairdown have a Bandcamp page here. You can read Work & Worry here. Meanwhile, you can find out more about Acoustic Music Works here.

[emmetohboy]

Favorites 19

Helado Negro. “And we’ll light our lives on fire just to see if anyone will come rescue what left of me.”

LISTEN: Sofi Tukker: Ringless Jamila Woods: Basquiat Big Thief: Century Helado Negro: Please Won’t Please Kota the Friend: Hollywood Joan Shelley: Teal Big Thief: Not Anderson .Paak: Jet Black Twain: Run Wild Dori Freeman: That’s How I Feel Angie McMahon: Slow Mover The New Pornographers: Higher Beams Rob Curly: Faded Sampa the Great: Any Day Cataldo: Ding Dong Scrambled Eggs Lloyd Cole: Violins Mark Mulcahy: Happy Boat Amber Mark: Mixer J. S. Ondara: Saying Goodbye Cuco: Bossa No Sé Tyler Lyle: Marina Karaoke The Japanese House: Follow My Girl

Here we sit between the final holiday of this year and the first holiday of the next one. Again, I am attempting to encapsulate my past 365 days of cultural consumption in a post. It feels more difficult this time around. Not because I enjoyed less. Quite the opposite. I feel the past year brought such varied creative stimuli that I struggled to recall much of it. That said I’ll let this flow and ask permission for an addendum, usually worked back into the overall recap in appropriate places, this year simply attached to the end. But before the beginning of the next one.

I’m going to dive headfirst into the record I easily spun more than any other this year, perhaps several years – Helado Negro’s This is How You Smile. Working creatively under the name Helado Negro, Roberto Carlos Lange is a musician of Ecuadorian decent working across genres and languages. I became aware of his work for the first time in 2011 with his release of Canta Lechuza. Reading reviews and listening to tracks I felt conceptually kindred to the work but for whatever reason the songs themselves did not resonate with me. In 2019 when This is How You Smile was released I curiously read a review that mentioned the title’s referencing a work by Jamaica Kincaid. Kincaid’s story Girl first appeared in the New Yorker in 1978. The work is accessible and brief so I read it before listening to one note of the record. When I finally did, I was transfixed. It is the kind of work I wanted to share with anyone who would listen, even texting friends about it at inappropriately early morning hours as I listened; Justin would love this; This is right in Venessa’s wheelhouse, my sister, old friend from college I hadn’t spoken to since his divorce this is a good reason to reconnect. The funny thing is it’s not a record that is inclined to draw people in right away. It’s not built on irresistible hooks or propolsive beats. It unfolds quietly across simple but lush instrumentation, drifting back and forth between English and Spanish, often in the same song. “Running,” the first single, is as unassuming as a track can be. Languid and gentle it practically intends to lull the listener to sleep.

 In June I drove with Mrs. OhBoy across two states to see Lange perform with a stripped-down two-piece band at the always wonderful Grog Shop in Cleveland. Knowing my sister lived within shouting distance I invited her to join us. The band played the new record in its entirety front to back. I’m not usually a fan of this live show format but Lange worked it magically. A lighting issue kept the stage darkener than intended for the first few tracks. When it was finally rectified the band and the audience all decided we preferred the previous illumination and the lights were dimmed again. Sometimes songs ended cleanly and abruptly. Sometimes saxophones or digital loops made it impossible to mark when one song ended and the other was beginning. The room seemed to shimmer with each note and gentle phrasing. When the set wrapped, I asked my fellow attendees their thoughts. Mrs. OhBoy summed up my total experience with the work of Helado Negro beginning with Canta Lucheza through his newest, at first, I wasn’t sure but then I thought ‘oh I get it.’

The second and third records I consumed with voracity this year are the tandem from Big Thief, U.F.O.F. and Two Hands. This quartet is working at the top of their game. And work they do. I had the pleasure of seeing them performed in 2018 at the Voodoo Music Festival in New Orleans. Nearing the end of their set Andrianne Lenker announced it was to be their last live performance of a perpetual two-year tour during which they had released two records. They took only the smallest of respites from touring recording and releasing both U.F.O.F. and Two Hands. They seem to be constanly creating. The Beetles played 292 shows at the Cavern Nightclub in Hamburg – Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours rule – how do you get to Carnegie Hall? - and in July of this year I speculated Big Thief to be the best band in America. Watching the four piece perform you get the sense that they could finish each others sentences but are just as likely to let each other ramble on for hours.

There are countless clips of the band playing live that make my case but I’m fond of this intimate little performance.

Speaking of musical acts improving on themselves with each release, this year brought a new e.p. from the duo Sofi Tukker. Nothing about this infectious act fits with the rest of my musical tastes. But how am I supposed to quit them if they keep putting out records like Dancing on the People. The integration of rock-oriented guitar licks and the multi-cultural cross pollination keep the musical arrangements from falling into rote dance patterns. And on “Ringless” Sophie Hawley-Weld composes lyrical quality akin to Stephin Merritt - “I'm more than the worst thing I've ever done. I’m less than the best thing I've ever won.”

