This new-found sense of self-discovery led Parish to pick up his copy of Fireside Book of Folk Songs, a gift from a friend which had sat among his sheet music collection for months. He began to work through the collection of traditional folk songs (“sea shanties, ballads, work songs, hymns”) in his new intuitive style. Parish recorded every song in the book, 147 in total, in an exhaustive and wildly ambitious project. Way Haul Away, released by the aforementioned Dear Life Records, handpicks twelve of these songs to form something of a conventional album.

Even across just twelve tracks we get a little of everything. The Neapolitan boat song ‘Santa Luica’ sits alongside Appalachian blues (‘Every Night When the Sun Goes In’) and the Mexican love song ‘La Jesucita’, while ‘Red River Valley’ provides the obligatory cowboy number. Importantly, Parish is tuned into each track’s historical implications. For instance, he confesses a love for sea shanties (such as opener ‘Haul Away, Joe’) in a piece with American Songwriter, focusing on their role in fostering community and collaboration in the dangerous conditions faced by men at sea. “Shanties are meant to ease the burden of heavy and dangerous work through song,” he describes, “by linking up your movements and your breathing with your fellow workers so that the ship operates as a singular organism.”

There’s history too on ‘Joe Hill’, an eulogy for the labour organiser of the same name. Parish spins the song into patient and intricate patterns, extending it beyond seven minutes in what he describes as a “meditation on justice.” Closer ‘Arkansas Traveler’ takes us back to the nineteenth century, an ode to the joy of making music. It feels like a fitting close, capturing the atmosphere not just of the album but Parish’s project as a whole.

Way Haul Away is out now Dear Life Records. Get it via Bandcamp.

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“The tape is packed with so many vivid images that the bigger picture becomes indistinct, like the recollections of a man so old and tired that the border between reality and fantasy has become porous”

The track draws inspiration from two works of literature: The title is taken from the James Salter story ‘Akhnilo’ and the falcon/falconer imagery was plucked out of Yeats’ ‘The Second Coming’.

The artwork for this one is by Erika.

You can buy Quiet, Constant Friends now the Wake The Deaf Bandcamp page. All tapes come with super-limited edition postcard art prints, and all profits will go to Worldreader.

The post Quiet, Constant Friends: Wes Tirey – Akhnilo Blues appeared first on Various Small Flames.

In winter 2015 I spent a month in Colorado, playing nights at a bar in a big quasi country band. In the mornings I quietly worked on new songs, borrowed my friend Jackson’s nylon guitar and recorded some of them. Here are three, presented as works in progress. Consider it a lo-fi preview of things to come.

Opener ‘Walking The Line’ gives you a good idea of what the EP is all about, with its gentle but intricate finger-picked guitar supporting Moss’s folk tale.

“Brush the fog from my eyes to reveal something clean
Look in through an open window to the nearly unseen.
But oh the lightness of the morning turns to eve
and stars go funnelling from you”

‘Postman’ is a moody folk tale in the vain of the classics, with a tough-luck wanderer parting with hopes and worries and wisdoms which could only be learned through time on the road. “Postman in the grey and blue,” he sings. “can I sleep among the bags while you drive? I’ll take the wheel after a time”. Closer ‘Vertebrae’ emerges from a swirl of instrumentation, what at first seems a desolate loneliness warming into a sentimental glow as Moss’s vocals appear, resulting in something akin to Small Sur.

If unpretentious, homespun folk music is your thing, just nylon-stringed guitar and intimate vocals, then this is the EP for you. You can buy Pitkin Country Morning now the Sam Moss Bandcamp page.

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In a recent interview, we asked North Carolinan folk musician Sarah Louise to name five acts that ours readers should hear. One of her suggestions was Wes Tirey, a familiar name around here – we have already reviewed his albums, collaborations and indeed even chatted with him too. Wes has since put out the tape Louise mentioned on Columbus label Cabin Floor Esoterica.

