As summer has begun, the lazy cable television news cycle of endless chatter about things mostly non-newsworthy has abruptly shifted. A series of events with equal measure of significance and sadness has come at us almost one day after another, as if the dam has burst. Mass murder in America. A story of a prison escape with a soap opera-like plot line of sex and betrayal. A doubleheader grand slam from the Supreme Court that said people are entitled to get affordable healthcare and if you want to get married to the person you love, you can. And in the carnival sideshow also known as your average day in Republican presidential primary politics, there has been hate, anger, racism, bigotry, intolerance, and threats spilling out into the conservative media slipstream.
If you’re a news junkie scanning the internet, reading the tweets, and sticking to your favorite tube channel, you most likely are in a bubble. People are not standing huddled on corners across the country debating gun control, but they privately ponder how many more will die before something is done. Most of the country had thought that the Confederate flag was already in a museum. The prison break was good drama for a couple of days, but it got boring when they couldn’t find the guys. And when I last visited my doctor’s office, there was no government panel overseeing my prostate exam. And my copay was only fifteen bucks. Affordable health care is a great concept that works.
Question: If the Supreme Court justices had decided that marriage equality should not be the law of the land, how many Republicans would have called for their impeachment? Answer: None. They would have been praised.
We have fuzzy logic. Instead of talking about how to keep a kid from getting his hands on a gun so he can’t kill nine people at a Bible study class, we put our energy and efforts in pulling down a flag. Of course it has become a symbol of hate and racism, but so is a Donald Trump press conference. Let’s not get distracted: there’s real work to be done here. Put the flag away, eliminate assault weapons, and pass laws that require background checks that work. That’s a start.
I know … I’m sort of running off the reservation (a completely non-PC phrase if ever there was) this week, but I’ll give you a little “fair and balanced” thought if I’ve ruffled a feather or two: I don’t like the Clintons either. I want to, but neither seem to be capable of being truthful. Oral sex isn’t really sex; all emails were turned over to the State Department except the ones that weren’t. Right now, I would love to see Bernie Sanders make it to the finals. I don’t know too much about him, but whenever I hear him talk about something, it makes a whole lot of sense and seems believable. Sort of like a Frank Capra film.
Did you watch Obama’s eulogy of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney? He sang a song that was written by an Englishman named John Newton who ran captured slaves from Africa across the sea to — of all places — Charleston, South Carolina. Time magazine reported this week:
After he rode out a storm at sea in 1748, he found his faith. He was ordained an Anglican priest in 1764 and became an important voice in the English abolitionist movement. At that time he wrote the autobiographical “Amazing Grace”, along with 280 other hymns.
Like many, I never get tired of hearing, playing, and singing that song. I really don’t know why, as I wasn’t raised in the church, nor am I what one might consider religious. But as I did some research, I found that there’s been many articles and academic papers written about why so many people love it so. Some think it’s the lyrics. But many believe it’s simply the music. Haunting, magical, and mystical.
In 2002, Steve Turner wrote Amazing Grace: The Story of America’s Most Beloved Song and I found this quote:
Somehow, “Amazing Grace” [embraced] core American values without ever sounding triumphant or jingoistic. It was a song that could be sung by young and old, Republican and Democrat, Southern Baptist and Roman Catholic, African American and Native American, high-ranking military officer and anticapitalist campaigner.
And even a wretch like me. Amen.
This was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music website.
Last weekend I went to what we might have once called a folk festival and was blown away by the power and majesty of a pure kick-ass electric set. It seems to be an affliction when you dwell in this house of roots music fandom that after a period of time you can become overwhelmed with a false notion of authenticity that only comes with acoustic instrumentation and some sort of lineage that will lead you back to Appalachia or New Orleans or Greenwich Village or any other place you can come up with that reeks of heritage and history. As I seem to have forgotten on occasion, there is a time and place to forget about trying to figure out where and when, and just shut your eyes as the music washes over you from head to tapping toes.
Perhaps its a condition of age. Or not. Given that some of the most muscular rock music comes from people now in their fifties, sixties, and seventies is not necessarily all nostalgia, no matter how it may be marketed and packaged. Although I can guess that many in the audience are in large part reacting to a trip down memory lane, it ain’t all be rice and beans. There’s got to be steak on the plate to create a meal of sonic treats that will leave you feeling satisfied and fulfilled.
What has made me slow to a crawl in going to see loud amplified music at larger venues for any genre has been the production and scale. The moves are all the same, the set list rarely changes, the cost and opportunity to acquire tickets are beyond my pay grade, and the lighting, set design, and ambiance are designed to elicit emotion. Sort of like what Disneyland does. Or a Broadway play. Or a show in Vegas. None of which are wrong or bad, but just not my thing.
It does not escape me that many of my peers think that my usual preference for a simpler form of entertainment is some sort of elitism, and that I choose to stay clear of the mainstream because of some sort of inadequacy or inability to blend. And I won’t disagree too hard with that. I don’t like to blend. And I don’t like to dance. It can be a problem.
