Sometimes two voices wend together so powerfully and perfectly that you stop frozen in your tracks the first time you really listen to them. I felt that way about Vandaveer when I heard their album Dig Down Deep in the hot summer of 2011 (and it went on to be one of my favorite records of that year). With roots in both Kentucky & DC, Vandaveer is the project of Mark Charles Heidinger with Rose Guerin perfectly complementing his voice with hers. J. Tom Hnatow (of These United States) plays dobro/slide guitar.
Mark has the most unusual voice, in that it reminds me of a wonderful female blues/jazz singer — maybe the rueful and bittersweet beauty of Nina Simone. It nestles underneath your skin. As complement, and sometimes taking the lead, Rose Guerin’s deeply-saturated, strong alto is generous and powerful. Together they are really stunning. If you haven’t listened to their music, I urge you to.
Mark was once called “The Greatest Songwriter of His Generation.” In the article, Paul Gleason remarks that: “‘Dig Down Deep’ was the moment of epiphany, the moment of spiritual awakening, when Mark reminded me of what art can do when it reaches its highest potential – that is, how it can close the gap that divides us into separate beings.” I had a very similar connection with the song standing under the staggering, light-drenched architecture of Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia a few winters ago.
I’d known Mark Heidinger’s work over the years through his connections with These United States (with Jesse Elliott, currently from Ark Life), as well as his role of lead singer in The Apparitions (I still run to their phenomenally-catchy song “Electricity + Drums” on the regular). I’ve loved every musical iteration he has explored, and this chapel session is another stop on that variegated journey. It was a pleasure to welcome these guys.
FUEL/FRIENDS CHAPEL SESSION #29: VANDAVEER
June 6, 2013
Shove Chapel, Colorado College
Dig Down Deep
YOU GUYS, I have sang along to the harmonies on this song probably 100 times, usually in my car, where the reception is always breathless and astounded wonder. I finally got to try those same “ohhh ohhh ohhhh”s IN REAL LIFE and WITH THE ACTUAL BAND. Pret-ty pleased. This is a such a great, great, great song. Dazzling and moving like a modern gospel hymn.
Down In The Willow Garden
The latest Vandaveer record Oh, Willie, Please is a bold exploration of murder ballads. There are a lot of terrible things that people do to each other – drowning, stabbing the woman you love with a dagger, and other lighthearted mirth. As Stephen Deusner writes in his terrific Paste Magazine review of their new record, “New folk revival bands like Mumford & Sons, The Lumineers and The Avett Brothers reimagine old-time music as uniformly fervent and life-affirming and white, but there’s some fucked-up shit in the American songbook.”
You might wonder, as I did — why the hell these murder ballad songs? Mark did many interviews about this genre and their decision to make a whole record of these gory melodies (– they donated 10% of the crowd-sourced funds raised for this record to a domestic violence shelter in Kentucky, actually). Mark said:
“I do think we humanfolk have long been fascinated by the darker, gruesome aspects of the human condition. It’s the same reason shows like CSI or those real-life crime documentaries are popular today. People are strangely attracted to acts of evil. It’s a form a voyeurism on some level. For my part, I wanted to participate in the process of continuing the life of these songs. They all come from the public domain. They belong to all of us, and so I think it’s important to revisit, to reinterpret, to engage with them as living artifacts of our collective experience.”
It was great fun to welcome our friends in Ark Life into the church to loan their stomping and clapping percussion to this last song. This is another song from the tremendous Dig Down Deep record.
SHOW ANNOUNCEMENT!
When Vandaveer played at my house last summer, they were absolutely riveting. I swear that none of us breathed in that room when they lit into it.
This time we are thrilled to have them playing the wonderful restored gym at Ivywild School a week from tonight! I am so pleased to get to see them again next week (Friday, April 18) and to introduce a whole new bunch of people to their voices.
In addition to looking goddamn beautiful whilst standing in pastoral settings, my friends Joe Pug and Vandaveer also make some fine music — and when they switch songs it gets even more delightful.
For their Fall 2013 tour together that JUST STARTED, they have each picked a song of the others’ to record for a split single. I am pleased to be able to premiere these songs for you all, to entice you further into their winsome grandeur.
