Hiss Golden Messenger's Haw

Another really good one...got into it mostly because of the cut on the Oh Michael, What Have You Done comp from last year, but I like the originals a lot, too.

Artist: Hiss Golden Messenger Album: Haw Label: Paradise of Bachelors Review date: Mar. 26, 2013

“I come from the bottom of the river Haw,” sings M. C. Taylor in “Sweet as John Hurt.” Taylor was once of the hardcore punk band Ex-Ignota, later did time with SF’s twangy Court and Spark and now is comfortably ensconced in North Carolina’s alternative folk/country/blues environs, inviting locals like William Tyler, Phil Johnson from Megafaun, Nathan Bowles of the Black Twig Pickers and at least one member of the Bowerbirds in for this second full-length as Hiss Golden Messenger. Taylor and his long-time musical collaborator Scott Hirsch (also of Ex-Ignota, also of Court and Spark) have settled into a low-key but muscular country groove, spinning out shimmering mirages of wah-wahed overtones, blues-bent meditations on god and man, and light-footed country rambles.

Hiss Golden Messenger’s first album Poor Moon came out originally in November 2011 on the Paradise of Bachelors label in a limited run and was later picked up and reissued by Tompkins Square. The connection with Tompkins led to a spot on the Oh Michael! Chapman covers album. Hiss Golden Messenger’s “Fennario” was one of the few on the disc to capture Chapman’s rough masculine energy, the ragged wear and tear that makes his lines so memorable. Haw is, likewise, bristly, indelicate, often beautiful but never precious. It bursts with life.

 

More

Oh Michael...2012's best covers album

I wrote about the Michael Chapman tribute once before, shortly after I received it, but it's a grower, and I like it, oh, maybe three or four times as much now that I've listened to it a few times.

My review is up at Blurt today.

Various Artists

Oh Michael, Look What You’ve Done: Friends Play Michael Chapman

(Tompkins Square)

Not long ago, Michael Chapman was a lot of people's favorite overlooked folk singer, the gruff voiced, lyrically-fingered veteran of the 1970s folk revival that never seemed to have gotten his due. Well received reissues of Fully Qualified Survivor and Rainmaker, as well as tours with younger pickers like Jack Rose (now sadly gone), have righted the balance.

Oh Michael, Look What You've Done goes one step further, gathering contemporaries, admirers and bill sharers to reinterpret Chapman's songs. It is a lovely tribute, one which allows the beauty of the songs to shine through multiple lenses and illuminate various facets of Chapman's appeal. There is a floor-stomping, string-band-style romp from Rose's former band, the Black Twig Pickers, Takoma-style reinvocations of the man's guitar skills from William Tyler and Nick Jonah Davis, and a heart-wrecked and luminous cover of "That Time of Night" from Lucinda Williams (with Doug Pettibone evoking Chapman's eerie, haunted guitar work). Chapman's own generation of folk revivalists kick in some of the album's most gorgeous moments, with Maddy Prior of Steeleye Span finding a shape-note spirituality in Chapman's song "The Prospector" and Bridget St. John quietly, understatedly killing on "Rabbit Hills."

More

Hiss Golden Messenger - "Fennario" (Michael Chapman)

Michael Chapman tribute

It's a good day when I can simultaneously post about Michael Chapman and Meg Baird, two rather different pillars of the new folk movement who come together in a new Chapman tribute called Oh Michael, Look What You've Done, out May 29 on Tompkins Square.

Here's what Tompkins Square has to say about the album:

Michael Chapman began his career on the Cornish folk circuit in 1967. Signed to the Harvest label, home to Pink Floyd and Deep Purple, he recorded four quasi-legendary albums. The influential 'Fully Qualified Survivor' was John Peel's favorite record of 1970, and featured future Bowie collaborator Mick Ronson. After decades of recording and touring, Chapman remained an obscure figure in the States until his profile was raised by a lengthy 2009 interview with big fan Thurston Moore in Fretboard Journal. He toured extensively with the late guitarist Jack Rose, and more recently, with Bill Callahan. Seattle-based indie label Light in the Attic began a reissue campaign of his Harvest work, and Tompkins Square released the internationally acclaimed double disc, 'Trainsong : Guitar Compositions, 1967-2010'.

All this has brought newfound attention to a singular guitarist and songwriter.