Last Saturday morning it was cool and drizzly when I got to Clearwater, the festival known for being founded by Pete Seeger. I bypassed the big stages to start my day at a song circle that was led by a trio of talented local musicians who did a great job of setting my mood straight. I caught Mike and Ruthy’s new band, which did a great set. Kate Pierson from the B-52s was next; an odd choice, I thought, but young hipsters in long beards and flowing dresses danced like lobsters as I slouched off towards the river toward the dance tent. The Klezmatics! Who doesn’t like an accordion, fiddle, horns, and clarinet? Hundreds were dancing the hora. I stood outside with my umbrella.
I really had come to see just one band. They were scheduled mid-afternoon on the main stage, and by now the rain was steady and umbrellas were up. As festivals go, Clearwater is very orderly and neat. People come early, put out their chairs and blankets, and when they get up to wander to other areas in the park, anyone is allowed to occupy their empty spaces. But everything was soaking wet, so I made my way to the small area at stage left that is reserved for dancing.
Los Lobos. Damn. It’s been so long since I last saw them; most likely in LA during the eighties. I’ve been a fan, but hardly a fanatic. My old friend Chris Morris, who has authored their soon-to-be-released biography, has lately been posting on Facebook about them and it piqued my interest. And from the opening chords of the first song to the last, the mighty and powerful wolves played music that seeped into the cracks and crevices my soul and made my feet frolic in the puddles. Loud. Driving. A wall of amazing sound that shot out across the field like a bolt of lightening against a soundtrack of thunder. I’m screaming, dancing, and done. Like the bunny, I’m energized again.
Have about 80 minutes to spare? Probably not. But here’s the full 1999 Woodstock set that the band did. I’m going for it.
This was originally published by No Depression, as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column. The original title was “If You Want To Dance With Me”.
Four years ago on this site, I posted an interview I had with a woman from Boston by the name of Marissa Nadler. She had been described somewhere on the web by various somebodies as both “the indie-folk pinup girl and mistress of the murder ballad” and “a damsel who has tumbled from a frayed tapestry in search of her unicorn, a crystal doll who has escaped from her vitrine, or a tubercular maid who has slipped out of her Victorian deathbed photograph to traipse this earthly plane.”
While most of Nadler’s music and striking visual image screamed goth-girl-fairy-princess, it turned out she was a No Depression reader in high school, loved Americana music, and recorded several albums of covers that she sold on Etsy, including the songs of Gram Parsons and Townes Van Zandt. She has a track on the Karen Dalton tribute album, Remembering Mountains, that’s been getting a lot of press lately, and has been recording a new album that’s due out later this year.
From Nadler’s music, I began to connect the dots with the sort of electric ethereal psych-folk music that she was doing, along with fellow travelers like the Philadelphia band Espers, the solo recordings of their vocalist Meg Baird, and Maine-based Buck and Shanti Curran who perform and record as Arborea. Buck is a fine guitar maker and excellent musician, and Shanti sings and plays something called a Banjimer (a type of banjo-dulcimer made by Tennessee luthier Gwen Forrester), harmonium, ukulele, sawing fiddle, and hammered dulcimer.
Over the years I’ve kept in “Facebook-touch” with all of the above, and last November I got a message from a person with a suspiciously long name who told me Buck Curran had thought I might be someone that he should reach out to in regards to the music he was making with his trio.
It was a good call. One particularly haunting song has pushed me back down into the Americana rabbit hole, where we bust genre stereotypes by melding various styles with new traditions. After dozens of listens, it’s become my adult version of “It’s a Small World,” and is now looped inside my brain.
Brian Ebin Parker Wolfe is a guitarist and mandolin player. His wife, Rose, does the vocals, and Bobo Lavorgna plays upright bass.
Based in Southeastern Connecticut, the trio made their debut in 2013, although they have each been performing in various configurations, in and beyond New England, for quite some time. Last May, they put out a five-track EP called Bare Wires, followed three months later by a live version of those same five songs, aptly titled Live Wires. Their newest EP, Wind Pictures, was released May 9. All are available on their Bandcamp page, and the 1998 album credited to just Ebin-Rose (sans Lavorgna), Through the Wires, can be found on Spotify and the iTunes store.
For the past six months or so, Brian and I have been exchanging emails, and in a new-age-y, dot-com-era way, it feels like we’ve developed a friendship over common musical tastes and interests. Like many artists I’ve come to know, he has aspirations to expand the band’s reach but also seems much more comfortable talking about the music rather than marketing and self-promotion. Some of you musician types might know of him through his day job at AcousticMusic.org, the shop halfway between Boston and New York that specializes in handmade guitars, mandolins, and banjos. Others might remember reading about him and Rose in Dirty Linen, a great roots music magazine that sprouted from the Fairport Fanatics and had a 27-year run before folding in 2010.
Rose and Brian met when she came into the store to buy a Martin guitar, and she joined the band he was in at the time, which was called Pottery. “[She] grew up in a family filled with music,” he says. “Her father played guitar and harmonica and sang, her mother sang, and other family members played mandolin and banjo. We would call it Americana; they called it music.”
Rose also credits her family and some close friends for inspiring her to sing, and says her style of singing evolved from the music that she and Brian have created together over the past 20-plus years.