The original Vandaveer song that Joe picked is from their wonderful 2011 record Dig Down Deep, one of my favorites of 2011. The Joe song turned lush by Vandaveer comes from his original debut EP, 2008′s Nation of Heat.
I’ve had the privilege of having both of these artists in my chapel sessions and house shows, and I just came across an old interview I did with Joe Pug what feels like 1,000 years ago. It remains one of my favorite interviews I’ve done, because Joe’s brain is amazing.
Then go out to one of these shows, and hug them all for me:
JOE PUG FALL TOUR 2013
Oct 8 Albuquerque, NM–Low Spirits *
Oct 9 Phoenix, AZ–The Rhythm Room *
Oct 10 San Diego, CA–The Soda Bar *
Oct 11 Los Angeles, CA–The Satellite *
Oct 12 San Francisco, CA–Cafe DuNord *
Oct 13 Felton, CA–Don Quixote’s *
Oct 14 Sacramento, CA–Harlow’s *
Oct 16 Eugene, OR–Sam Bond’s Garage *
Oct 17 Portland, OR–The Doug Fir *
Oct 18 Vancouver, BC–Electric Owl *
Oct 19 Seattle, WA–The Crocodile *
Oct 20 Bellingham, WA–The Green Frog *
Oct 21 Moscow, ID–Mikey’s *
Oct 22 Boise, ID–Neurolux *
Oct 23 Salt Lake City, UT–The State Room *
Oct 25 Denver, CO–The Larimer Lounge *
Oct 26 Kansas City, MO–The Record Bar *
Nov 5 Milwaukee, WI–Linneman’s
Nov 6 Iowa City, IA–Gabe’s #
Nov 7 Minneapolis, MN–7th Street Entry #
Nov 8 Chicago, IL–Lincoln Hall #
Nov 9 Indianapolis, IN–Do317 Lounge #
Nov 10 Akron, OH–Musica #
Nov 11 Newport, KY–Southgate House #
Nov 12 Columbus, OH–Rumba Cafe #
Nov 13 Nashville, TN–The Stone Fox #
Nov 14 Louisville, KY–Zanzabar #
Nov 15 Champaign, IL #
Nov 16 St. Louis, MO–The Firebird #
Nov 18 Fayetteville, AR–George’s Majestic #
Nov 20 Tulsa, OK–The Vanguard #
Nov 21 Norman, OK–Opolis #
Nov 22 Houston, TX–Fitzgerald’s #
Nov 23 Austin, TX–The Parish #
[top photo taken by Todd Roeth — I believe in the orchard outside my house! Second photo I bet by Sarah Law, though I have no confirmation of this. I have damn talented friends all around.]
We are looking ahead to a long summer filled with all sorts of good folks coming through to play us some Fuel/Friends House Concerts! Our next one is Thursday, June 6th with Vandaveer, and has been a long time coming.
These are songs that resonate with echoes of old, rich music: spirituals, dirges, and songs of rejoicing. It often feels primal and organic in the percussion (lots of handclaps), elegant in the wending warmth of the cello. The lyrics are also dang smart; one just needs to listen to a rich allegory on songs like “Spite” to know that.
But the real currents that pull me through these songs come from the vocal pairings of Rose Guerin’s icy deep low harmonies and Mark Charles Heidinger’s wending ripples and currents that tug us around the rocks. Heidinger’s voice has this vinegar of sadness around it that actually reminds me of Nina Simone (something I would never expect); they both have that slight metallic tang and bitter aftertaste that sounds regretful all the way through.
Vandaveer has a new record out of traditional folk murder ballads and other dark things, called Oh, Willie, Please. I am looking forward to being drawn into those complicated stories on a warm summer night.
And off their last record (one of 2011′s favorites of that year), the title track, which I still love so damn much. I thought of this song over and over in that Barcelona cathedral, and all those dazzling dizzying colors still come to mind every time I hear it.
