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.

 

Getting to Know the PRESTO #6 – Crossing State Lines: Early success and devastating failure as The 78 Project gets baptized in the Delta

Memphis, TN / Clarksdale, MS
September, 2010

[Note: Our PRESTO recording skills have been hard won, as the following story of our very first attempt at recording illustrates. Our first ever acetate recording streams below!]

Each acetate we cut tells its own unique history. There’s a personal tale of circumstance, hopeful anticipation and the potential for disastrous failure etched into every new set of grooves. The results are always uncertain, always unpredictable. We are continually reminded of the sheer physical effort and the miracles of technology that go into each performance captured on our lacquer discs. And we are grateful for all of the shared knowledge and inspirations we receive from friends old and new as we travel forward on our journey.

And so it was that we loaded up our PRESTO for its inaugural two-day road trip to Memphis one summer a couple of years ago. At the end of the long drive we found ourselves in Electraphonic Recording, the funky, vibey studio owned by our dear friend and frequent collaborator, Scott Bomar. It was there that we set up our PRESTO unit for the first time, hooked up our vintage Shure 51 mic, inserted an old cutting stylus of uncertain age, and pulled out a stack of recently acquired, 1960’s vintage lacquer disc blanks – unsure that our efforts could result in anything more than scratchy unintelligible sounds and untold frustration.

After a few level checks, the PRESTO recorder was engaged, and Scott proceeded to strum out a few bars of the Blues.  Brushing away the lacquer thread that was accumulating as the stylus carved its careful deliberate groove into the disc’s smooth black surface, it was clear that something miraculous was happening. We stopped the recorder and nervously played back our new record. The results were, as Scott would later exclaim, “magical.” We stood transfixed, tears welling up in our eyes, transported back in time by a sound almost a century old, yet a sound recorded only moments earlier.

A trip to Clarksdale the next day was not so successful. Amidst the swarming mosquitoes of a sultry Mississippi night, we set up our PRESTO on the porch, and watched horrified as our batch of lacquer blanks flaked and pulverized before our very eyes, driving one decades old cutting stylus after another straight to the discs’ aluminum core, to be ground down and shatter and crumble. Turned out time had not been so kind to those materials, our initial success in Memphis merely a fluke. What sort of fool’s errand had we embarked upon? Clearly we still had much to learn about capturing field recordings on acetate and a PRESTO.  But haunted by the ghostly sound of our very first sonic experiment, we left the birthplace of the blues, feeling that perhaps, like Robert Johnson himself, we had already sold our souls to the devil.

LISTEN: Scott Bomar’s Memphis acetate
The first ever acetate recording for The 78 Project – September, 2010

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.

 

The 78 Project Goes to Washington

The massive white buildings of Capitol Hill in Washington DC house some of the most dreamt-of pieces of recorded music history in America. This week, we had the incredible opportunity to visit them. We have never experienced anything so breathtaking as being led through these collections of our nation’s greatest folk music treasures.

The PRESTO at the Library of CongressTodd Harvey, the curator of the Alan Lomax Collection at the Library of Congress, pulled some documents and artifacts for us to see including acetate sleeves containing handwritten tracklists from Lead Belly field recordings, expense reports from Alan’s expeditions, original Mississippi Fred McDowell tapes and – here’s where our hearts stopped – one of the Lomax’s PRESTO units. Alex was given permission to start putting their PRESTO back together with parts he found in a compartment underneath. Lavinia was allowed to dig her hand into the unit under the platter to pull out used needles that had been thrown down there during the Lomax’s trip.

Jeff Place at the Smithsonian’s Rinzler Archives gave us a tour of the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Highlights included Moses Asch’s microphone, Woody Guthrie’s artwork, letters from Lead Belly, a staggering folk record collection, and decades worth of acetate and tape field recordings.   Our last stop was to meet the fine folks at Smithsonian Folkways who are hard at work digitizing and releasing music from the collections.  They laughed when they found out we were going the opposite way with our recording project.

A full set of photos from the trip is up on our Facebook.  It was the most exciting two days of our lives. We’re still recovering.

Hall of Pharoahs

Vandaveer (Official Teaser)

If you listened only to his narrative of a scorned suitor’s terrible revenge in “Banks of the Ohio,” you might be reluctant to follow Vandaveer down a long dark corridor. But we took a chance in the name of an acetate, and let him lead.

We’ve lived in New York City for a collective eon. But we learned from Vandaveer that our own hometown still keeps secrets.

A Black Heart & White Lies

Amy LaVere (Official Teaser)

Amy LaVere is no stranger to chilling tales told through song. We have seen her sing both classic and original murder ballads with a masterfully woeful cadence. So, when she passed through Harlem on a bright and cold December weekend, it was a perfect opportunity to capture an acetate.

Amy granted our wish, laying down a chilling portrait of “The Railroad Boy” and the unlucky girl he scorned. The teaser tells a tiny piece of the tale of a life ruined by a callous lover, the consequences are to come…

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

Happy Solstice from The 78 Project: Strings of streetlights, even stoplights, blink a bright red and green…

At the end of a long episode shoot, in a hotel room made tropical by radiators older than our PRESTOs, Vandaveer’s Mark Charles Heidinger and Rose Guerin, with J. Tom Hnatow on banjo, made our season bright with a holiday greeting custom made for The 78 Project.  We brought out a fresh acetate, and they recorded a festive message and beautiful rendition of the classic New York Christmas song “Silver Bells.”

WATCH: Vandaveer “Silver Bells”

From all of us at The 78 Project, our dearest wishes for a peaceful, happy season.  Thank you for listening and watching this year.

Love.

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