ILX Gonna Shine in My Backdoor Someday (new post-Fahey folk for ppl posting in Takoma/Tompkins Square threads Pt II)

there's been a dude named Jon Monday who worked at Takoma that's been posting some really cool stuff on Fahey/Takoma/the general intersections of weirdo ppl in the late 60s/early 70s on the John Fahey Facebook group

Also---- CHECK THIS SHIT OUT...another dude who posts a lot of old scans posted this from '65 Berkeley....So it looks like Fahey played a show with Bob Dylan in disguise billed as "Tedham Porterhouse" - a pseudonym he used on a Ramblin' Jack Elliot record....if so, what a fucking crazy show

https://i.postimg.cc/YSHxLkcR/68767931-2796884800324865-5760716845304774656-o.jpg

holy fuck this kumio kurachi rules

xp lol, wonder who the dylan impersonator was ... bob himself was in chicago
http://www.bjorner.com/DSN00785%20(65)-filer/image215.jpg

haha ah too bad, Dylan is so weird you never know

I bet it was Fahey doing a second set

Conrado and Magic Tuber String Band both played great sets. Really complimentary and excellent playing all around. Was psyched to grab a copy of "Insilio" and the MTSB tape on Blue Hole as well. Think I will listen to "Insilio" a lot, as the compositions are very sturdy and interesting without being as fatiguing (for lack of a better word). While I like a lot of more active / wild / technically proficient players, for repeated listening I can really appreciate records that sit in a more measured, casually artful place. Not saying this well, but just noting that I think I will return to this one a lot.

glenn jones set (with two new songs!) from last fall

https://southernjukeboxmusic.bandcamp.com/album/glenn-jones-100918

nice!

Cool!

Also was listening to Chuck Johnson - Crows In The Basilica again (one of my favorites) and it really is amazing how deliberate every note is, yet it sounds so effortless and there doesn't seem to be a single flaw.

yeah! that one really is one of the best solo guitar LPs of the decade, I think.

in other news pertinent to this thread, Nathan Salsburg played a set in my living room last night! it was great.

Speaking of flawless guitar playing... that's awesome! I want him to teach me everything he knows. I love his very underrated solo records.

One of my students gave his folk presentation (required part of class) on Fahey (at my suggestion, he said he likes guitars) and in making my playlist for them to use on their midterm, I chose Sun Gonna Shine in My Backdoor Someday as my Fahey track bc it seems like a classic and appealing choice.

I'm sitting here in the exam and making sure everything is good before they get to that part of the test and guess whose youtube account I linked to for the Fahey track?

that's right, our own global tetrahedron. lol!! the internet must know we are friends or maybe this is the most recent version of the song?! anyway, small world, <3 to all folkies nu- and old.

awww that's awesome 😊

I love this story, thanks for sharing it! Long live this thread and all of its various expanding adjacent activities.

aww, that's great. i uploaded that because my favorite version wasn't easy to find, glad it's getting some use!

apparently yahoo is scrubbing yahoo groups, so there goes the fahey group. it was nigh unusable and mostly inactive but it had a trove of great information and posts from a lot of the OG folks stretching a fair ways back. i hope there is a way to archive that information easily

there's the FB group but there's definitely something about the modern social equivalents to boards/groups that doesn't seem to be as good for getting real information

such a bummer about yahoo groups, they are such a rich archive and a link to the disappearing first generation.

new bill orcutt is so good! his technique is so gorj but some of his earlier stuff felt claustrophobic to me at times, like trying to get out of a tied sack as you're thrown in the canal. the fire is still there in his playing but it feels a little more strung out, a bit more balanced, slower burning. once or twice it shades into bluez jamz but I have some time for that and the whole thing has such supreme autumn energy.

think it's been the strongest year for this sort of guitar music since we've had a thread for it, so many interesting and great records. was listening to the australian guitarist julia reidy, whose new album on oren ambarchi's new label has a kind of wild mix of things (inc autotune !) feeding into this big glittering clunky sound, it's not quite my bag but it's p unique & fresh

That's entirely my experience with Orcutt up until now but this is gorgeous. Thanks for the heads up. 'All Your Buried Corpses Begin to Speak' has to be song title of the year.

like trying to get out of a tied sack as you're thrown in the canal

this is such a great description of Orcutt's sound/style (which I dig, but not quite as much as the best Harry Pussy stuff, totally different though)

Julia Reidy is great, thanks for the heads up...