‘Old Ohio Blues’ starts the release as it means to go on, a slow, sad folk song surrounded by atmospheric drone which creeps and clings like an oneiric fog. A similar technique is employed across the remaining songs, the combination of traditional folk and electronic effects producing a sound that is disconcerting and alluring, Tirey’s vocals cutting through the mist like an unknown narrator, doomed to repeat his regrets. ‘Ballad of the Black Hills Woman’ plays like the late night echoes of a man who has outlived his company, while ‘The Body’s Better’ tells of someone so indebted to their vices that they have given up pretending otherwise. ‘Akhnilo Blues’ reduces the ambient levels in favour of stark guitar and ‘Mexican Blanket’ offers an evocative instrumental interlude, the ever-present reverb creating a strange sense that the song is a recording of the song, a memory that has not lost its lustre. Closer ‘Buffalo Bones’ is a current favourite, combining macabre dream imagery with a tender beauty, creating a song that’s unsettling and striking and would please any of the past masters.

“And I dream the trees were singing
and I dream the river was on fire
and I dream rattlesnakes were upon me,
and my name was cursed for all time.
And I dream the sky had teeth
and I dream of buffalo bones
and I dream the moon was bleeding
and I dream my body was stone.
And I dream of your lily white hands
and I dream of the flowers on your dress
and I dream wild horses surround you
and I dream your stomach grew.”

The tape is packed with so many vivid images that the bigger picture becomes indistinct, like the recollections of a man so old and tired that the border between reality and fantasy has become porous. Gripped by a fever dream, he is desperate and delirious but determined to say what needs to be said before time runs out on him.

All this is a way of saying that Journeyer/Forward, Melancholy Dream is one of Tirey’s best yet. The release is available as a great little cassette via Cabin Floor Esoterica (see below). While you are there, why not dig into the Cabin Floor back catalogue? But consider yourself warned: it can eat up your day pretty quick.

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A couple of weeks ago we wrote about Field Guide, a really great album from North Carolina native Sarah Louise. Despite being entirely instrumental, the album is incredibly deep. As we said in our review, “Louise manages to circumvent the skin-deep and decidedly human introspection that occupies most genres in favour of something larger and wider, resonating on a deeper level. The songs speak of an association with nature that makes everything else appear incidental, a connection that humanity has attempted to sever for millennia without ever quite succeeding. In this way the album is both sad and joyous, a reminder of all we have missed and all there is left to experience, the terrifying, heartbreaking and glorious comfort that we, as humans, are an oh-so-small part of an oh-so-wonderful world”.

Luckily for us, Sarah agreed to discuss Field Guide with us, and her answers to our questions explore the album’s themes and inspirations far better than we ever could.

Hello Sarah, I hope you are well! How is life in North Carolina this time of year?

Life is good! In some ways the tail end of Winter is the sweetest time of year because I know there is so much amazing weather ahead of me!

It’s clear that Field Guide is influenced heavily by the natural world. Would you say that nature plays a big role in your life and creative process?

I’m so glad that comes across. Nature is the most constant interest I have had in my life. Even when I was little I felt so bonded to it. I would literally read and memorize field guides, a pastime which still serves me well in my life in the mountains of North Carolina. It’s medicine for me and my greatest source of inspiration.

The other big influence is traditional folk music. How much has this shaped your music? I’m not a specialist in the taxonomy of traditional music but is there a particular branch that you see yourself aligned to?  

I’ve enjoyed the diversity of American traditional music for long enough that it is in my DNA and peeks out when it wants to. However, I wrote a couple of the songs on “Field Guide” around two specific lined-out hymns. I thought of my interaction with the material as a way of honouring these amazing women of song,like placing flowers around a sacred object. In some of the songs on “Field Guide” I was dealing with similarities between Appalachian music and Hindustani and Carnatic music. For example, harmony was not allowed in some of the more
conservative southern churches and was instead replaced by drones, rich melodies and melisma. These characteristics are also hallmarks of Indian music, as well as many other kinds of traditional music from around the world. To me, these connections speak to the ancientness of some of these mountain melodies (although I can’t prove their origins). I certainly don’t want to reduce the complexities or distinctiveness of these individual traditions, but I find inspiration in the similarities.