(You might have noticed that the trio looked extra large in that video. Matthew Bruns was the other guitarist in Pottery, 30 years ago, and he is also the composer and second guitarist in the video.)
Lavorgna is a journeyman bassist, associated for many years with the late New Haven blues musician Robert Crotty. He’s also played for a number of other groups. In addition to his work with the trio, he proudly proclaims himself to be the 48th member of the great ‘60s band Jake and the Family Jewels, going on his 38th year with them. His work with Brian and Rose, he says, has “given me the opportunity, the freedom, to create a foundation, a color, and a depth to some of the most beautiful and moving music I have ever heard and been privileged enough to play. It is a gift I do not take lightly, and [I] treasure every time we come together to perform and record.”
When Brian and I got around to talking about influences, it wasn’t surprising that we had similar tastes and touchstones: Beatles, Kinks, Stones, Lovin’ Spoonful, Moby Grape, Fairport Convention, Byrds, Blues Project, Pentangle, Fahey, Dead, Joni, CSNY … all the usual suspects of FM radio back in the day. They were all “guitar-driven,” he says, “with a player who had their own style and we were like sponges. Then came Richard Thompson, Nick Drake, Pierre Bensusan … and by the late ’70s, I started to feel my music was at a point where I was becoming more focused on what was in my own head and what I wanted to say through it.”
Like everybody else who plays or writes inside the “big tent” of Americana, Brian now is struggling with what label might be best used to describe the trio’s music. When I recently heard a song on the radio that featured Louis Armstrong, Oscar Peterson, and Ella Fitzgerald and realized it reminded me of ERT, I thought, “jazz – there it is.” Brian has a different perspective:
“Strangely enough I think that Celtic Americana is close, even though I thought it odd at first. I guess if Richard Thompson can be acknowledged by the AMA as Americana Artist of the Year, it is a fairly wide-open field. Anglican folk rock comes to mind as a label, but I doubt there is ever going to be a drop-down box for that. Appalachian music is certainly at its heart Celtic, and how could there be Americana without Appalachian music? When people ask what our band sounds like, I sometimes say we are like Pentangle, only not from the UK, knowing most of them will not have a clue as to how Pentangle sounds.”
Whatever you call it, Wind Pictures is a four-track EP that pays homage to Brian’s old band Pottery by including a song of the same name. Recently the track was included in a compilation from Good Sponge Records, and I like their motto: “Your brain is a sponge. Be good to it. Absorb what’s of quality, and wring out the rest.”
Ebin-Rose Trio … glad they landed in my stream of connectivity.
This was originally published by No Depression, as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column.
This article and interview was originally published at the No Depression website on April 2, 2011. Marissa is a wonderful sound and visual artist who remains a favorite of mine, and I thought that this deserves a reprint here on my site. She is currently recording a new album for a 2015 release, and has a track on the recent tribute album to Karen Dalton.
Valerie, the twenty-something graphic artist whom I used to work with a few years ago was also a guitarist who fronted a metal band, and she was a good soul with Indian ink hair, Keane-like eyes and translucent skin. One day as I was driving some folks over to the Astro Diner for lunch, she sat in the back of my truck and shuffled through some discs that I had shoved out of the way and under the floor mat. I could see her smile in the rearview mirror and in her flat, po-mo deadpan voice she sneered, “Ed digs chicks with mandolins”.
Although I’m pretty sure I don’t suffer from idiopathic craniofacial erythema, I nevertheless developed a high cutaneous blood flow which caused a radiation of intense heat. Which means that I blushed as a result to an emotional response. It’s associated with shame or modesty, embarrassment or love. Charles Darwin described blushing as “the most peculiar and most human of all expressions.”
It’s no secret nor shame that I do indeed “dig chicks with mandolins” as well as women who play guitars, dulcimers, banjos, fiddles, cellos, bells, pianos, flutes, percussive instruments and autoharps. And if they can write songs and sing, especially in the upper registers while accompanied by open tunings, fingers that pick strings gracefully and have layered vocals with Eno-isms and Fripp-eries…than I may indeed fall hard.
Which brings me to the incredible Marissa Nadler. For when I listen to her sing and play her guitar, as I watch her videos and listen to her lyrics…I feel the heat and flush begin to spread from head to toe and damn it if she isn’t the circus that every little boy wants to run away with. So it would be fair to say that Marissa’s music touches this old man in a most unique way and I just dig her.
In the press section of her website, I counted over forty stories and reviews, from small blogs and fanzines, to mainstream press like Mojo, Pitchfork, Uncut, NPR, Interview and the LA Weekly. I’ve read most all of them because I found it fascinating that a) writers (mostly male) seem to fall in love or lust, and gush over her in the most poetic manner and b) her music has been described in more strange ways than one could possibly imagine.
While I’m left in awe of Marissa’s talent, words to describe her music don’t come easy to me and I admit to feeling hopelessly inadequate. Especially when I read the beautiful, lyrical and flowing words that others have come up with. So here’s a few uncredited “cut and pastes” from the press page of her website. I could never, ever come up with these phrases on my own, but it might give you some sense of what others think of her…and please consider this as a form of graffiti and neither thievery nor laziness:
“The indie-folk pinup girl and mistress of the murder ballad.”