As our opener for the evening, we are in for a real treat. Fresh off one of THE most insanely long and awesome shows I have seen in a very long time (at Meadowgrass this past weekend), opening the night will be Colorado Springs’ own Joe Johnson. He may also know a folk murder ballad or two, and man — can he also wail when he sets his mind to it. Check out this video he made last weekend amidst the pines, with friend Kevin Ihle:
EARLY SHOW: Please note that we have a multitude of musical riches in town on this same night, and we are doing this house concert as an early show (from 7pm to 9pm), so as to allow time for all of us to hop on bikes (those who have bikes) and ride the few blocks over to the Triple Nickel for the second act of the night with more good friends: The Changing Colors, with Ark Life and Roo & The Howl, which will get started shortly after 9pm!!
A generous donation is encouraged at my house show next Thursday, to support homegrown quality music and musicians. BYOB. You can RSVP via Facebook here — hope to see you here!
2011 has turned out to be the year in music where I found myself resting, and drinking deeply. If you look at the three major music festivals I went to in 2011 (other than SXSW, which is always a debaucherous 1000-mph wonderful mess) they were all of the scenic, restorative type: camping at Sasquatch at Washington’s Columbia River Gorge, Telluride Bluegrass where I pitched my tent right by a rushing river, and Doe Bay Fest on isolated Orcas Island in the San Juans. The ethos of these music festivals, more than anything, is a sturdy summation of the music I enjoyed this year – music that sounds good by rivers, with friends, or under the stars.
Speaking of rivers, I kept finding myself near them this year, and being drawn to songs that either spoke explicitly of them (ref: autumn mix) or artists whose overall sound evoked that for me over and over (see: Vandaveer, below). Not only just rivers; this year I dreamt of swimming pools. Two years ago I remember a dream where I was forcing my way through choking growth, gnarled and thick in a jungle, somewhere unrelentingly humid. I broke through into a clearing where there was an abandoned swimming pool, which, really, if you think about it, is one of the saddest spaces imaginable. It sat there, cracked and empty, dirty in the middle of the place you need it most. A swim would have felt so good. And it wasn’t able to hold any water. It would have run out the cracks in the bottom.
And then one night not too long ago, after I returned from a fairly transformative trip back through Europe, I dreamt I was with the best kind of old friend, again on foreign shores; we slipped down clean white subway tiles into the sparkling water of that gigantic pool. My hair was getting wet, I remember I kept thinking about that. The tiles were so flawless. The water was so perfect. Refreshment. Saturation.
Reconstitution. This was a year for that kind of music.
2011 was also the year we got the Fuel/Friends Chapel Sessions rolling, after years of wanting to try something like it. The pieces all fell into place with the generous help of Conor and Ian from Blank Tape Records, and the somewhat fleeting discussion we had one night over beers: “you know, how about, like — in Shove Chapel? It’s so gorgeous in there.” We’ve now captured the acoustic songs of over a dozen magnificent bands and solo artists as they made their way through this gorgeous Rocky Mountain State, and each hour spent recording was humming with magic. We hope to welcome as many next year. The very first session we did, with The Head and The Heart, was even released this year as the UK bonus tracks on their self-titled debut album (via Heavenly Recordings). Yep, that felt pretty good, to share that sparkly sort of magic afternoon with so many people.
So: favorite albums that soundtracked my year? Here are the ten that I’ve listened to the most during the journey this year with deep enjoyment, from musicians that I am excited about. These are all bands that shimmered and exploded for me this year. All are worth some of your Christmas (or Hanukkah) money that’s burning a hole in your pocket. I continue to be grateful for albums like this.
FUEL/FRIENDS 10 FAVORITES OF 2011
(alphabetical, by band)
I’ve long had a thing for Colin Meloy’s mellifluous and flawlessly incisive vocabulary (it’s the way to my heart, you know) but haven’t really dove deeply into being a comprehensive fan of The Decemberists’ uber-literate chamber-rock for geeks. This year’s The King Is Dead bust down the last of my resistances and made me a full-fledged fan, blending rootsy gorgeousness and bluegrass twang throughout (recorded on Pendarvis Farm in Oregon) on this big and bursting album.
Joining the band on this effort was the marvelous propulsion by Peter Buck (R.E.M.) on jangly guitar, and Gillian Welch also makes her first of two appearances here on my year-end list with the flawless combination of her voice and Colin’s voices twining together throughout. In addition to the bright and jaunty jangle, there are moments of quiet, introspective beauty as well on songs like “June Hymn” and the closer “Dear Avery,” which I just love. This album has so many elements that pierce through perfectly: the wheezing of harmonica, a little banjo and the pierce of the fiddle, but also the acoustic fingerpicking on guitar and whiz-bang wordplay. Seeing The Decemberists at Telluride was one of the highlights this year, a simply perfect setting in which to experience this gem of an album.
