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“First known for his emphatic career with the genre-defying rock group ‘Cul De Sac,’ a band that you forgot played more times with Damo Suzuki than Can did, Glenn Jones has gone on to become one of the foremost American Primitive guitarists of the early 21st century. His life long tenure to the underground has gifted us dear reader with 10 widely acclaimed solo LPs and his approach to fingerstyle remains uniquely idiosyncratic.
Over the course of two and a half decades as a solo artist Jones’ has established and continued to innovate a deeply personal melodic grammar for the acoustic guitar and banjo that is witty, cleverly self-referential and tethered to the weight of reflection and memory.
Sketches of Fahey, a close friendship with the late John Jackson of Fairfax Virginia, a maiden voyage to visit 78rpm gugu Joe Bussard alongside one Jack Rose; devotion to his mother, the ever lovely Nora Smith with her leather jacket, and his cats. The portraiture of days gone by, sentiment for those close and fondly remembered. Ever fleeting. Ever sublime.
Here is a vital messenger of the steel string guitar who we can celebrate in his time - here and now.”
— Man Tragil, 2025.
Vade Mecum
Glenn Jones is a unique player in the world of solo guitar. Steeped in both American Primitive guitar music as well as rock and experimental music, Glenn Jones creates rich sonic tapestries with a distinct and stirring voice. Endlessly curious, Jones has spent the better part of four decades exploring the boundaries of expression and storytelling with the guitar and banjo. On Vade Mecum, Jones draws on his personal history to tell stories with elaborate musical detail and emotional weight. Exploring the complexity of personal experience, emotions and our shared histories, Vade Mecum finds Jones painting his music in boundaryless colors, captivatingly vivid.
“Vade Mecum means, literally, ‘go with me.’,” says Jones. “It’s an invitation.” With that invitation opening the album, Jones acts as a guide across the terrain of interiors and exteriors alike, from barking of seals at “Bass Harbor Head” to the gentle crumble of “A Handful of Snow.” “I tend to think of my albums as the latest entries into something like an ongoing musical diary,” Jones continues. “I don’t write pieces to order or with anything much in mind; I simply follow wherever the music leads me. Why this tuning? Why this note and not that one? Why this chord and not another? Why this tempo and not a different one? I don’t know, and I love not knowing. The ‘not knowing’ is what keeps me engaged and curious; ‘not knowing’ keeps me coming back.” Jones uses those questions of tempo and chords alongside unique open tunings and capos as a way of posing musical questions to himself which he in turn answers with sublime stories that unveil as much about Jones himself as they uncover memories or impressions of their subjects.
“When I play ‘John Jackson of Fairfax, Virginia,’ I think about John (who I met in 1972, and for whom I co-produced two albums, released in 1979 and 1983). John was a lovely man and a superb fingerstyle country blues guitarist – a living connection to the elegant Piedmont country blues and ragtime guitarists of the ‘20s, ‘30s, and ‘40s, whose records I love so much. Like John Fahey, Robbie Basho, Jack Rose and a very few others,” Jones notes, “John Jackson was an influence and a friend.” The rousing “Ruthie’s Farewell” features the album’s one guest musician Ruthie Dornfield, a longtime friend and past collaborator of Jones’ who gifted him his first banjo in 1996 when she was leaving New England for the West Coast. The piece brims with the excitement of old companions reuniting and breathlessly trading stories between one another. A steady wind and unwind of tempo and shifting keys on “Black & White and Gray” conjures equally full, rich canvases of blurred beauty. Jones makes each passage as personal as the last as he dexterously imbues every note with precise emotion.
Jones’ recordings are indelible to his surroundings. Vade Mecum was recorded in March of 2021 on Mount Desert Island in Maine with longtime collaborator Matthew Azevado. The crisp, thin Atlantic air seeps its way into Jones’ playing. “Forsythia” moves with the lanquidity of a persistent winter keeping the spring flowers from blooming. After delaying the recording for a full year and bringing on Azevado to fill the shoes of Jones’ usual engineer, Laura Baird, the album took altogether different shapes than what Jones had initially intended. New pieces that spoke more to Jones’ moment emerged and shouldered out others. The challenges and triumphs of a world recapitulating but altogether changed is thoroughly interrogated in the liminal spaces highlighted by Jones throughout the album.
Glenn Jones’ music draws from a deep well of reflection and memory. Vade Mecum revels in the profound idiosyncrasies and contradictions inherent to the act of remembering and the people remembered. Jones summons luminous detail from the complicated web of emotions intrinsically bonded to memories of loved ones, unfamiliar places, and elusive feelings alike. “It’s a fact of life that as we age, we’ll lose people we love,” concludes Jones. “Vade Mecum contains pieces dedicated to a few of these. Though there is melancholy in such losses, my album is intended to celebrate, not just mourn.”
https://thrilljockey.com/artists/glenn-jones
https://glennjones.bandcamp.com/album/vade-mecum
https://acousticguitar.com/alternate-tunings-master-glenn-jones-returns-with-vade-mecum/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPXk1ElmzGs
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Liam Grant is a New England guitarist and improviser cut from the American Primitive cloth. The restless guitar explorations, modal epics, and driving uptempo rags recall the likes of Grant's pedagogue, Takoma Records, and the path that was paved by his forebears John Fahey, Robbie Basho, Peter Walker, Max Ochs and later Glenn Jones, Steffen Basho-Junghans, Jack Rose, and others.
Bridging that past Grant evokes the pith of the landscape where he was raised. Instrumental memoirs and ruminations on the banks of the Merrimack River. Amoskeag. And the place where the waters flow around it. Salmon tails up the river, the exodus to Stratton-Eustis and the last night on Dead River before the great flood.
Prodigal Son
VHF debut and second widely-available LP by Grant, part of a new generation of underground “American primitive” guitar players serving the traditions and smashing them up simultaneously. Prodigal Son is a portrait of an artist on the road, changing fast, recording things as they spring from the fountain. The sound here is raw – grass and dirt instead of prefab; homemade/handmade instead of high-tech, etc. There’s a visceral quality and immediacy of culture that’s being lost every day in modern life – Prodigal Son is a chance to grab some of it back. “Palmyra” has Liam on Weissenborn-style lap steel, the sound fuzzed out and distorted by the guerilla recording technique. “Salmon Tails Up The River” stretches out to nearly 13 minutes, a dense meditation on 12 string that sustains a dark and heavy mood for the entire duration. On the B side, “Insult to Injury” reverses the mood, with an elegant and unhurried 12 string sequel of deep beauty. Liam’s unexpected take on Loren Conners’ “A Moment at the Door” is a perfect translation of Loren’s reverb-heavy electric drift to unadorned acoustic (and tape hiss) – a frozen moment of absolute grace. Wrapping things up is a take on “Old Country Rock,” with fiddle and banjo, just a brief taste of the barnstorming old-time sound of Liam’s touring trio.
https://www.vhfrecords.com/catalog/liam-grant-vhf166-lp
https://vhfrecords.bandcamp.com/album/prodigal-son
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Katie Ernst is described by the Chicago Tribune as "a versatile bassist who plays in far-flung bands and sings with uncommon delicacy and authenticity." She is co-leader of the adventurous Chicago-based jazz trio Twin Talk, folk-jazz duo Wayfaring, indie rock band Edith Judith, and is the touring bassist for indie folk artist Iron & Wine. She has received widespread critical acclaim for her Dorothy Parker poetry song cycle Little Words.
Her solo set for double bass and voice is a perennial project that weaves together original songwriting and improvisation with folk and jazz melodies.
@katieernstmusic
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MksQ8Z0pFCA
katieernst.com