*Here are traditional recordings of the lined out hymns that Sarah mentions above, and I’ve included her guitar versions so you can compare and contrast. First is ‘The Day is Past and Gone’ by Jean Ritchie:

…and secondly ‘A Home Just Over Yonder’ by Frankie Duff:

It’s not that difficult to notice that the album isn’t a completely happy one, that’s not to say it doesn’t have little bright moments of joy, but it has varying shades of emotion, and sadness is certainly well-represented. This captures perfectly my feelings on nature – namely that it is an incomprehensibly amazing thing, but something facing the dire consequences of us as a species. Did you set out to write something that touched upon not only the joy of natureitself but also the sad fact that so many people are now disconnected from it?

What’s interesting about writing music for me is that sometimes when I am sad, I write joyful-sounding music, and sometimes when I am joyful, melancholy will emerge in a piece. I think that speaks to music’s wideness and strength as an expressive medium that goes beyond language or individual emotions. I didn’t set out to have “Field Guide” express sadness or joy about a particular topic, although it is safe to say that some of my deepest sadness stems from my concern about our culture’s disconnection from nature and the empty consumerism that can follow. And my greatest moments of joy are often in the woods, making little discoveries or feeling connected to the life around me.

*We asked Sarah to share a photograph that sums up Field Guide for her. It was an impossible question and she admitted defeat, but did share this picture of a Wake Robin, a species from the genus Trillium, which is one of her favourite wildflowers native to North Carolina.*

The music on Field Guide feels old – if you played it to a random sample of the general public, I reckon lots of them would place it somewhere in the formative years of the previous century – is that something you set out to achieve, this timeless quality, or is it more a consequence of your inspiration/influences?

It wasn’t an intention to write something that sounded timeless, but I just tried to be as honest and exploratory during my process as I could be. I have never wanted to write music that sounded like anyone else, but it makes me feel good that you think it sounds timeless. Thank you!

Does the album also have a more intimate, personal scope? Track titles like ‘Dog Improv’ and ‘Late Summer Seed Collection’ seem to suggest that the album as also inspired by personal memories.

Some of the titles are definitely inspired by my memories. I kept a seed collection when I was a kid in a large file drawer, which I lovingly labeled and alphabetized. And I still save seeds from/for my garden! The origin of the music itself is more difficult to pin down. I don’t know exactly where it comes from. I’m glad it’s a little bit mysterious.

This new version of Field Guide is entirely instrumental. Was this a conscious choice for this release or did the songs naturally take that direction? How do you decide when to include vocals on your tracks?

I always aim to have my pieces function first and foremost as instrumentals. In most cases I have added vocals only once the guitar part is finished. I’m starting to explore the possibility of writing instrumental and vocal parts simultaneously as a way to shake-up my process if nothing else. Scissor Tail Editions releases almost exclusively instrumental music, and since the pieces for the most part already functioned without vocals, it felt fine to cut them.

Could you list four or five artists/bands you really like and think people should hear? They could be new or not so new or one hundred years dead, whatever you like.

Asheville, North Carolina has a stellar scene, particularly for guitar music. Shane Parish
has a new tape out on Marmara Records called “Odei”, which is incredible for its inventiveness and is an absolute pleasure to listen to. I’m also a huge fan of Tashi Dorji who can say more in 3 seconds worth of guitar than many, many words could express. He has an upcoming album on Asheville-based Bathetic Records. Wes Tirey, who I think you’ve also featured (J: yes we have), is a Scissor Tail alum and a great player/songster (and has new tape out on Cabin Floor Esoterica). And my friend Emmalee Hunnicutt is a hypnotic, soulful cello composer who also collaborates with Shane Parish. That better be the last one or I won’t know where to stop!

The post Interview: Sarah Louise appeared first on Various Small Flames.

We featured Sarah Louise late last year, a brief paragraph that described her American primitive album Field Guide as “a lost disc from Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music” and promised a new year release on Scissor Tail Records. Well I’m pleased to say that the release is upon us. Part of the Scissor Tail Editions series (which includes the Tirey/Weathers split we also covered), Field Guide has been packaged as a quite beautiful cassette with artwork by Dylan Aycock.