Not to be confused with the danceable Spanish band from Ibiza named after 1985′s most bitchin time machine, Dolorean is from Portland, has at times served as Damien Jurado’s backing band, and released four records in their own right. I keep track of which band is which by remembering the Spanish word for sadness, dolor, and then listening to the record — and all things flow accordingly. The Unfazed is not a sad record, per se, but it is deeply wistful and bittersweet, and in that richness there is a healthy wash of beauty.
This is a complex, richly gorgeous album of melancholy and ache. Al James’s voice soars with this vulnerable, incisive timbre that cuts right into me. I’ve played it on the stereo for friends when they come over, and the comments I get are often equal parts Ryan Adams/Heartbreaker and Blind Pilot’s smoky, multi-hued, string-laden beauty. This is a marvelous record, front to back. Like the album cover marries “high art” with the impassioned graffiti scrawls of our most base desires, this album sings to me about knowing better, but doing anyways.
Frank Turner came blazing into my ears this summer through the persistent rallying cry from my friends at The Ruckus. From the first listen in the heat of this summer, I was knocked flat on my musical ass by several of my favorite things in music coming together in his anthemic, thoughtful, urgent bar rock that makes me feel alive. Above all, Frank sings like he’s staying hungry, with an undiluted joy in his music for me and unvarnished exuberance, even when he is singing of more heady subject matter.
The Springsteen comparisons are incontrovertible, and he crafts some whoppers of lyrics: “Life is about love, last minutes and lost evenings / about fire in our bellies and about furtive little feelings, and the aching amplitudes that set our needles all a-flickering…” YES. Or this rallying cry: ”And who’d have thought that after all, something as simple as rock and roll would save us all?” A humble sentiment, but listening to Frank Turner, much like when I first heard Gaslight Anthem or Lucero, yes – it seems obvious that something as simple as that, well — it just might.
I continue to appreciate Leslie Feist’s bottomless reservoirs of imaginative musical creativity, led by that voice steeped in a warm, classical throaty beauty that magnetizes every song that it is a part of. Feist is an artist of brilliant imagination, and I think we need more imagination in our lives, more of those unclassifiable moments and unclassifiable records like this one. We need the ability to look at one person standing in a warehouse and picture dozens of rainbow-clad dancers falling out in an arc of motion, or picture that just maybe this morning our toast will fly out the window on tiny pink wings.
That imagination also soaks Metals, her fourth album, and I really appreciate how no two Feist albums or even two songs on the same album are similar. You can have orchestral jazziness one moment, trip-hop the next, playful pop classics with stomping and snapping, and finally these mournful sparse melodies to round it all out. On this album I hear a darker weight to the songs, a level of maturity in the music. The record was recorded partly in Big Sur, California, which is near where I’m from, and if you’ve been there you know that the two things which might leave a lingering impression are the immense redwood trees and the blanketing fog. It’s an atmosphere you can see in her video for “How Come You Never Go There,” and that spirit pervades a lot of this record. A gorgeous record, this one — Metals shows the continuing regenesis and reinvention of Feist.
GILLIAN WELCH - THE HARROW & THE HARVEST
(Acony Records)
Together with her longtime musical partner David Rawlings, this is the first Gillian Welch record since 2003, and it’s a moody, often-dark, languid album of subtle beauty that was totally worth the wait. These two have an incredible songwriting partnership, with their intricate guitar and banjo work, their harmonies that sound birthed from the very same celestial vein. This one also feels like a chronicle of a journey, with the triplet of songs “The Way It Will Be,” “The Way It Goes,” and “The Way The Whole Thing Ends” arcing a tense thread throughout their sparse Americana, and punctuated by stunners like “Dark Turn of Mind.”
