C or D: Robbie Basho, "Basho Sings"

not really. i may have voted for the twilight peaks reissue last year tho.

I just got the Voice of the Eagle reissue cd - really crazy and joyous and funny stuff! There is just the right amount of madness in his method. Sounds great. Some of it is very Ennio Morricone. Hopefully they will reissue Zarthus, too!

met a fellow in MPLS (Kyle Fosburgh, a great guitarist in his own right!) who is reissuing a bunch of Basho stuff via his company Grass Tops records- he's a nice dude and the remasters sound amazing (he said 8 reissues are in the pipeline) this CD version of Visions of the Country is the first CD version of the album, actually. This song absolutely floored me, made me cry in my car on the way to work:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lFzu74gtQo

oh, well, i need to read the thread, you were all talking about the VotC reissue like 7 months ago. Oh well, got to bump a Basho thread.

You can never say enough good things about Visions of the Country though. That record is not of this earth.

yeah it is pretty amazing.

Don't know if I mentioned this already but one of my all time favourite memories from last year was camping in the Peak District and sitting on a hill playing VotC.

When corn is ripe
I light my pipe
And smoke the peace of the world

didn't know those guys were from minneapolis!

i think i'm coming around to his voice, it's just so singular. i like it better when he's in the higher registers but overall don't find it as abhorrent as i once did. and damn, he's a hell of a whistler

visions is definitely what brought me around to his vocals, he sounds so good there

if anyone in this thread is interested, kyle fosburgh at grasstop records is bringing out a reissue of robbie basho's "rainbow thunder" sometime the middle of next year; also, he will also be issuing an lp of totally new, never before released songs by robbie basho that kyle recently acquired.

! what era is the new stuff from?

it spans his career,i believe--

hmm, will this be released through the usual channels (whatever those are)

count me, sadly, among those who can't really handle basho's singing :(

well, actually i can handle it some times. visions of the country is nice.

On that record particularly his singing matches the vibe so perfectly.

the lps will be released by grasstops recordings, kyle's record label. here is the link https://grasstopsrecording.com/

the new material is from takoma era to '85, '86

visions of the country brought me around on his singing

i saw the posts from people admiring "blue crystal fire", here is a link to the recording of the violin/guitar duo that opened for robbie at sinclair auditorium in 1978---tacked on the end is the duo's version of 'blue crystal fire" played at Chuck Sherer's Deli Natural restaurant in cedar rapids, iowa, where basho also performed.

The link's missing!

that's so zen

cedar rapids, iowa is a pretty happening place, even if the art museum is at the opposite end of a block with a strip club IIRC

which has better nudes

^ the voice of the oogle

sorry here's the link---didn't intend to be so zen https://archive.org/details/SamWeisAndCarlisFaruot

btw the violinist playing on the "blue crystal fire" recording on the link works at the cedar rapids art museum---so i sent him the part of the thread dealing with nudes, the c.r. art museum and strip clubs...

that cover is cool! i learned "blue crystal fire" a little while ago because it is probably the only basho song I'll ever be able to play.

the strip might be a full block away? my memory is a little rusty. i went to a show there (as in, an art show, not a rock show) and it was neat. the museum that is.

AVAILABLE TODAY : Robbie Basho's 'Art of the Acoustic Steel String Guitar 6 & 12', remastered from the original studio tapes — This marks the first ever reissue of this 1979 Windham Hill album from the legendary guitarist/composer ...

This release is available in both CD and LP formats and each purchase of either format comes with a free digital download of the complete album. To order the LP, please visit GnomeLifeRecords.com. To purchase our CD edition, simply click the link below.

The CD edition comes with exclusive and extensive liner notes written by Anil Prasad of the Innerviews publication, and include thoughts from Windham Hill founder and original album producer Will Ackerman, legendary guitarists Peter Lang and Henry Kaiser, and reissue producer Kyle Fosburgh.

Housed in a beautiful six panel digipak design, this historic and beautiful work of art is once again made widely available to the world. The music shall never die!

Store - Grass-Tops Recording


image

Store - Grass-Tops Recording
Digipak design with liner notes by Kyle Fosburgh – The CD version contains an exclusive track titled “Something, Or Oil Paintings”.
View on grasstopsrecording.com
Preview by Yahoo

Ahhh awesome I will probably buy this today or tomorrow.

for those who haven't already heard. a post from the yahoo robbie basho group

Hey Richard, Kyle & Basho fans,

First let me say congrats to Kyle on the CD reissue of Art of the Acoustic 6 & 12! It's always welcome news when an important and long out-of-print album is brought back to life (first time ever on CD!) and I'm especially pleased that there are in-depth liner notes for this one; I'm always grateful when someone goes to the effort to put a reissue into historical context. Very good job!

Everyone: This reissue, whether you buy it on CD or LP, deserves your support. To keep the gates open to future high quality, legit reissues of Robbie's recorded legacy, so much of which is unavailable, we need to support the efforts of people like Kyle. Do it!

* * *

OK -- Basho's 12-string -- there's much I don't know; what little I do know is thanks to Liam Barker, who, as I think everyone here knows, is working on a documentary about Robbie Basho.

This is a roughly the story as I got it.