I'm probably more drawn to the un-hip side of the whole thing, but old folks dude Bruce Cockburn released an album of all acoustic instrumentals that is really great imo, he's quite a player, I think it would appeal to fans of Nathan Salsburg, James Elkington....very nice composition

er drawn more than MOST to the un-hip I'm still VERY hip, pass me the Sun City Girls record

By the way, I saw Orcutt live not too long ago (apologies if I said this upthread already ....) and it was very much in the vein of this new record. It was less knotty and restless than usual and jaw-droppingly gorgeous quite frequently (with less vocalizing throughout as well). There are of course no guarantees that that would be your experience, but I highly recommend going if he is coming through your neck of the woods.

when i first heard that orcutt album, i almost wondered if it was a deep put-on of some kind ... but it is gorgeous for sure — love the way he kinda dances around the actual melody of "moon river."

Well I mean Bill kind of sets you up for the idea that it is all a put on in one way or another (the album art, some of the song titles, his past output ....) but then the experience of listening generally knocks all of that out of your head as it is so powerfully delivered (whether you like it or not he is certainly offering what he does up at a consistently high level). Pretty much love the way he presents and delivers his stuff across the board.

Cool find from someone on the FB group - American primitive influenced stuff from Japan...really digging this on first blush, unique voice

https://senrirecord.bandcamp.com/album/broken-woods-some-prayers?fbclid=IwAR3SVlyCN--soRGJKx1IrV6nFu5KBU9ynyv03rLL0SNR2RYYAp45yT3NnW8

yeah, that's interesting!

^I knew that name looked kind of familiar, he had a release on Scissor Tail a while back—towards the tail end of a time I like to think of as the communities' salad days, lol... not in a 'peak' sort of way (at all) but more so in an idealistic innocence kind of way. Maybe it's just adulthood that hit me way too fast!

Thanks for posting that. I am really enjoying that (the "Broken Woods Some Prayers" tunes). Will go check out that Scissor Tail release too. And Neal I was by no means young when this thread and its predecessor got rolling, but I had that same feeling in re salad days. I will always remember that early run fondly as it was just nice to roll through all those releases as they came out and commune with the folks here that were into them. Was a good time.

think it's been the strongest year for this sort of guitar music since we've had a thread for it, so many interesting and great records.

would love to see some quick/short lists of things not to miss as we head into list-making time, if anyone's willing

Yeah in that case I'm definitely missing out. Not because I disagree but because I'm simply not as on top of it.

that Isasa record might be my fave purely solo acoustic guitar record from 2019

there have been gorgeous records that are kind of straight down the middle - Hayden Pedigo, Bill Orcutt - but also ppl reworking the centre or drifting away to explore new territory - forthcoming Steve Palmer, Sarah Louise - as well as ppl shading towards similar territory from different directions - Kumio Kurachi, and who knows what's going on with the Julia Reidy records. lots of good players plugging away at their own thing - some tasty live improv collaborations from Tashi Dorji and Susan Alcorn, Marisa Anderson must be due something new soon, & I saw DBH play a bossa novaish track live the other week !

and yeah, Insilio by Isasa is probably just my favourite record of the year and he deserves more recognition. it's unassuming, stripped back and very gentle, but it has that peculiar quality I love so much about the best solo guitar music where the intimacy and the control of time through phrasing and space (so much space on the record) start to evoke strange feelings, like someone else's memories or dreams. it changes the atmosphere in the room, and sends you inside yourself, or inside something. it reminds me of Glenn Jones a little in terms of tone and how personal and expressive it is, but it has an elusive quality to it too. I love all the delicate accompaniments but the two solo pieces named after districts in Montevideo are the clear stand outs, I feel like they've been playing somewhere in the back of my mind for months.