This is a smart record, loaded with lines that whap you across the face in their sly perfection. “Now I’ve tried drinking rye and gamblin, dancing with damnation is a ball / but of all the little ways I’ve found to hurt myself, well you might be my favorite one of all,” Gillian sings in a drawl, but with the precision of a scalpel. There is a spacious pensiveness in this record, and I keep listening over and over, going deeper and my toes haven’t scraped the rocky bottom yet.
Pickwick is a band out of Seattle of six white guys who sound, when they make music, quite convincingly like a soul & blues band from a generation ago, but in a refreshing way, without any posturing. This was the year that Pickwick quite literally found their voice and have shot off into my stratosphere with what they’ve hit upon together. They used to be an ambient folk band, but shockingly found it hard to rise above the din in Seattle with that sound. So one day, frontman Galen Disston was in a cubicle at work and heard “A Change Is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke “jump out of the speakers” — it hit him powerfully, as Sam is wont to do, and totally changed his perspective about what kind of effect he wanted his music to strive for. So, at the next band practice, they tried something completely new, and oh my does it absolutely work.
Galen seems an unlikely frontman, with his wild curly brown hair, thick-rimmed glasses, and hands that knead each other while he kinesthetically works all the songs out of his lungs. One of my favorite observations about him this year was the person who commented on a friend’s Facebook how unexpected Galen’s voice was, writing: “In a million years you wouldn’t pin that voice coming from him. He’s like, ‘Hello, I’m here to fix your Internet,’ then, BOOM. Voice.” Precisely.
There’s that ambush acapella performance in the gorgeous gothic-style reading room at the University of Washington library. Watching it, Galen is absolutely, without a doubt, is in his element when he sings — he nearly vibrates an easy tidal wave of vocal power, inhabiting and swimming free inside the song. You can see the confidence and the difference, even from the recorded songs on the album, or their KEXP performance from earlier this year, and it is electrifying. They are recording their full-length debut album right now, and will be touring in the Spring (including SXSW). I predict pretty massive and wonderful things for these fellows, and for everyone who hears them in 2012.
RURAL ALBERTA ADVANTAGE - DEPARTING
(Saddle Creek Records)
Rural Alberta Advantage is an elemental band of just three people, with a chemistry that has produced this potent record of push and pull and tension — both in the juxtaposition of the prominent percussion and the distinctive melodies, and also in the vocals of Nils Edenloff and Amy Cole. I went through a phase this summer where I was falling asleep to this record on a regular basis, which is completely weird because it’s heavily drum-based and rough, with almost a punk-rock feel, but to me the percussion literally works with a narcotic effect, helping shut down my brain. Drummer Paul Banwatt is my hero on this record, the star of every single song.
RAA is another band I crossed paths with at SXSW this past March, for a midnight show in a church. The echo and clang were riveting, but they simply took my breath away with the final song of their set, and converted me immediately to this entire record. Like the feeling of the fog-blanketed desolation in the cover art, this is a record chronicling the holding tight and the letting go in nearly every song, every line. Departing is their sophomore album, and is out on Saddle Creek Records (Bright Eyes, Rilo Kiley, Two Gallants), a label I tend to associate with urgent, percussive, melodic music.
This is a record from a young songwriter originally from Atlanta, a dozen songs about the ending of one relationship, told with honesty and effervescence. Tyler recorded it in one day, just two days before he moved away from Atlanta and off to the golden coasts of Southern California. He told me he spent $250 total mastering this record, and enlisted some friends to fill in the wonderful instrumentation on this record, the flutes and the cello and the banjo, to technicolor effect. Because it all came pouring out in one day, more than anything this album feels like one exceedingly honest and humble snapshot to me, without artifice, in the best possible way.
I remember when David Gray’s first record came out, the one he wrote and recorded all in his bedroom and arrived out of nowhere, there was a little sticker on the front of that record from Dave Matthews that said something like “…David Gray is beautiful in the purest and most honest way.” No one really knew of David Gray at that time, but the same way that record pierced me reminds me a lot of why I can’t stop listening to Tyler Lyle also, especially on songs like “Sorrow” or “When I Say That I Love You.” People haven’t heard of Tyler, but they will. He’s a young wordsmith who says precisely what he means, with immense talent and a beautifully open heart. The first song muses, ”I think it’s enough to feel the fire” — and this album makes me do that.
