Tag: 78rpm

Episode #22: Patterson Hood “Tramp in the Rain” – recorded live at Athens Ciné

Touring to bring The 78 Project Movie to theaters and to watch the film together with audiences has been a gift to us. It’s given us a whole new set of memorable experiences. Making the movie brought us into new places and introduced us to new friends, and showing the movie has once again been a journey of connections and momentous events.

We traveled to Athens, GA in September on the invitation of the Athens Ciné, an independent movie theater run by truly the kindest, coolest folks, and Patterson Hood generously offered to join us there to cut a live 78 after the screening. Patterson sang a warm and visceral rendition of “Tramp in the Rain,” a family song from his childhood. As all of us in the room let out the breath we had been holding during his performance, Patterson explained that his grandmother sang the song to him when he was a child, as a lullaby at night. He had learned his words, and the subtle and sure style of singing them, from her.

 

Thank you again to Patterson, the fine folks at the Athens Ciné, and everyone who came out to see the film.

We hope you’ll be able to see The 78 Project Movie on the big screen. Take a look at our sidebar for a new batch of screenings coming up both in the U.S. and abroad.

 

 

Hear John Reilly & Tom Brosseau’s 78, see The 78 Project Movie in Seattle and Portland

The afternoon sun streaming in through the windows took on a longing feel as our Presto clicked on and John Reilly & Tom Brosseau started their haunting harmonies. Though moments before the bright L.A. light seemed gentle and sweet, their performance of the lost love lament “Careless Love” was so perfectly harmonized and utterly heartbreaking, by the time the record was full, it had made even the sunshine understand the song’s timeless yearning.

Our Official Nationwide Release Tour for The 78 Project Movie continues as we cruise up the West Coast to show the film in Seattle and Portland at two amazing independent theaters. We can’t wait to see you there!

Northwest Film Forum
Sunday, September 14, 7:00 pm
1515 12th Avenue
Seattle, WA

Hollywood Theatre
Monday, September 15, 7:30 pm
4122 NE Sandy Boulevard
Portland, OR

Hear John Doe’s 78 “Skip to My Lou”, Our West Coast tour starts today

John Doe, being the punk rocker that he is, mined “Skip to My Lou” for its fiendish fun in his masterful recording. On our New Year’s Day visit to his house in Northern California for The 78 Project Movie, he showed us a Folkways Collection LP of the song performed by Lead Belly that inspired him to dust off this sweet tune from childhood and sharpen the edges a bit.

 

Our Official Nationwide Release Tour for The 78 Project Movie is officially in full swing. This week we’re returning to the West Coast for the first time since our road trip to make The 78 Project Movie, excited to share the finished film with you. We have screenings scheduled in Los Angeles, Camarillo, San Francisco, Seattle and Portland. And we’ll be there in each city to answer questions and spend time with you if you’ll be there!

 

The Library of Congress to screen The 78 Project Movie, and a new acetate from Louis Michot, Corey Ledet & Ashlee Michot

The Library of Congress will host a screening of The 78 Project Movie and live recording event as part of its Botkin Lecture Series.

On September 5th a great dream of ours will come true as we screen The 78 Project Movie and cut a record live at the Library of Congress. Over the two years since we began working on the film, we’ve had the privilege to visit the Library’s American Folklife Center in Washington, DC and its Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation in Culpeper, VA, where we were shown Alan Lomax’s Presto, his correspondence and actual acetate recordings, and given a glimpse into the work the truly amazing folks at the Library do to preserve America’s musical treasures. We’re honored to be able to return to the Library’s historic halls to present our film and to use our Presto to record a 78.