Earlier this month NPR’s Ann Powers published a fascinating piece, Songs That Bend Time. Featured in the article-playlist combination is Chicago’s own Jamila Woods. And rightly so considering her latest release is entitled Legacy! Legacy! and each track pays homage to pioneers that Woods admires. The entire record is astonishing in both composition and performance. “Basquiat” is a great place to start.

It seems I am perennially placing Joan Shelley on my yearly favorites list but truthfully, she was absent last year. 2019 brought Like the River Loves the Sea, another lilting work with her frequent collaborators Nathan Salsburg, James Elkington and Will Oldham. Recorded in Iceland where, as Joan tells it, they were unable to find a banjo anywhere, the record wonderfully utilizes the angelic violin and cello work of Þórdís Gerður Jónsdóttir and Sigrún Kristbjörg Jónsdóttir. Teal and The Fading are true standouts in a solid lineup of Shelley compositions.

“Hollywood” by Kota the Friend was my unofficial song of summer. And two of my long-time heroes, Lloyd Cole and Mark Mulcahy notably had their best records in a turn. Mulcahy brings us The Gus and finds him pushing his story telling prowess to new heights.  The  track “Late for the Box” treads onto George Saunders level observations. Cole’s Guesswork reunites him with Commotions partner Blair Cowen and effortlessly blends some of Lloyds previous electronic instrumental work with his more noteworthy singer songwriters’ efforts. It feels retro and current at the same time. Similarly, “Higher Beams” from The New Pornographers latest effort, The Morse Code of Brake Lights is as close to a new 70’s-era Genesis song as we may ever hear again.

I was able to carve out a little more time for reading in 2019 than previous years. Not a lot but enough to keep multiple books going at once. I haven’t been able to maintain such a practice before. Maybe I grew into it. Or more likely the specifics books I chose allowed for it. I’ve been making my way through John Berger’s Portraits form nearly two years. Its structure is pefect for picking up, putting down and then picking up again. I cannot imagine another person writing more eloquently on the experience of humans creating and interacting with visual art. His writing is cerebral but not lofty. His language is precise yet textural. In a way I hope never to finish this book. 

I haven’t read much George Saunders, only Civilwarland in Bad Decline, but when I finally opened Lincoln in the Bardo I poured through it. It can be a difficult read at first. But like Helado Negro, once I caught on to what the artist was doing (oh, I get it), every word was a joy.

Superheroes and deep mythologies are not my cup of tea, but Watchmen is fantastic. To be honest we have their final episode yet to view. We are cherishing it in a way we had previously with the final episode of Catastrophe. The writing is clever and complex. The performances are so good that one cannot imagine any other actor playing any of the roles – Jean Smart? Wow!

Counter to Watchmen, although there is certainly an aspect of mythology, is Lodge 49. AMC has announced they are not renewing it, so we hope it finds a new home. What is so unique about this set of characters and their tales is how ultimately low the stakes are, yet how much the viewer is compelled to care.

I have not seen Parasite yet although it is on the list for this week. We don’t go to the theater a lot, but we did go to see Knives Out. Pure fun. I wore a broad smile for the final 15 minutes of this caper. A fantastic ensemble and masterfully woven story. Not to the lcomplexitiy of the time-jumping Watchmen, much more immediate with the stakes made clear early. That’s what makes this a fresh take on an old genre.

So, here’s the forewarned addendum. One of the books I’ve juggled since Thanksgiving was recommended to me by a friend upon our adopting a new dog, an English Setter. My friend is an avid outdoorsman and has had two retrievers since I’ve known him. Both of the dogs were impeccably trained and behaved which is always important, but can be especially so for larger and active breeds. He told me he used a book called Water Dog to train his retrievers. It is an old book written by Richard A. Wolters and published in 1964. And the bulk of it, as the title suggests, has to do with teaching a dog to retrieve ducks for hunters. Wolters is wry and no-nonsense from the opening paragraph. He threads scientific data with gut instinct and acknowledges that some of his views may be questionable, but his results speak for themselves. Addressing the theory that you’ll ruin a hunting dog by keeping it inside the house with the family, Wolters proposes it was “thought up by some old house wife who hated dogs.” To be sure I am not recommending this because of the results it has brought us with our new four-legged family member. I have only just begun utilizing the books techniques. And as the largest percentage of them relate to laying in a blind and waiting for fowl to approach, be shot and then retrieved, I will never use most of it. But I have read every word, never thinking that a hunting dog manual would be a book that I joyfully balanced in the mix of everything else I intended to experience this year.

*Update (or addendum 2?): We watched the final episode of Watchmen. Go directly to HBO now. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. It is mind-bendingly entertaining and provocative. And yet I hope they make not another second of it. It’s not possible to match the quality of these nine episodes.

Under the wire musical addendum. The Japanese House: “Follow MY Girl”

I almost forgot about this gem of a record. Good at Falling came our way back in March. Running the last errands of the year (dog treats to keep pups occupied during a pajama clad New Year’s Day) the randomizer in Apple Music reminded me. So glad it did. And that I prepped this space for late entries. Happy New Year. .