“She’s hacked away the art school whimsy, tossed out the crystals and burned the floaty headscarfs.”
“Simple, melancholic fingerpicked folk ballads that take advantage of her sonorous, spine-tingling vocals, narrating tales of damsels in distress or lovers absent or dead.”
“Compelling medieval twang.”
“A markedly haunting pathos, musing on death, sadness and mourning with an elegiac beauty.”
“Part of me wishes she’d use her siren’s call to unite Sisters of the Moon in a woodland super-group of nymphs and urban wood-sprites.”
“Marissa Nadler could be a damsel who has tumbled from a frayed tapestry in search of her unicorn, a crystal doll who has escaped from her vitrine, or a tubercular maid who has slipped out of her Victorian deathbed photograph to traipse this earthly plane.”
“She’s like a young Stevie Nicks, all doped up and duped to serve as Devendra Banhart’s geisha. Nah, too strong for that. How ’bout Donovan reincarnated as Linda Ronstadt? Except instead of a ’70s pop star, in this life she’s Fairy Queen of the Muir Woods, a mythical creature spotted only by hippie chicks who dare to eat strange mushrooms and venture into the redwoods past nightfall.”
That’s enough of that….you get the idea. Beautifully written words that conjure some sort of witchy maiden swirling in the fog’s mist, wearing long dresses of lace and satin while her black hair blows in the wind and she holds out an alabaster cup filled with a steamy potion that is sure to lure any man to her lair.
And that right there is what I’d call her curse and her blessing, because she carries this image on her shoulders that might work with many fans but also will chase others away. But she is not living in the land of unicorns and dragon slayers, and her music is not all incense and peppermints and it sits neatly on the shelf with artists ranging from Joni Mitchell to Emmylou Harris to Vashti Bunyan. There is a lot of talent, strength and intelligence in this woman, and although I”ll admit that I fell for the image at first (and have since become platonically smitten as I’ve gotten to know her) it offers great satisfaction for me to help assist in the demystification if Marissa for you and bring it all back to Mother Earth.
Marissa Nadler turns thirty this month. She grew up in a Boston suburb and then attended the Rhode Island School of Design where she studied fine art. She taught herself how to play guitar, uses a lot of open tunings and fingerpicks with her thumb and index finger. She has four “official” albums out, as well as quite a few other projects that she sells at shows, on her Etsy page, website or Bandcamp page. She has toured extensively in the US and Europe. She’s tried living in New York, which she found claustrophobic, and Los Angeles which was just too sunny. She now resides again in Boston when not traveling the highway.
I’ve read she prefers old things to new things, and she cites these folks as some of the artist’s she likes to listen to: Nina Simone, Billy Holiday, Neil Young, Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Roy Orbison, Elliot Smith, Bob Dylan, Mazzy Star, Opal, Throwing Muses, Leonard Cohen and the Band. On her Covers album (available only on Etsy), she sings Gram Parsons and Townes Van Zandt and simply nails Lennon’s “Jealous Guy”.
She was the breakout artist performing this year at the first ever Couch By Couch West web-fest alternative to Austin’s SXSW, putting up some simple homemade videos that drew me in and reminded me that I had all of her albums uploaded, but had barely spent enough time with them. The urge came upon me to curl up with them immediately and so began several days of non-stop Nadler-maniacal obsessive compulsion which made me seek her out like some lecherous stalker.
Thankfully, writing for this site has cachet and she’s graciously allowed me into her world, although I imagine it shall be fleeting as she is a busy person. Over several days we traded messages, tweets and emails and I share our conversations:
Easy Ed: When you and I first connected, you mentioned that No Depression was a magazine you read back in high school. What were your interests back then? Did you identify at all with the alt.country and Americana scene at the time?
Marissa Nadler: Well, I remember really having an affinity for the rootsy Americana scene at the time, probably because it was so different from my own upbringing in New England. I worshipped the west and the freedom it embodied. Part of alt. country and Americana was linked to that wanderlust. My interests back then were my painting career mostly, and music was still a hobby until about age 18. I would just spent my awkward adolescence copying master paintings in my basement and listening to music on the boombox. A lot of this music was prog rock and classic rock. A lot of it was folk and americana. I loved Gillian Welch and Lucinda Williams and they really spoke to me. Also, Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons and the Fallen Angels. Elizabeth Cotton. I could go on and on.
EE: I felt you were the breakout artist this year at Couch By Couch West and you certainly captured my heart with your homemade videos. You’ve mentioned that it was a more comfortable setting for you, making and uploading videos, than your previous live SXSW experience. Can you share a little about that?
