#finger-picking

[dustedmagazine]

Davide Cedolin — Ligurian Pastoral (Island House)

Ligurian Pastoral by Davide Cedolin

Liguria, in Italy, is where the boot might meet the top of the thigh, a mountainous region in which rocky cliffs jut out of the sea and tourists hike from fishing village to fishing village along the Cinque Terre. It’s not exactly unpopulated — the largest city is Genoa — but there are lots of parks and natural areas, and it is there in these wilder places that guitarist Davide Cedolin finds inspiration.

This cassette release collects seven serene and unruffled meditations, mostly in finger picked acoustic guitar, but augmented sometimes with threads of bowed bass, lap steel and harmonica. Natural sounds, like a thunderstorm and bird noises, move in and out of these pieces, which are, themselves, natural and unpretentious. You can imagine the guitarist working them out in some sunny spot, perhaps picking up stakes and running inside when the weather turns and its starts to rain.

“Ca de Cavo” is especially lovely, its eddying cascades of finger picking shot through with bending, shifting tones of lap steel (that’s Mike Horn from Seawind of Battery sitting in). These compositions are not overly concerned with melody or song structure. They unspool in repeated patterns with few signposts indicating beginning, middle or end. They open out into a kind of wide-horizoned dreaminess, an infinity pool of sound that stretches as far as you can see.

Cedolin’s Instagram tells us that he’s been learning from Daniel Bachman, another skilled finger-picker whose compositions stretch to incorporate the living world. He is, at least so far, more tethered to the sound of his instrument; field recordings nest in the crevices of his songs, rather than taking them over. In “Lische Alte,” for instance, the rumble of wind slips between pensive guitar chords, the arc of lap steel (Horn again) tracing a throughline in the lyric jangle.

Ligurian Pastoral exists in its own time and space. It’s in no hurry to get to the end of its placid compositions, nor, after a while, is the listener. But it does take some adjustment, some slowing, some calming, some willingness to sit with this music, to get to its pleasures. Put it on with the sun streaming in and the whole afternoon idling in front of you. It will unfold like a flower.

Jennifer Kelly

[antirecords]

Christopher Paul Stelling just wrapped up in Europe and kicks off his US tour today in Cambridge. Before he hits the stage tonight, we wanted to share a new video for "Oh, River" from Itinerant Arias, filmed at Echo Mountain Recording Studios.

"While many artists fancy themselves as some variation of a modern day troubadour, Christopher Paul Stelling has earned the title outright." - Rolling Stone

ChristopherPaulStelling.com/Tour 05/18 - Cambridge, MA - Atwoods Tavern 05/19 - Providence, RI - Columbus Theatre 05/20 - New York, NY - Rockwood Music Hall (stage 2) 05/21 - York, PA - Sign of the Wagon 05/22 - Philadelphia, PA - Bourbon and Branch 05/23 - Baltimore, MD - Creative Alliance 05/24 - Washington, DC - Gypsy Sally’s Vinyl Lounge 05/25 - Chapel Hill, NC - Cat’s Cradle 05/26 - Johnson City, TN - Founder’s After 5 05/27 - Asheville, NC - Altamont Theatre 05/30 - Knoxville, TN - Modern Studio 05/31 - Nashville, TN - The Basement 06/02 - Detroit, MI - 20 Front St. 06/03 - Chicago, IL - The Tonic Room 06/04 - Kansas City, MO - Dubliner 06/08 - Denver, CO - Hi-Dive 06/10 - Flagstaff, AZ - Firecreek 06/11 - Phoenix, AZ - The Listening Room 06/16 - Joshua Tree, CA - Furstworld 06/16 - Los Angeles, CA - Hotel Cafe 06/21 - San Francisco, CA - Hotel Utah 06/22 - Ashland, OR - Brick Room 06/23 - Portland, OR - Laurelthirst 06/24 - Seattle, WA - Conor Byrne 06/25 - Yakima, WA - Sports Center 06/29 - Sandpoint, ID - 219 06/30 - Spokane, WA - Bartlett 07/05 - Grand Forks, ND - North Dakota Museum of Art 07/07-09 - Winnipeg, MB - Winnipeg Folk Festival

[dustedmagazine]

Joseph Allred — The Rambles & Rags Of Shiloh (Worried Songs)

The Rambles & Rags of Shiloh by Joseph Allred

Some folks talk about how life influences art, and some talk about how art influences life. You don’t have to step back too far to see how they can be in dialogue with each other, exert forces upon one another that cannot be summed up in a neat binary equation. The Rambles & Rags Of Shiloh, Joseph Allred’s solo LP release of 2022, is named for a rural location in Tennessee that has been home to his father’s ancestors for a couple hundred years. At the time that Allred recorded it, they were attending graduate school in Boston; just after the LP was released, they moved back to Tennessee. Might a looming longing for the ancestral sod have shaped these compositions? Might the interaction of compositional processes and memory that formed them set Allred on a course away from that dirty water that the Standells so loved? Or maybe we can blame it all on escalating rents?