After learning about his documentary, someone contacted Liam claiming to have Robbie's original 12-string. Liam visited this person in order to ascertain that it really was Robbie's guitar, as the assumption has always been -- among those of us who care about such things -- that all of Robbie's possessions, including his guitars, went to Sufi Reoriented when Robbie died.

As soon as Liam saw it he recognized that it was, indeed, the legendary 12-string that Robbie used on all of his recordings.

The seller said that after Robbie’s death, he had been entrusted with the job of finding a buyer for Basho's 12-string guitar, which he did. He sold it to someone who was a big fan of Robbie’s, "an undisclosed Bay Area guitarist." (I have no idea who.) That guitarist has had the guitar for all the years between shortly after Robbie's death and a year or so ago. (BTW, I also have no idea if the original seller was a friend of Basho's or someone from the Sufi Reoreinted group to whom Robbie had willed his possessions -- many questions!)

Perhaps (I'm speculating here) the person who first got the guitar after Robbie died figured that Robbie's guitar might be of interest after realizing a documentary was in the works, but whatever his reason, he contacted the guitarist he'd sold it to and learned, to his dismay, that the guitar had not been well-taken care of and was now damaged. This was about a year ago.

Apparently the news of the guitar's condition upset him enough that he bought the guitar back with the intention to find someone who would give it a better home.

Before Liam could announce the discovery of the guitar, the owner did an online search, discovered Steffen Basho-Junghans' Robbie Basho web pages and wrote Steffen offering him the guitar.

I assume Steffen jumped at the opportunity -- who wouldn't!?

IMO, it's great that it ended up with Steffen who certainly appreciates its iconic value. Whether Steffen will invest in having it made playable again is up to him -- in the state it's in now, it's not much more than a keepsake.

(Because of the severe warping between the end of the fingerboard and the soundhole, the guitar will likely have to have a whole new top made for it in order for it to be playable again, which will mean removing the neck and the old top. Robbie replaced the top once, between the time he got it and the time he recorded Art of Acoustic, so it's safe to assume that Robbie's motivation was keeping the guitar playable, not keeping it original.)

As with John Fahey's Recording King -- which, for a couple decades, was merely shards of wood and splinters in a box till Fred Sheppard rebuilt it -- I'm sure it's possible to make it sing again. In the hands of the right luthier, possible, but probably not cheap.

BTW, Fred documented the restoration of the Recording King here: http://www.parachodelnorte.com/FallenAngel.htm

Glenn//.

Yikes that really bothers me! Why don't people take care of objects with that kind of significance?

thanks for the info! cool stuff.

Steffen deserves it, hope he gets it up&running again

Somebody send Steffen here in a couple weeks; he will find the right restorer: http://holygrailguitarshow.com/

is the documentary going to be finished?

good news---grasstops records re-release of basho's "rainbow thunder" album should be available this summer https://grasstopsrecording.com/

liam barkers has also told kyle the documentary will be out "in 2015."

good news on both counts!
i don't think i've ever heard rainbow thunder...

i don't think i'd even heard /of/ it, but i'll buy it!

kyle fosburgh has put together the entire nightflight interview with robbie basho https://soundcloud.com/grasstopsrecording/sets/bfbs-nightflight-interview

robbie basho's american indian album, "Rainbow Thunder" (songs of the american west) Release date is 9/8/15 ! by grasstops records

Wanted to post this here for those interested, but wanted to make sure I secured my own copy first - ha! Original, sealed copies of Rainbow Thunder going for the relatively inexpensive price of $36.

www.grasstopsrecording.bandcamp.com/album/rainbow-thunder-songs-of-the-american-west?mc_cid=a5e92b6448&mc_eid=db424a4d62

Never heard this album, but if it's anything like Visions Of The Country, I'm excited. Does anyone know if this is an all-vocal album, or are there instrumentals mixed in?

It's vocal bar the opener (Redwood Ramble), one track is just vocals and drums, but it has some really lovely guitar playing on it too

Rainbow Thunder is a collection of songs expressing the feelings and textures of the West in its Prime, and of the Native American Peoples who lived there. I hope it does them some small degree of justice — they who looked so hard into Nature – Robbie Basho

- Track listing -

1. Redwood Ramble
2. Crashing Thunder
3. Moving Up A'Ways
4. Legend of Mount Tamalpias
5. Rainbow Thunder (hear a rare live version)
6. The Pathfinder
7. The White Buffalo
8. Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee
9. Home Again
10. The Long Lullaby
11. Black Hills Soliloquy

CD reissue Produced by Kyle Fosburgh
Originally Produced by Silver Label Recording
Originally recorded by Dennis Reed
CD remastered by Joe Churchich

p.s. i'm not sure that track 5 is a live version on the reissue---i believe it's studio, but i ould be wrong.

think they were just linking to this: https://soundcloud.com/grasstopsrecording/rainbow-thunder-by-robbie
excited to hear the reissue! they've done a great job with the others...

this looks nicely done too https://smeraldina-rima.bandcamp.com/album/twilight-peaks

Highly recommend that Twilight Peaks LP to anyone who doesn't have it. Unlike anything else in Basho's catalog and "Nice Enough For Love" is one of his most haunting and beautiful tunes. LP reissue sounds superb too, with great liner notes.

In other news, 2014 was the year I finally stopped disliking Basho's vocals; 2015 is the year I began to actually prefer them.