MN: Ha! Thanks Ed. CXCW was a good alternative to SXSW, at least for me. To answer your question, my career has never been an overnight thing. I am not the kind of artist that some A&R guy would see at SXSW and give a big record deal too. This is mostly because I am and always have been a bit shy, and stage fright really debilitates me at those high pressure events. For the past four or five records and those related SXSW shows, the people around me, whether various managers or various record label lackeys that I was working with at the time, would really put a lot of pressure on me to “kill it.” It was as if not doing these showcases was somehow career suicide. One particular year, I ran off the stage after three songs. I am really particular about my sound, but people always see a chick with a guitar and think they don’t need a soundcheck and also assume you suck. (That and you don’t get sound-checks at festivals). So, I’m fingerpicking on a twelve-string and all you can hear is feedback. I start crying, run off stage. End. Three songs. I must add, however, that this hasn’t happened since and I am doing well at my live performances these days.
EE: You use lots of open tunings when you play guitar, and on your albums it’s augmented by all sorts of other instruments, electronics and sounds. Does that come from your collaborators or is it something you hear in your head early on in the songwriting process and direct during the recording process?
MN: I’m pretty open to what my collaborators, like Carter Tanton, will throw in the mix. Carter, who’s arrangements feature prominently on my new record, has a very delicate ear and a sensibility for melody that I trust. So, I basically just have to work with people who I love and trust that can handle playing delicately and knowing when not to play. Usually, during the actual songwriting, my main focus is the words and the vocal melody, and when I can get a real groove on with the guitar, it’s usually by using an open tuning. I can keep the bass notes droning for a constant atmosphere.
EE: I read an interview where you spoke about going into Guitar Center and being treated like the little girl who plays a pink guitar. It seems to me that anyone able to put out five albums, who has toured throughout the world, created an image of both femininity and strength in equal measure and runs a business indicates quite a bit of ambition and tenacity. How do you view your accomplishments so far and what have been some of the highlights for you?
MN: Well, that is very sweet of you, as well as observant. It is a hard thing to strike a balance between femininity and strength. If you are too strong, a lot of men in the music industry view it as “diva” behavior. If you are too meek, or wear too many dresses, people think you can’t play your guitar. I get both assumptions a lot, no matter how many albums I put out, and notoriously have had difficulty with sound-men throughout my life. I have always had a very definitive idea for what I wanted. Whether is was 7 seconds of long hall reverb on my voice or more treble, I knew what I wanted but the sound-men always seemed to think differently. The obvious choice would have been to hire my own sound technician but I have never been able to afford one. I always felt and still do feel that there is a huge double standard in the music industry. There is an argument to be made that women musicians have to play guitar twice as good and write twice as well to get the same amount of respect that the men do. Also, I find an incredible amount of pressure to “look good.” Video killed the radio star, I guess.
In terms of accomplishments, pretty much I just live day by day. I have to be honest with you that I am one of those workaholics that is never happy with the work I have done and I am constantly striving to be better, even at the risk of complete emotional ruin. But, yeah, I guess if I had to name one single accomplishment, I am pretty proud of overcoming my debilitating shyness and it’s crippling shackles to be able to share my music with the world.
EE: Can you share a little about your new album and what we can expect to hear? You mentioned something to me about a pedal steel guitar.
MN: Well, I would say that Brian McTear, who produced this record, did a great job! There are many intimate moments on the record with just guitar and vocals and there are some big, luscious arrangements. There are three songs with absolutely no reverb, which was a huge thing for me. I always and still do love the way reverb make the voice sound, but on this record I wanted it to really cut deep. I noticed the dryer the vocal, the more emotional the sounds sounded. I used to not be able to listen to my voice without reverb. Now, I can listen to it completely dry. Its so much more intimate. Carter Tanton added an incredible amount of beauty to the record with some of his choices as well.
In other parts of the record, we used Tammy Wynette recordings as a way to place the vocals in the mix. So, in some ways, it’s mixed like a classic Americana record. Nevertheless, it has many atmospheric and dreamy moments. Yes, there are two songs with some real rootsy pedal steel “jamming.” And I have to tell you, I never thought I would hear a groovy jam on one of my own records. I actually can’t even believe I just wrote the words groovy jam.
EE: What was your thought process in deciding to fund it through Kickstarter and handle the sales on your own, going outside of the traditional music business model?
MN: Well, things are changing. Everyone’s got to try something new, whether it’s artists or the labels. Its a lot of work but I’m really enjoying my freedom. I am self-distributing through a mail order system. I put pre-order buttons up on my websites far in advance, knowing I would need to be as organized as possible. I also put up a way for stores to order bulk/wholesale from me. So far, so good! (Click here for her website.) If I get overwhelmed, I may use a distributor down the line but definitely an independent one.
EE: I saw you have posted some west coast tour dates for June…where else are you planning to perform? And is your audience of equal gender and age, or is it tilted one way or another?
MN: I am planning on touring the entire US as well as the rest of the world. My audience is changing. My first and most loyal fans have always been older men who are finger picking and songwriting fanatics and music buffs. I also now have a size-able legion of black metal fans at my shows due to my collaboration with Xasthur’s Malefic. I wish more ladies would come to my shows.
EE: In reading some of your press, people sure throw many different labels or genres on your music, many I’ve never even heard of before. So how do you describe what you do?