I first saw this band in a live video performance from SXSW, where eleven of them crammed into an elegant ballroom in the classy Driskill Hotel and launched into a song medley together that just simmered and exploded cathartically, with all their instruments and their heads thrown back and the voices raising together. Every time I watch that video, even now, it makes me wonder where the hell else nearby I was and why I hadn’t seen them for this.
With a name that suggests a warm wet tropical cyclone, you better deliver something worthy of the moniker, and this band of early-20-somethings from Portland certainly does that, in spades, with their dozen-ish members on stage. There’s an innocence to their music, this brilliant shimmering springtime feel — but also the weight of experience with some of the more difficult parts of life, also. Kyle Morton, the lead singer and primary songwriter, was bitten by a tick when he was young and struggled for years with an initially undiagnosed Lyme disease infection, which stunted his growth some, and isolated him with health issues throughout childhood. A lot of his songs wrestle with themes of that lost innocence — the threat of death — God and suffering. But it’s not maudlin; it’s authentic, and it’s beautiful.
I love the cavalcade of sound and voices that is truly overwhelming. There’s some of the shimmering, redemptive waves of orchestral joy and colossal thumping force that we find to love in Fanfarlo. When they all throw their heads back and sing “alleluia, it will be gone soon,” I get chills, every time.
So I’ve been magnetically drawn to rivers for some reason this year, as I mentioned earlier, and they’ve played an important part in several pivotal memories in 2011. This record reminds me entirely and completely of a powerful river, and I’ve been stupid in-love with it from first listen in late July.
Vandaveer’s music has all kinds of wonderful nods in it to old, rich music: spirituals, dirges, and songs of rejoicing. It often feels primal and organic in the percussion (lots of handclaps), elegant in the wending warmth of the cello. The lyrics are also dang smart; one just needs to listen to a rich allegory on songs like “Spite” to know that. But the real currents that pull me throughout this record comes from the vocal pairings of Rose Guerin’s icy deep low harmonies and Mark Charles Heidinger’s wending ripples and currents that tug us around the rocks. Heidinger’s voice has this vinegar of sadness around it that actually reminds me of Nina Simone (something I would never expect); they both have that slight metallic tang and bitter aftertaste that sounds regretful all the way through. Absolutely terrific, this one.
So, there you have it — my personal ten favorites from this year, although I could have of course rambled on with twenty or thirty. Let’s do it again in 2012?
I’ve made it back from my sojourn across the Atlantic, feeling just like a shiny new penny with all the oils of a thousand hands rubbed clean off, and the golden copper Lincoln grinning through again. After twelve years, I returned to the city where I studied abroad and where, in many ways, I think I first started to bloom even though I didn’t know at the time what colors I would be. I saw new terrain too, new monuments to beauty and joy and struggle, in cultures that value putting public money into creating and sustaining such majesty. I feel dizzy. I am reminded of things I used to know.
I’ve been enjoying my fast from technology as well, noticing how much more powerful the resonance of my thoughts can sometimes be when they just echo inside my own head and don’t zap out in bits and bytes to everyone else all the time. I have a few chapel sessions coming to share with you all, and they will come when they are ready. For now we’re contented in an inlet, a lull.
This is something I wrote one afternoon last week in a small cafe in Barcelona, alone, on my little iPod touch. It’s the only thing I’ve written lately, more about an internal dialogue than a new song. I thought you might enjoy it.
Barcelona, 11.10.11
Sometimes, I drift unmoored. The seas have been high, and choppy. The focus has been on the salty, windy survival. Today when I walked into Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia, I surprisingly felt closer to God than I have in a long time, as the colorful light brilliantly flooded into all that whiteness. It is the most stunning and overwhelming space I have maybe ever been in. A train might as well have hit me when I walked through the doors; the splattering effect of my psyche was the same. I was derailed. I was, for a short time, wordless.
When you study and live and experience art (also reference: the complicated and sometime emotionally abusive relationship I’ve been in with Michelangelo these years), it’s like a small rip in your fabric is enlarged and pressed and kneaded outwards, sometimes violently. Picture the hands that work the pizza dough from underneath, as it drapes and offers no resistance. There’s a hollow vacancy that’s been left in my life as I try to return to normal dimensions after living daily with beauty and art that challenges and probes. Days like today blow everything back up and out again.