[parkerbombshell]

Strange Fruit May 5

Strange Fruit 10pm EST bombshellradio.com Archival Shows available on bombshellradiopodcasts.com Strange Fruit (10-midnight EST) offers up the latest cosmic journey unleashed by British specialist brain-scramblers and sonic technologists. Along the way we’ll throw in some satanic ragtime (yeah, really!) and the unwitting afterlife enjoyed by a randomly acquired tape of an old man singing. We reckon normal is over-rated, join us and see what you think: https://bombshellradio.com   #newmusic #hawkwind #independentradio   Anton Barbeau: Heavy Psychedelic Toilet Ana Lua Caiano: Cansada OneDa - ft. Rennee Stormz: Major Pay Hawkwind: The Starship (One Love, One Life) Linn Koch-Emmery: Happy Renaissance: Dear Landseer Nick Nicely: Day that Never Came World Party: Ain’t Gonna Come ‘til I’m Ready Doves: The Cedar Room (Live) Vanessa Sinclair & Pete Murphy: Wanting to break apart everything, smash up everything Howl in the Typewriter: I Only Have Eyes for You Hawkwind: Eternal Light Hawkwind: Traveller in Time Metronomy x Pan Amsterdam: Nice Town Avalanche Kaito: Tanvusse Arthur Melo: Saidas Ill Considered: Kintsugi James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg: Buffalo Stance Shimmy with the Devil: Infernal Overture Shimmy with the Devil: Hellhound Hop Shimmy with the Devil: Devil’s Treat Shimmy with the Devil: Mischief in the Melody Shimmy with the Devil: Underworld Ragtime Shimmy with the Devil: Sinister Swing Shimmy with the Devil: Jitterbug Ritual Shimmy with the Devil: Flapper Sacrifice Shimmy with the Devil: The Final Bow Elsa Hewitt: The Realms Hawkwind: Underwater City Hawkwind: Stargazers Hawkwind: The Night Sky Lola de la Mata: PINKnoise Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti & Frank Rosaly: DESTEJER' David Crosby: I’d Swear there was Somebody Here                         Read the full article

[affairesasuivre]

Songs We Love : Joan Shelley, 'Wild Indifference'

On May 5, the Louisville songwriter Joan Shelley will release her fifth album of poetic folk minimalism. This time, it's self-titled. "I'm all for adding only what is required, so in a way this was trying to get away with less," she tells NPR. "This particular collection of songs feels somehow central in relation to what I've done so far and what'll come next. It also didn't feel necessary to slap a title on it. Everything about this album, from writing to performance to artwork, was an exercise in understatement."

Backed by longtime associates Nathan Salsburg and James Elkington, Shelley opted to work with a producer for the first time, and found a fitting match in Wilco's Jeff Tweedy. The pair met at a radio recording in 2016, and soon after, she asked "on a whim" if he wanted to collaborate. "Of course I was in shock when I heard he was up for it, knowing Richard Thompson, Mavis Staples and Pops Staples were other records he'd worked on," she admits.

There's an effect to Salsburg, Elkington and Shelley's playing on lead single "Wild Indifference" that sounds technically novel and beguiling but emotionally familiar — a soft, lurching sound that evokes the hum of corrugated metal shacks bowing in the wind. The impression is desolate and buoyant, a rudimentary shelter against the elements that echoes Shelley's tentative self-protection in the face of fierce disregard. On her early albums, minimalism meant fragmented narratives, but her growth as a songwriter means she can now tell a whole story in just a few lines. "In your wild indifference / It's all centered around you / Ain't it lonely?" she asks, her voice barely touching the sides of each word.

Shelley's weapon against apathy is wholehearted tenderness, wielded with delicate precision. At the faintest edge of the mix, a wisp of finger-picked acoustic guitar attempts to coax her subject out of their self-inflicted confinement, and her pain gives way to empathy and determination. "Well, I've been the chaser too long," she declares, turning inward, and onward.

[bolachasgratis]

We chose Joan Shelley’s new self-titled record to shine on our 101th playlist. It’s not even on Spotify on its entirety, but it’s simply too good for you not to buy it. It has the likes of James Elkington (who also has a brand new track out), Nathan Salsburg and the Tweedy father and son combo playing on the record, could it not be perfect?

Bolachas Now Playing, 17/2017 (#101):

LCD Soundsystem - Call the Police Joe Goddard - Lose Your Love Perfume Genius - Just Like Love Slowdive - No Longer Making Time Big Thief - Shark Smile Grizzly Bear - Three Rings Feist - Any Party Tica Douglas - Down + Out Lydia Loveless - Desire Gianna Lauren - Will You Come Joan Shelley - We'd Be Home Joan Shelley - If the Storms Never Came James Elkington - Wading the Vapors Charlie Cunningham - Lights Off Christopher Paul Stelling - A Day Or a Lifetime John Moreland - Latchkey Kid Chris Stapleton - Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning

[resistance765]

“Believer Field” - James Elkington & Nathan Salsburg