MN: First and foremost, I take my songwriting very seriously. That is my main craft. I work very hard on the lyrics, the structures, and the melodies. I also consider myself a guitar player. Labels beyond that to help describe the music to new listeners would be dreamy, atmospheric, sultry, nostalgic, and romantic.
I told Marissa that it was my hope with this profile that I could help expand her audience a little. You know, old guys coming out to the shows are nice and all that, but I’d think a younger, broader audience would be there if they just knew her a little better. With an extensive touring schedule being put together, it shouldn’t be too hard to find her.
Here’s a list of what I call Marissa’s “official” releases, although she is an extremely prolific woman in the recording studio and there’s much more to be found in the way of compilations, live EP’s, the great lo-fi Covers album available only on Etsy, and other gems and one-offs:
Ballads of Living and Dying (2004)
The Saga of Mayflower May (July 2005)
Songs III: Bird On The Water (March 2007)
Little Hells (March 2009)
Marissa Nadler (Coming June 2011)
These links where you can learn more, hear music, watch videos and buy things:
http://www.marissanadler.com
http://marissanadler.bandcamp.com
http://www.etsy.com/shop/Marissamoon6
http://twitter.com/#!/marissanadler
The photograph at the top of this post is credited to Courtney Brooke Hall, 2011. Copyright. http://www.lightwitch.com/
In 2011 I began to test my own fractured Americana and roots music definition and biases with a series of articles originally published at the No Depression website. Exploring artists who pushed against the bounderies to create remarkable collaborations, it began with Boston-based Marissa Nadler and then to Buck and Shanti Curran, who are profiled here. It took me down a road I’m still traveling on.
Hyphenated genres are there for the sake of hilarity when writing press releases, not for seriously describing music. Kim Ruehl, Twitter (Editor of NoDepression.Com)
April 2011
Around the time that our site manager Kim posted this thought of hers, I was in the midst of spending several weeks exploring the music of a number of East Coast contemporary folk artists from Maine to Pennsylvania, and pondering what the hell to call it and how I should describe it. What began with Boston’s Marissa Nadler, led me to Philadelphia’s Espers, Meg Baird’s solo work, and up to a town near the Northern tip of the Appalchain Trail where Arborea live and work.
As I read and researched each of these artists, I found myself knee deep in hyphenation-ville, because there are so many elements and influences that are pulled into their music, there seems simply to be no other way to describe it. Indie-folk, goth-folk, acid-folk, psych-folk, freak-folk, neo-folk, prog-folk, metal-folk, electric-folk, techno-folk, space-folk…you get the idea…it’s just all folk-ed up. And Kim just about killed it for me with her Tweet.
So I took a break to ponder.
A week or two later, while watching a television show on the Smithsonian Channel about Folkways Records, it was founder Moses Asch who put it all in context for me. I shall para-phrase his actual quote, but it goes something like this: “I consider folk music to be sounds made by folks.”
The “a-ha moment” had arrived which allowed me to go back into the woods and share this story.
Buck and Shanti Curran live with their family in Maine, and have been making music together since 2004 under the name Arborea, with four group albums currently out, and a few anthologies that they’ve either compiled or just contribute to. (They do a real nice “This Little Light of Mine” on an Odetta tribute I just found this afternoon; merely stumbled on) Acoustic Guitar magazine noted that their Robbie Basho tribute album We Are All One, In The Sun was one of 2010’s best. And it was a top editors pick in the December issue of Guitar Players Magazine 4 stars from Mojo, and has received great reviews from The Wire and Pitchfork.
This month, they’ve released Red Planet and have been traveling and performing all over the US, UK and Europe. (As I write this, they just landed in Ireland.) Before leaving the States, Buck and I spent a few weeks writing back and forth to talk mostly about music, and a little about life.
It’s tough sometimes for bands and artists to understand that I’m not someone who often reviews stuff, but I do love to shine a spotlight on those who dwell in the shadows. And while Arborea are not even close to being shadow dwellers, they live in the world of the hyphenated genre which prompts me to share a few words. Actually, I think I’ll share a song.
A little bio and press-type stuff I’ll steal from someplace else…it’s saves me time:
“Husband and wife team, Buck and Shanti Curran, construct a fragile, resonant world with a lingering Americana after-taste, shimmering with the same wide-open spaces Ry Cooder’s captured so well on Paris, Texas. Sounding like frayed, half-remembered, hand-me-down tunes, shaped and altered with each retelling, the fluidity and the sparse application of instruments wherein Eastern and Western modes gently mingle is the secret of this album’s startling beauty”.
BBC
“Arborea’s brand of folk music is ethereal, bone-chilling and beautiful all at once”
Performing Songwriter Magazine
“Maine folk duo Arborea creates timeless music, haunted by deep shadows. Their songs are bathed in shimmering harmonics, spectral slide, and positively spooky banjo. The songs also evoke a kind of mysterious quality, in which you are never quite sure what the songs are about, but they seem to touch a place in your soul that instinctively understands.”
Dirty Linen Magazine
Buck is an interesting guy, especially in the world of acoustic guitar playing. Let me have him share his story with you.