The exterior of the church evoked the dribble sandcastles my mom taught me how to build on the beaches of Santa Cruz when I was a kid. The spires are chaotic and irregular, and expansive and impressive, and dirty from years of exposure, and beseiged by cranes and scaffolding and workers still building. A hundred years after Gaudi started it, craftsmen are still rappelling down the sides.
But indoors.
Walking into that massive space felt like a blinding flash of narcolepsy, where suddenly I knew this place but I knew it from dreams, from a place that I used to be, thousands of years ago. I stood at the base of a forest of columns that turned into trees as I craned my neck, knitting together so high over my head into a canopy. I rolled around Wendell Berry’s words, “I love to lie down weary under the stalk of sleep growing slowly out of my head, the dark leaves meshing.”
There are clean, flat, angular planes everywhere that somehow still feel organic in their sharpness, the way starlight or thistles are organic. Dazzling, pure color (!) and light (!) bleach and stain and permeate the church, and soak through me. Here we are, and we are liberated from tradition, we are severed from heavy gold ornamental oppression, and we have forgotten our grief.
Sometimes you are in a space that is a perfect combination of all the elements that you are uniquely wired for, and this was mine. Gaudi’s got my number, and he has it completely. In art, I felt known.
I am totally stupid-in-love with the new Vandaveer album. I slipped it into the car stereo Wednesday when I headed up to an organic farm in Lyons, CO for a workshop on digital storytelling (more on that adventure later), and it seriously has not been switched off. I keep finding tracks that I love and putting it on repeat and sitting for extra minutes in the driver’s seat after I reach my destination, so the song can finish playing, and I can finish my illustrious harmonies. This is some fantastic stuff.
Vandaveer is the Washington D.C. duo of Mark Charles Heidinger and Rose Guerin, their voices perfectly crackling, deeply resonant, and melding golden orange against each other. Heidinger’s voice often reminded me, oddly, of Nina Simone — they both have that slight metallic tang and bitter aftertaste that sounds regretful all the way through.
I could tell you about the rootsy soulfulness of this record that is not a roots album. I could mention the moments I wanted to pull the car over to drum the steering wheel, or stomp-clap along to songs like “Dig Down Deep” (at that terrific crescendo, wow) or “The Great Gray.” I could mention clever, clever lyrics on songs like “Spite” — “I once knew a man who learned such a thing / he cut off his hand to spite his ring / he poisoned the well to spite the frogs / he put down his son to spite the dog / he cut out his sleep to spite his dreams / he picked all the flowers to spite the bees… gonna hold my breath to spite the air.” It chronicles a cavalcade of spiteful acts that just end up stripping all the beauty and joy, written in precise and smart form like a darker Shel Silverstein. It is, as the Washington City Paper delightfully wrote, “Folk music, with none of the historical bullshit.”
Listen also to the second song on the album; the second one I stuck on repeat after I sated my need for the one posted up there (temporarily). Vandaveer just finished a humongous tour and I missed them in Colorado, but you must get this album. Heidinger used to be in These United States, and my friends Justin Craig and Robby Cosenza from TUS help out on this album, as well. I should have listened sooner. It was only a matter of time until I listened myself, and fell in love.
Addendum: HA. Just figured out that Heidinger was also in The Apparitions, which recorded that one song that to this day I still can’t get enough of, six years later. That song follows me, pleasantly.
Dig Down Deep is out now on Supply & Demand Records.
Name: Heather Browne Location: Colorado, originally by way of California Giving context to the torrent since 2005.
"I love the relationship that anyone has with music: because there's something in us that is beyond the reach of words, something that eludes and defies our best attempts to spit it out. It's the best part of us, probably, the richest and strangest part..."
—Nick Hornby, Songbook
"Music has always been a matter of energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel." —Hunter S. Thompson
Mp3s are for sampling purposes, kinda like when they give you the cheese cube at Costco, knowing that you'll often go home with having bought the whole 7 lb. spiced Brie log. They are left up for a limited time. If you LIKE the music, go and support these artists, buy their schwag, go to their concerts, purchase their CDs/records and tell all your friends. Rock on.
2011 was also the year we got the 
Name: Heather Browne