The Rambles & Rags Of Shiloh was recorded at the same time as its predecessor, Branches & Leaves. But the two albums sound profoundly different from one another. The first release is an exactingly realized virtual ensemble performance, with prominent singing and a variety of instruments on every track. But Rambles… is a purely instrumental recording. Each piece is devoted to a particular instrument — a six or twelve-string guitar, or banjo — and sometimes to a particular method. Allred’s debt to James Blackshaw has never been clearer than on “The Dervish,” “Dance of the Fair Folk,” and “March of the True Bugs,” which all use tremolo string technique to generate slow-moving clouds of resonance-wrapped melody. The jaunty “Linville Rag,” which shares its name with a tiny burg in North Carolina, is a study in the joyous ends to which one can apply Piedmont-style picking. And the lap steel showcase, “Blues For Terry Turtle,” uses patient swoops up and down the neck to express posthumous regard for the fallen Buck Gooter guitarist. 

But to linger too long on methodology is to miss the way that the music’s diverse vectors converge to generate a sonic synergy of memory, imagination and emotion. Allred contains multitudes, but that’s what it takes to be a true standard-bearer of the Takoma School.

Bill Meyer

[dustedmagazine]

House and Land — House and Land (Thrill Jockey)

House and Land by House and Land

Photo by Judy Henson

(Ed note: Check out Sally Anne Morgan’s Listed, too.)

House and Land may have too many entry points for talking about their music. On their self-titled debut, the duo of Sally Anne Morgan (we'll call her a fiddler for now) and Sarah Louise Henson (let's go with guitarist) have this mutual ability to take traditional Appalachian folk music, run it through their own minimalist sensibilities and turn it into something both forward-looking and historically grounded.  

The North Carolina pair root their music in the mountains, but they build strange contexts around it, adding instruments like a shruti box and a bouzouki. Surprisingly, those textures don't add a world music influence so much as just darken the Appalachia. This is no Hollywood porch music; it's dark and leafy and cavernous. The buzz at the bottom of many of these tunes is the sound of the bottom about to drop out.  

At the same time, nothing on House and Land feels gimmicky. Morgan and Henson (visible in notable displays of picking skills) are careful composers here. They don't simply mash two influences together; no one's saying, “Ooh! How would Tony Conrad play this hymn?” There's a deep valuing of history across the album, of digging into the true roots that the artists have pursued. Understanding that value allows the two to expand what the songs can do, to build and reconstruct and pursue and new means for old truths.  

For all the historicizing and musicology that could squirm through conversation about this album, it's still the tunes and the central performances that carry the record. Morgan and Henson share vocal duties, usually in harmony. The a cappella “Johnny” lets the duo focus simply on melody and precise but engaged singing. When the next track, “Rich Old Jade” begins with a drone, it lets the vocalist's steady melody pull to the center of the performance. The hurt of that track is highlighted by the spareness of the performance. The emotional expression is Depression-era stoic, but the impact comes with force. Then everything feels like that inescapable buzz.  

House of Land makes for a strange old-timey listen. It doesn't stretch as far from its foundation as some of its referents might suggest, yet it continually pushes at something slightly alien. The group would be too restless for a retro celebration, yet it's their ability to pick through and understand the history that pushes them forward. That intelligent play between various traditions makes for a listen at least as captivating as it is new-fangled. 

Justin Cober-Lake

[mollysmusicschool]

Five Tips For Writing Songs on Guitar

Picture from https://takelessons.com/blog/how-to-write-a-jazz-guitar-song-z01 The following blog was guest written by Alex Frank, who has worked in the sound technology industry for over 10 years. Songwriting is a process that takes a lot of dedication, commitment, and joy. The act of songwriting is very personal, unless you are in a band or duo that co-writes the…

Five Tips For Writing Songs on Guitar was originally published on Molly's Music Blog

[letsallmakemistakes]

so beautiful

[antirecords]

Watch Christopher Paul Stelling make his national television debut on CBS This Morning performing his song "Hard Work."

[antirecords]

Christopher Paul Stelling​, 150 year old Larson harp guitar.  European tour starts now. New album Labor Against Waste arrives June 16th.

Photo: Gert-Jan van Aalst