“My passion for acoustic guitars can be traced back to the 1970’s when I first heard and fell in love with my mother’s record of John Williams playing Bach’s Gavotte en Rondeau. I started playing guitar and taking lessons in 1981 after my father gave me his Yamaha classical guitar. In the early 80’s I was fortunate to discover the record ‘Routes to Django’, which featured the young gypsy guitarist Bireli Lagrene. Another milestone in my musical education was listening to the record ‘Passion, Grace, and Fire’ which introduced me to the breathtaking Flamenco guitar playing of Paco Delucia. These two acoustic guitar based recordings, really showed me that there was an entire world of ‘hot’ guitar playing outside the realm of amplified players Jimi Hendrix and Edward Van Halen.”
In addition to developing a very distinctive fingerstyle-type of playing, Buck also took an interest in hand built guitars were working at Ramblin’ Conrads, a premier folklore center and store in Tidewater, Virginia. And he took that extra step of learning how to design and build his own guitars.
Performing as Arborea, Shanti Curran provides lead vocals, banjo, Banjimer (a type of banjo dulcimer made by Tennessee luthier Mike Clemmer), harmonium, ukulele, sawing fiddle, and hammered dulcimer. Buck does vocals, guitar, slide guitar and sawing fiddle. And they both share songwriting duties, arrangements, and production.
Over a period of a few weeks as I became lost in their music, I started to wonder if No Depression was the place for them. After all, it’s not exactly twang or alt or what we normally think of as Americana and even roots music might be a stretch. Buck turned me around.
“We use the elements of pre-war folk and archaic blues as a starting point. Our recordings definitely have a dreamscape feel to them…but that is quite a natural product of how Shanti and I sound together and the open minor tunings we use with our banjo, guitars, and dulcimers. Our recording are quite stripped down, but they have an undeniable mood and atmosphere to them. It’s not like listening to a Pink Floyd record where you have dreamy synthesizers, electric guitar, drums etc….but mostly just Shanti signing and playing banjo and me on slide guitar. These ethereal elements are certainly present in the music of Skip James and banjo players like Hobart Smith…elements that can definitely be attributed to the resonance and ring of their instruments and the tunings they used.”
“Our album also features traditional songs like Black is the Colour….Careless Love which is not a trad song, but an anonymous poem that many traditional artist cover. The Tim Buckley song Phantasmagoria in Two. As well, our music is influenced by the rugged and beautiful Landscape of Maine. Shanti and I live close to the Appalachian trail…which terminates in Maine. A lot of people don’t instantly think of Maine as part of the Appalachian trail. Often we like to say, we are creating a Northern Appalachian sound.”
In one of our last email exchanges, I thanked Buck…as he had pretty much written the story for me.
It goes like this:
Buck and Shanti make folk music together. It’s exceptional work from highly talented people. It requires no hyphenation. End of story.
Some of the videos I featured here are from the March 2011 Sun Room Sessions featuring Helena Espvall from The Espers (currently on a never-ending hiatus) on cello, and Jesse Sparhaw on harp. Video by Derek Moench. They will be released on an EP in June, 2015 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the duo. And this last video was from 2014 and obviously not from the original article. But it’s a great example of the enduring work these two continue to produce.
Like most guitar players, I’ve long known that having just one is simply not enough. I have my sweet-smelling mahogany Martin 000-15 that I keep inside the case next to my bed and only bring out on special days. There’s the Takamine Jumbo custom for playtime; a cheapo Ibanez black laminate, thin-body, acoustic-electric that sounds totally awesome when I plug it into an amp once or twice a year; the lap steel I’m still fussing around with, in C6 tuning; and two guitars I bought when I was a kid that are now classified as vintage. As am I.
Other players will chuckle and tell you truthfully that I am as far from a serious collector as one can get. In fact, for someone who has played as long as I have, it’s an embarrassing assortment of wire, wood, and glue mostly constructed across the Pacific. If I had ever chosen to show up at a bluegrass festival parking lot with my Epiphone 6830 dreadnought, they would likely have run me over with a John Deere tractor. I speak in the past tense because this week it ceased to exist as anything other than wall art.
When I bought that guitar back in 1971 – it is an ‘it’ because I don’t name my instruments – it cost me about $200. That was a lot of money back then for a starving student to spend. People would often ask why I didn’t have a higher end Martin D-whatever, and I always said that if I could find one that sounded better than this one, I’d buy it. Honestly, the Japanese craftspeople who made my Epiphone did one helluva job. I’ve kept it in great condition, with only a few nicks and bruises that one might expect after too many nights of dim lights, thick smoke, and loud, loud acoustic music.
A few years back I began to notice it wouldn’t stay in tune for too long, and I started to play it less and less. Still, every guitarist needs at least one dreadnought, so I drove up north last week to a small town in the Hudson Valley to see a luthier named Doug about what it might cost to repair. After he examined it inside and out, and explained in detail the issues, he picked up a calculator, punched on the keys like Liberace, and held the display up for me to see. $1,800. Goodbye.