As you can guess from the title and artwork, Field Guide is inspired by the natural world, especially the Black Mountains of North Carolina where Louise resides. While every song is instrumental, the title provides clues as to the context of the pieces, framing each track within a specific time or place or situation. The title track is vivid and rich, swirling around the listener and blossoming with tiny details so that there is something wherever which way you turn. ‘Dog Improv’ casts the listener as a canine explorer rooting through the undergrowth, the tempo changing on a whim to follow scent trails or other curiosities, while ‘Waterways’ adopts a steady background rhythm upon which playful picking becomes the rippling surface. ‘Late Summer Seed Collection’ is radiant and breezy and conjures the smell of an earth warmed by the sun, the small intricacies hidden within the flow mimicking the morphological complexity of the seeds themselves.

Musical comparisons will undoubtedly see you looking backwards, but to use the term ‘old’ in describing this album would not quite grasp the sensation experienced while listening. Instead it seems more apt to say Field Guide exists outside of time as we generally consider it. Listen to John Fahey or Matokie Slaughter or Blind Willie McTell and there is a commonality running through the music that seems to withstand the changeable patterns and trends that are adopted and cast aside across the years. There seems to be an unchanging element at its core, a force defeated by stylistic fads in genres such as pop and rock. Both in sound and theme, Louise manages to circumvent the skin-deep and decidedly human introspection that occupies most genres in favour of something larger and wider, resonating on a deeper level. The songs speak of an association with nature that makes everything else appear incidental, a connection that humanity has attempted to sever for millennia without ever quite succeeding. In this way the album is both sad and joyous, a reminder of all we have missed and all there is left to experience, the terrifying, heartbreaking and glorious comfort that we, as humans, are an oh-so-small part of an oh-so-wonderful world.

We are delighted to have an exclusive stream of the album that will be available up until the release date. Grab a tape or digital download from Scissor Tail Records.

So make sure you pick up a tape or download the album!

The post Sarah Louise – Field Guide appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Robbie Bankes is a Calgary folk musician whose talents span an impressive array of instruments from around the globe. According to this feature by The Calgary Collective, he plays in groups that make a diversity of folk music, from traditional Quebecois to age-old Celtic stuff. But on this solo album, Through February Snow, which he released earlier this year, Bankes focuses on what sounds to me like american folk music, playing guitar, 5-string banjo and fiddle to make what he himself describes as, “sings songs of the dusty prairie and high mountain peaks.”

The entire album is peppered with great lyrics, which is as important to folk music as guitars are to rock. Opening track ‘Alice’ is a beautifully written and poetic (lost) love song, which utilizes the classic minimal folk formula – just one man and his guitar. It opens with the lines:

“Oh my Alice I’ve been dreaming ’bout your sea-blue eyes
All the letters that I’ve sent that have not met with replies
Maybe you got lucky or you just can’t find the time.
Oh my Alice I’ve been dreaming about our lives”.

The second song is ‘February Snow’ which sounds warm and cosy during the persisting winter chill. The songwriting is great again, see for example the refrain:

“There is a place that’Il like to go
To watch the city far below
And to hear the sounds and to see the show
And to wait for you and the February snow
Well you took off your shoes and showed me your soul
You gave me a lot of warm socks to keep out the cold”

‘Little Sadie’ is a change of direction, a throwback to old-timey Gothic folk, with a morbid atmosphere straight out of a Flannery O’Connor story. It tells the tale of a murder subsequent events from the perspective of the perpetrator:

“I went out last night to make a little round
I met little Sadie I blowed her down
Went back home and jumped into bed
.44 pistol under my head.”

Bankes shows his proficiency for writing sad and pretty folk songs again on ‘As I Walked Out’ (e.g. “I’ll pack my bags and I’m moving on to soft summer nights of silver and gold, long rides and hillsides and shivering cold.“), before providing a decidedly Canadian take on the classic folk song ‘Hang Me Oh Hang Me’ (“Up on the Rocky Mountains it’s there I’ll make my stand, with a rifle on my shoulder and a sixshooter in my hand”). ‘Up to Skoki’ is a banjo/fiddle instrumental, the soundtrack to a lively Appalachian celebration, and ‘The Blackest Crow’ sees things out with a wistful flourish, the musical equivalent of an evening with no company except the lonely pines and two foot of snow.