The 78 Project: Documenting Historic Sound in the Contemporary World Botkin Lecture & Screening of The 78 Project Movie
The Library of Congress
Friday, September 5th 2:00 – 4:30pm
Mumford Room, 6th Floor, James Madison Building
Independence Avenue, between 1st and 2nd Streets Washington, DC

 

Louis Michot told us that what he loved about French music was that everyone playing was driving the same rhythm and the same melody together at the same time. A community of song.  We had driven to the Michot family home in Arnaudville, LA last August, and in the course of a hot and happy afternoon, recorded Louis with his wife Ashlee and their friend and musical collaborator Corey Ledet for The 78 Project Movie. The trio cut a 78 of the traditional Cajun dance-ending song “’Trape mon chapeau,” fiddle, accordion and guitar working together the whole way through to forge a powerful, cohesive feeling into the song.  Compelling imaginary dancers to crowd together on the floor and enjoy the last joyful moments of the party.

Our Chicago premiere and a jazzy new 78 from Adam Levy & Gaby Moreno

Our excitement is growing as August gets closer. Especially now that it will bring our Chicago premiere! The 78 Project Movie will screen on August 16th and 17th at Chicago’s Music Box Theater as part of its Summer Music Film Festival.

Tickets are available now. And we’ll be there for a Q&A at both screenings, if you’d like to say hello. Or sit next to us. We’d love that.

Music Box Theater
Summer Music Film Festival
August 16 & 17, 2014
Chicago, IL
Purchase tickets

On a day when the road was at its most challenging, when long drives, short batteries, fried tubes and a weary Presto threatened to dampen the spirit of our California adventure, Adam Levy and Gaby Moreno righted everything immediately with their unmitigated joy. Their happy collaboration on “After You’ve Gone” turned the trials of the day into the perfect evening to create a perfectly beautiful record.

Sounds of Summer: A screening at the Jacob Burns Film Center and a new 78 from Sea of Bees

Exciting news seems to come with each new day at The 78 Project this summer. We’re overflowing with updates and music to share with you.

This week we’re happy to announce that The 78 Project Movie will screen on August 18 at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, NY as part of their Sounds of Summer series. And we’ll be there to answer questions and swap stories! Tickets are available now through the Jacob Burns Film Center website:

Jacob Burns Film Center
Sounds of Summer
August 18, 2014 7:30 pm
Pleasantville, NY
Purchase tickets

Though her song explores a weighty subject, Sea of Bees is a person of celebratory spirit. Which makes her 78, “In My Time of Dying” – recorded for The 78 Project Movie at her home in Sacramento – feel like the perfect acetate to accompany this happy news.

 

Hear Victoria Williams’ 78 recording of “Take This Hammer” – An exclusive from The 78 Project Movie

As we’ve traveled and shot, edited, finished and started to screen, lived and breathed The 78 Project Movie, just about every day of the process has felt momentous.

The record we cut with Victoria Williams, on the last night of our West Coast road trip, gives a perfect glimpse of one such unforgettable day. Luck and symmetry had helped us find her, and her enthusiasm imbued the evening, and the record, with a magical energy.

Victoria’s 78 recording of “Take This Hammer” is one of the many one-of-a-kind performances that you’ll be able to see when The 78 Project Movie screens this Fall at a theater near you. More on that soon. Until then, listen to the brand new 78 below.

Episode #21: International Blues Express – “Pa’ Janvier” (Part 2)

In the comforts of early Fall, with the windows thrown open and nothing coming through but the sun, winter seems not to exist. It is just a story you’ve told and been told but never really believed; the cold a memory you can’t quite access from a distance.

On this particular warm fall day, months before the polar vortex and the snowiest winter in years, Cedric Watson, Sidi Toure, Abdoulaye Kone dit Kandjafa and Desiree Champagne – collectively known as International Blues Express – perform the story of “Pa’ Janvier.” At the end of a day spent drifting out to the porch and back into the kitchen, once the sun and the garden has charmed us all into a pleasant stillness, the song sends a chill into the room. The violin, ngoni and guitar harmonize in a mournful breath, like a high-pitched moan of cold wind through a crack in the door. And Cedric recounts an old Cajun tale of the icy hand of old man winter come to steal his love. Donne moi Pauline.

Now as we haunt our own houses through a forbidding winter, listening to the performance it could seem a prediction of what was to come. A fable that foretold our chilly fate.


See International Blues Express – “Hanna” (Part 1), a traditional Malian song sung by Sidi Toure.

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