Co-signing on the Isasa record. Picked it up when I saw him live and I think Ogmor's description above really nails it for me. The space and phrasing is really great, very easy to listen to but very rewarding in regards to the repeat value.

Hoping that Marisa Anderson and Jim White record is on its way out into the world soon. I have a feeling I am going to be very very into it.

oh man that sounds great, thanks for letting me know

yeah, an anderson/white collab LP is pretty much my dream come true. heard a tape of a live show and they sounded great together.

For my NYC people, this free show just booked for November 22 and I wish I was in town for it:
https://blankforms.org/events/ksiyc/

Ksiezyc (Polish for “the Moon”) are a Polish avant-folk ensemble whose haunting fusion of traditional Slavic music with minimalism and ethereal wave has earned them a cult following the band characterizes as “poetry seekers, dreamers, and people dressed in black.” First formed in 1990 as a female a cappella trio, the group quickly expanded into a quintet when singers Agata Harz and Katarzyna Smoluk were joined by two friends from Poga, a Grotowskian student theater group. Remek Hanaj and Lechoslaw Polak appeared on the Moon, and a while later Robert Nizinski came straight from outer space. Their accordion, keyboards, clarinet, and tape have lent an alchemic magic to the mysteries of the singers’ reverberating voices ever since. At once ancient and modern, cosmic and local, Ksiezyc’s timeless 1996 self-titled LP features 14 surreal miniatures structured by accumulating, cyclical sequences of hypnotic keyboards and voice. Although sung in Polish, its macabre reworkings of nursery rhymes resonates with an ability to conjure spirits beyond language. After Ksiezyc‘s release, the group disbanded with no more than 30 concerts under their belt, becoming the stuff of legend before a 2013 reissue by Penultimate Press set the moon alight once more. 2015’s Rabbit Eclipse adds the hurdy-gurdy, violin, and field recordings from Hanaj’s sound breeding farm to Ksiezyc’s palette for a suite of shimmering drone-song dealing with eternal themes of life and death, good and evil, and transformation and expectancy. Drawing from their roots in theater, Ksiezyc’s performances have maintained a ritual quality suited to the unorthodox venues they have historically preferred, such as caves, jails, hospitals, towers, factories, and castles. In accordance with this tradition, Blank Forms welcomes the ensemble to Chelsea’s historic St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, the first English parish Gothic church building in the US, for their first-ever American performance

and, more tangentially, but if you dig that shit, try the French choral band San Salvador, coming to NYC in January.
https://soundcloud.com/lostintraditions/sets/san-salvador-live

Thanks! RSVP'd

blank forms does so much good shit, gonna try and make it

Did yall see the press release about Basho doc and box?
S/D: Tompkins Square Records

(also the TS 14th Anniversary playlist in there)

Listened to that 1996 Ksiezyc Youtube this morning (on my phone ha) and really enjoyed it. It made me think vaguely of a precursor to Instant Classic stuff.

https://feedingtuberecords.bandcamp.com/album/matthew-j-rolin

yes

I am seeing them this evening!

xxp

how was the ksiezyc show?

this thing is coming out next month — a lot of familiar names: https://tompkinssquare.bandcamp.com/album/ten-years-gone-a-tribute-to-jack-rose

Absolutely fantastic! Kind of performance art too, where the two singers walked among the audience and tossed a large balloon/ball to each other, carefully deployed small lights down the center aisle and threw a small light on a long wire across people's laps as if she doing something routine like fishing or harvesting etc. The band overall rotated among instruments while very atmospheric soundscapes continued underneath it all. They had a variety of noise makers like you might find on a sound stage, even children's toys to make animal noises with. Super enchanting.

xp

aw, now i'm super sorry i missed it! that was their first and so far only us show; unlikely they'll be around next week.