Music can be used to say a lot of different things but folk musicians are poets at heart and (to meat least) are best suited writing these kinds of songs. Lonely and lovelorn they may be, but they’re also songs of hope, of finding beauty in everyday life and the natural world, and a realization that our lives are not isolated events put the products of hundreds of years of history. Folk music paints a romanticized version of a life that is actually attainable. It doesn’t shy from sadness and hurt, in fact it can dwell on them, but it dwells on other things too, like how the town looks from the hillside or the sound of the river.

You can get Through February Snow via the Robbie Bankes Bandcamp page.

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O, Annihilator sees Tirey use an ambient/drone backing that gives the songs a more cinematic feel, pushing the boundaries of folk music while still retaining that traditional quality. As a result, the album could fall into that dreaded category of “experimental”. However, this isn’t experimental in the usual sense, where incongruous sounds are played in the hope of finding some strange off-centre union. O, Annihilator may bring technology into traditional folk but it does so in a harmonious way, where every ambient drone sounds natural and vital to the atmosphere of the track.

Tirey’s previous two releases have been instrumental, so it is very nice to hear the man sing again. He has this tremulous singing voice and he delivers his lines with a real earnestness. Sometimes lovelorn, sometimes weary, he sounds (and writes) a lot older that he actually is. It brings to mind a description of old-time folk singer Dock Boggs by writer William Gay in an essay for Oxford American (and part of the wonderful collection, Time Done Been Won’t Be No More),

“Boggs’s voice here sounds so dissociated it seems to be coming not just from some other time but from outside time itself.”

I’m no folk scholar, so I may be very wrong here, but for me ‘traditional folk’ is less about a particular instrument or sound and more centred on an attitude, a way of writing and playing that exists well beyond the banjo or steel guitar. Tirey writes the sort of songs that sound like oral histories, passed down to him to be passed on again, owned by no-one, there for anyone to interpret.  They sound like the remembered words of forgotten men.

You can buy the album now from Full Spectrum Records, either digitally via Bandcamp or on limited edition cassette.

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“After releasing my last record, I hit the road hard with a revolving roster of musicians, writing songs and sharing stages with some of my heroes.  One of them, Jeffrey Foucault, signed on to produce my new album and booked my dream band to play on it.  I wrote like wildfire in the months leading up to the session.  In late October we walked into Sonelab studio in Easthampton, MA and spent four days playing these songs live, cutting 19 tracks in all.  We walked out the door with the core of my new album, RECKLESS SKYLINE.

This is the best music I’ve ever made – it feels so good.  I can’t wait to share it with you.”

The album is going to be a mix of foot-stomping rockers, country ballads and delicate folk. So if that sounds like your thing then why not give a little something?

Click the link above for a trailer, and support the album here. The Kickstarter page also contains details of all the rewards you can get for donations, as well as previews of some of the tracks.

The post Caitlin Canty – Reckless Skyline appeared first on Various Small Flames.

He makes heartfelt love songs, with a naive, almost childlike innocence which brings to mind Daniel Johnston. The album opens with ‘Roll On’, a back-to-basics love song which contains lines like, “Hush my sweet darling, darling don’t you cry / The wind is gonna blow, the grass is gonna grow, the sun is sure to shine.” Many of the songs deal with personal struggle and self-doubt, but unlike many other songwriters who take this route, O’Connell always retains the hope of redemption, namely via the phenomenon of love. On ‘You Belong’ he sings, “The strongest weapon they’ve come up with yet / is a way of making a human forget / How to respect and love themselves / and share that love with someone else.”

O’Connell writes songs rooted in a refreshing simplicity, with a classic folk style that brings to mind fellow Canadian Mike Tod. Lots of his songs deal with escape from our modern money-driven culture. For example on ‘Roll On’ he sings, ”Don’t you go chasing those tainted paper greens / Open your heart, don’t fill it up, bust it at the seams.“ In the wrong hands these kinds of messages can come across of happy-clappy hippie-speak, but O’Connell’s disarming naivete means that you really believe what he is saying.

The fact is that in order to solve some of the biggest social and environmental issues that we currently face, we must learn to live within our means. This means that the modern obsession with material wealth and financial growth must be replaced with something else. O’Connell’s suggestion is to obtain the small number of things that we really do need and then enjoy them with people that we love.

You can get Wet Moccasin Moondance on a name-your-price basis via Bandcamp.

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