Piano, voice and a whole lot of soul on this advance track from Christina Rubino’s upcoming album Godspeed and Guns.
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Christina Rubino: Down to the Sea
Saturday, January 14th, 2017Steve Dawson: Rattlesnake Cage
Tuesday, February 25th, 2014
Outstanding blues, folk and jazz solo acoustic guitar
Canadian guitarist Steve Dawson has often treated his concert audiences to solo acoustic performances, but his albums have always supported his picking with a full band. On his latest album, Dawson gives listeners an opportunity to hear a conversation between his imagination, fingers and guitars (including 6- and 12-strings, traditional wood bodies and a National tricone), unadorned by other instruments or even vocals. Listeners will quickly realize how easily the rich particulars of a guitar’s sound are subsumed by other instruments, and that freed from the competition of a band, each guitar sings with a unique and detailed voice.
In these eleven performances, Dawson keeps meticulous time, but the tempos and changes flow from each song’s internal rhythms. Dawson is a well-rounded player who weaves together blues, folk, country and jazz, finger-picking ragtime on “The Medicine Shows Comes to Avalon,” playing slide on “Flophouse Oratory,” and adding lovely rolling lines on “Butterfly Stunt.” His originals range from contemplative to up-tempo, ending the album with the 12-string “The Alter at Center Raven.” Fans of Fahey, Kottke and Cooder will recognize Dawson as a kindred soul. [©2014 Hyperbolium] 
Marah: Presents Mountain Minstrelsy of Pennsylvania
Tuesday, February 25th, 2014
Ghosts from the backwoods and lumber camps of Pennsylvania
David Bielanko and Christine Smith, of the rock band Marah, have put together an album that is as folky as folk can be. Starting with an obscure compendium of songs gathered from turn of the twentieth century Pennsylvania backwoods, lumber camps and hunting cabins, Bielanko and Smith have brushed up the material, written new melodies and recorded with a band organized from local talent. The invitation to perform drew in not just a core set of players (who brought along their banjo, guitar, harmonica), but an eight-year-old fiddler and the townspeople of Millheim, PA (pop. 900). In addition to the odd tuba or bagpipe, you can hear a hundred of the assembled citizens and a local barbershop quartet singing “Ten Cents at the Gate.” The record was recorded live to tape, returning these songs not just to listeners’ ears, but to the shared joy of music-making. The assembled band not only brings the songs back to life, but also the people, places, half-truths and flat-out myths recorded within them. [©2014 Hyperbolium]