'Oh Michael, Look What You've Done : Friends Play Michael Chapman', compiled by Michael's wife Andru and Tompkins Square's Josh Rosenthal, features artists who have shared a stage with Michael, or share a personal connection. These include some of his contemporaries like Bridget St. John, Maddy Prior, and longtime cohort Rick Kemp (Steeleye Span), as well as young guns inspired by Michael's legacy.

\
And, now, Ms. Baird covering "No Song to Sing"


By the way, I caught one of those Michael Chapman/Jack Rose shows a few years ago and wrote it up for PopMatters. Check it out here, if you want.

Michael Chapman and Jack Rose

I've got a live review of another acoustic guitar show, again at the Bookmill...this one much better attended. I didn't mention it in the review because it seemed a little too star-fucker-ish (and possibly intrusive), but Thurston Moore and Kim Gorden were there, as well as pretty much everyone else in a band in the Pioneer Valley. Moore sat on the floor. Kim got one of the couches.

I'm noting that this review really doesn't have a lead paragraph. Here are a couple of paragraphs about Michael Chapman:

A road-tested veteran in every sense of the word, he mentioned that he had recently celebrated 40 years of touring. He marked the occasion, he said, with a show at the very same venue he’d begun his career at, with a set that started 40 years to the minute after his debut. “Some of the same people were there,” he said, marveling. “They’d been home, though, you know.”

Born in Yorkshire in 1941, Chapman was part of the great folk revival of the 1960s and 1970s, sharing stages with Roy Harper, John Martyn, and others. He recorded four albums for Harvest Records in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Rainmaker, Fully Qualified Survivor, Window, and Wrecked Again, then moved to Deram, a Decca subsidiary, in the later half of the decade. His latest album Time Past and Time Passing, with songs from nearly every stage of his 40 year career, made up the bulk of the evening’s set list, interspersed with often very funny stories about his life so far.

You can read the rest here.

There's a song on the new album called "Silver King/Dustdevils" which is, unfortunately, not a tribute to that no wave band we all like so much...but it's pretty good anyway. Check it out. The link will work until November 21, 2008. After that, you're stuck with the Myspace.

Couple of really good ones...Woven Hand and Michael Chapman

I'm not sure if the reviews are any good, but the music is...My review of semi-legendary (and also little-known, if that makes sense) folksinger Michael Chapman runs today in Dusted. There'll be a live review of his show at the Bookmill sometime, as well. Also, the new Woven Hand, which on a first cut, fell at #3 on my best of list for 2008.


Artist: Michael Chapman
Album: Time Past Time Passing
Label: Electric Ragtime
Review date: Oct. 29, 2008

Like many of the songs on Michael Chapman’s Time Past and Time Passing, “Dewsbury Road/That Time of Night” can be divided into two pieces. The first, either a long introduction or a separate but related composition, is a delicate web of picked guitar, serene, sunny and unhurried. The second, starting at about three minutes, introduces Chapman’s voice, a dark-toned, rasp-edged instrument that immediately turns the mood darker. The song changes when he starts singing, like a country lane suddenly turning into a shadowy forest. “You know I don’t scare easy….but I do get scared,” Chapman intimates at regular intervals as the song proceeds, in the kind of voice that raises the hairs on your forearm. It is as if Chapman made Robert Johnson’s deal at the crossroads, but traded his voice, instead of his soul, to the devil.

More





Woven Hand
Ten Stones
(Sounds Familyre)
US release date: 9 September 2008
UK release date: 8 September 2008

by Jennifer Kelly

Fiery visions

David Eugene Edward’s Woven Hand has been on an increasingly rock trajectory lately. His Mosaic in 2006 was considerably more electrified than 2004’s Consider the Birds, built on pounding, Joy Division-esque rhythms and slashing guitars, and with only small islands of acoustic respite. Now with Ten Stones, the fifth since Edwards disbanded 16 Horsepower, the volume and intensity creeps up another notch, in some of the most viscerally powerful songs yet from the Woven Hand catalog.

This is perhaps partly due to Edwards’ partnership with Sereena Maneesh’s Emil Nikolaisen. Like Edwards, Nikolaisen has a fascination with rock rhythms and spiritual striving. He shares Edwards unusual combination of born again Christianity and love of Joy Division. He adds, perhaps, an understanding of the powers of guitar distortion and blur, an otherworldly sheen that encases “His Loyal Love” and other cuts in battings of tranquility or that launches “Not One Stone” from a My Bloody Valentine-esque howl of guitar.

More

“Beautiful Axe”


“Not One Stone” (Not actually a video…but a damned good song)