Tag: brooklyn

The Fiery and Snuffy: Hear Loudon Wainwright’s 78

Even though he claimed to know little about ranching and cowboy ways, Loudon Wainwright handled the vocabulary with ease as he rambled through “Old Paint.”  What are the fiery and the snuffy? we wanted to know.  Branding equipment, we learned.  He told us an old paint is a speckled pony, and, of course, dogies are cattle.  But some of the song’s other words, so familiar to the cowhand are mysteries to us, and Loudon wouldn’t dare to speculate.

“Old Paint” was a song taught to Loudon by someone very dear, a song that has taken on a new life in the different ways he has played it and recorded it.  This time when he played it, we heard a song about the beauty in each day of work and having lived a life devoted to your chosen trade.  We placed the player on the long wooden table, and set the needle in the groove, and the acetate’s crackle was a campfire suddenly warming the chilly room, and it was the voice of a lone cowboy we heard.

Buy it on iTunes.

For his flipside, Loudon chose a song with a very different story of westward migration.  “I Don’t Care” is a signature Loudon Wainwright song, a jauntily irreverent goodbye to a former love headed across the country made compelling by the masterful dance between words and guitar.

 

Episode #8 of The 78 Project: Loudon Wainwright III “Old Paint”

There was a playful confidence in his motions as he got out his guitar and told stories of hats and ukuleles and cowboys and family. Industrial street noises and a lively chill air seeped in through the walls of the secret Brooklyn fishing club as we set up to record. “Old Paint” is a distinct and fundamental piece of Loudon’s personal musical history, and he put all of his years of performance into those three minutes of acetate. The song is so much a part of him that he played it with a concentration nearing transcendent, his voice so familiar to us that it filled the space and we could no longer hear the trucks passing. The click of the switch announced the end and the Presto’s turntable slowed. The things best known to us are sometimes most able to surprise.

Buy the music on iTunes.

Special thanks again to the Brooklyn Rod & Gun for making us honorary members for the afternoon. We love your peanuts.

On a Jenny Jenkins Roll: Valerie June’s happy hour “Wildwood Flower”

The elation at the end of a long day of recording mixed with the sweet burn of a 78 Sour as the bar moved into happy hour and we moved into the bar.

Some of the gathered crowd knew what would happen, some wondered what we were doing. They lingered nearby, craning their necks to get a better look at the mesmerizing Valerie and the strange old machine on the table in front of her.

Valerie was a pro by this time. “Wildwood Flower” was the fourth side she’d sung in one day, the fourth time she’d watched our needle drop, the fourth wild mass of chip she’d displaced with her wild voice. And she kicked off of that momentum, straight into a final song so spirited that it hushed and entranced an entire Brooklyn bar.

 

Buy it on iTunes.

Thanks again to Pete’s Candy Store in Brooklyn, NY, for letting us in, and inventing our new signature drink.

Ride Around Slow: Loudon Wainwright III Teaser

He traversed Manhattan, journeying to the edge of Brooklyn to sing for us. His words tell of a love of the lonesome West, and his voice is rich with understanding that in the solitude of a traveler’s nights, a song can become your companion. Loudon Wainwright tells us he doesn’t know much about ranching, but just after striking the last chord, he shares one piece of wisdom that a man who rides an old paint horse would know: the proper way to take off his hat.

Special thanks again to the Brooklyn Rod & Gun for making us honorary members for the afternoon.  We love your peanuts.

Have a Heart: Valerie June pulls a “Shotgun” on The 78 Project

So as not to sound unbecomingly contrary, or morbid for that matter, let’s just say that the love songs of The 78 Project so far have been torn from the book of hard-living.  They have ranged from the practical to the downright bloody, and that fits right in with our gleefully unsentimental folklorist’s view of the prospects of love.

Because we would be spending February 13th with Valerie June, and because her voice sends us into the rapturous state we imagine Chaucer intended when he wrote about Cupid’s arrow, we hoped she would be willing to record a song for our Valentine’s Day greeting to you.

We were sheepish and shy in asking, “Would you…?”  She didn’t have even have to think about it.  She had the perfect thing. The song sprung from her guitar as her cold, silver slide trailed it’s red scarf across the frets.  And the words came from the darkest part of her heart, confirming what we suspected: Valerie is our dream girl. A matchless murder balladress.

It’s a handwritten, handcut Valentine, from Valerie and The 78 Project to you. Unlike flowers and paper, an acetate is forever.

 

Coal Miner’s Great-Granddaughter: Hear The Mynabirds’ 78 “Roses While I’m Living”

After the excitement of being discovered in his home of rural West Virginia in the 1920s by representatives from a recording company, Dock Boggs saw his music career dissolve quickly.  Miraculously, the folk revival of the 1960s resurrected Boggs and his singular mountain-style banjo (thanks in no small part to Alan Lomax,) but in between his two big breaks, the musician spent thirty years at the bottom of a dark, dusty coal mine.  It is understandable why a man who knew the struggles and triumphs of life so intimately, would want to celebrate the human spirit now rather than waiting for the afterlife.  Leave it to a union man to make love into a call to action.

“Roses While I’m Living” puts a positive spin on the field recording tradition of expressing the hardships of life through song.  And The Mynabirds’ Laura Burhenn is always one for a positive spin.

 

Episode #3 of The 78 Project: The Mynabirds “Roses While I’m Living”

The 78 Project: The Mynabirds “Roses While I’m Living”

It seems like we started another life when we started The 78 Project. One filled with humbling challenges we couldn’t have ever imagined we’d face (a few swipes of a paintbrush and a tiny needle are all that stand between failure and success?) but also overflowing with momentum and awe.

And so it is fitting that The Mynabirds‘ episode should come first in the new year, 2012. The shoot was a celebration of our first week of filming for The 78 Project, and the spirit of the night was one of joy and gratitude. We gathered friends together in Brooklyn for a backyard party, dragged the piano outside and, after dark, The Mynabirds’ Laura Burhenn sang for us. Her song, Dock Boggs’ “Roses While I’m Living,” is about appreciating life while we live it and appreciating those we love while they are around to receive it.

We wish you a Happy New Year with joy and gratitude! We hope 2012 brings you excitement and comfort in equal measure. And we hope to see you in person, perhaps record you, but definitely share with you the indescribable beauty of sound captured the old fashioned way.

With deepest appreciation,
The 78 Project

Happening: Watch footage from our secret New York hootenanny on the 7 Train

Last Friday night, December 2, at 9:02pm, forty New Yorkers piled onto a 7 Train bound for Flushing, Queens. Not an unusual occurrence in and of itself, except that these particular New Yorkers had more than commuting in mind. As the subway sped out of Grand Central Station, guitars, drums, banjos, mandolins, accordions, and even a mbira came out and a hootenanny began.

7 musicians and bands each played a cover song in honor of the borough of Queens, and a song of their own, and The 78 Project cameras caught it all.

Starting tonight, we’ll be posting a video from The 7 Train Happening every day for a week on our Vimeo channel. It’s a musical advent with a lucky number of surprises to open; our gift to you.

Check our Twitter for daily updates and for invitations to future hootenannies.

Special thanks to James and Amy of The 7 Train Sessions, a beautiful regular gathering of musicians in Long Island City, our partners in crime and planning.

And thank you to the 7 artists whose spirited song and singing made the 7 Train the most Happening party on a Friday night in New York City.

The Mercantillers
Chris Morrissey
Kara Suzanne
Luke Reynolds
Katie Mullins
Austin McCutchen
The Reverend John DeLore

1 2 3