Like an addict who needs a fix, I’ve been staying up late all week, surfing the web to brush up on what’s out there that might fit my tight budget. I’ve solicited suggestions from musicians and dealers I know, and read up on the pros and cons of manufacturing and design from America, Canada, Mexico, China, Korea, and Japan. I’ve learned about solid wood, sustainable wood, laminates, satin finish, high gloss stain. I’ve considered guitars with a thin neck, wide neck, open or closed tuning machines, acoustic both with and without pickups. I’ve looked into large companies, small companies, handmade, oven-baked, extra crispy, and gluten free. The choices are endless.
And where do you buy a guitar these days? Just like with hardware stores and booksellers, there seems to just be one or two companies that dominate the marketplace. They look the same, price the same, have the identical inventory and selection. Most of the guitars on display have never been set up, the strings are oxidized, and they buzz and squeak. I’ve also visited a number of smaller retailers and they can hardly compete with the big guys on price, so they tend to stock the lower-end models for beginners. Even here in New York City, it’s hard to find someplace that doesn’t either require a ferry ride to Staten Island or a trip to the Village where it’s often hard to hear above the din.
Being someone who loves to curl up with a good spreadsheet, I’ve been doing some research. According to www.musictrades.com, last year in the United States almost 1.5 million acoustic guitars were sold; about 350,000 more than electrics. Thank you Mumford and Llewyn Davis, I suppose. Of that number, about two-thirds sold for $500 or less, a third priced between $501-$1,500. And only 25,200 sold above that. Wow. If you’ve ever picked up a magazine like Fretboard Journal or Acoustic Guitar, you’d think everybody is buying that custom $15,000 Martin or Taylor. Nope. I think those magazines are mostly hedge fund manager pornography these days.
Jim Isray, the owner of the Indianapolis Colts’ football team, paid $335,000 last February for a Gibson Les Paul to add to his collection, which includes Dylan’s Fender that he played at the Newport Folk Festival when he went electric and Jerry Garcia’s beloved Tiger. The Washington Post quoted Cheap Trick’s Rick Nelson – a Les Paul collector himself, with over a hundred of them – as saying the price was reasonable, and “I’m happy it didn’t go for $2.1 million.” And that Garcia guitar? Isray paid $850,000 for it in 2002. That’s much less than the Hendrix 1968 Strat that billionaire Paul Allen bought in 1993. Boys and their toys.
So anyway, here I am: minus one dreadnought and ready to go on a shopping spree. While I’ll try not to succumb to Madison Avenue-style advertising and marketing, it’s hard not to want a new six-string that will “bring back memories of the great instruments of the Golden Era of guitar building. Those were days when all work was done by gifted craftspeople, by hand, using simple tools. Heirloom-quality instruments which may be enjoyed by future generations of musicians.” God bless great design, low overhead foreign manufacturing plants, and American Express.
This was originally published by No Depression, as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column.
Do you think you might be suffering from the boogie woogie flu? It’s an affliction that causes you to become totally bored with your record collection or digital library, much of which is populated with either new music or old favorites. It happens to me sometimes. The best medicine is often digging deeper.
If I’m driving down the road and a track pops up from The Okeh Blues Story 1949-1957 collection, my toes start to tap and my heart skips a beat. The Complete King Recordings of Wade Manier makes me pull my banjo off the wall for some two-finger pickin’. If you haven’t lately listened to the Cotton Top Mountain Sanctified Singers or Da Costa Woltz’s Southern Broadcasters or Fruit Jar Guzzlers, run out now and get yourself Yazoo’s Times Ain’t What They Used to Be. There’s something about those old dusty 78s.
Last week I was in the car and I tried to get my mojo back by twirling the dial up and down the FM band looking for inspiration. Of course “twirl” is a euphemism for pressing buttons on a digital readout, and “inspiration” was perhaps too much to hope for. But with millions of people from every nook and cranny in this whole wide world living in the city of New York, I knew I’d find something to whet the whistle.
What I found was a small station broadcasting from New Rochelle, a suburb not far from Queens and the Bronx. It caught my ear with Caribbean music, blasting in a style that blended old school rhythm and blues, a reggae back beat, hip-hop, dancehall, and toasting. Weird electronic sounds, songs shifting effortlessly in and out of each other, and a steady commentary in a thick Jamaican accent that made it impossible to know if it was part of the music, an informercial, or a news flash. I think it might have been all three.
WVIP-FM is owned by David ‘Squeeze’ Annakie’s Linkup Media Group, and some of the other businesses they own and advertise almost continually on the station include JAMROCK Magazine, Saige Skin Care, SqueezeCard, AAA Service Protection, BioLife Energy Systems Solutions, Vitaways, Value Health Network, USA Credit Repair, Fiction (a Jamaican club), and Immigration Link. Squeeze takes to the air himself and promotes like Reverend Ike on speed. And, as a special bonus to the island music (between all the ads), there is the option for anybody to buy a 30-minute block of time for their own show. I’m considering it.
While my reggae vocabulary mostly consists of Bob Marley and that “Bad Boy” theme song from COPS, I have to tell you that whatever the hell this station is playing, I want more of it. Although not Americana nor alt-anything I know about, it’s roots music of the stems and seeds variety. Ain’t no such thing as wrong music.
