Lyrically, the song’s a mantra that evokes more than it explains, hinting at some mysterious place just beyond the horizon. One was that 12-string, the other a six-string, and any doubt that Walker was relying on the extra strings to add heft was abundantly clear on his self-penned title track. He required only two acoustic guitars and a microphone. At the Echo, the handsome, once shaggy-headed troubadour had a clean haircut that made him look downright respectable, and his presentation was equally crisp. On the studio versions of “Primrose” songs, Walker recorded with a band of miraculously practiced Chicago jazz players. Despite the obvious debts, though, he’s developed his own ideas. Celebrating both instrumental prowess and pastoral simplicity, Walker drew on the ideas of artists including John Fahey, Joni Mitchell, John Martyn and inheritors such as Glenn Jones and James Blackshaw. Across that and other pastoral originals and a choice take on Van Morrison’s “Fair Play,” Walker created music with rolling momentum, one that required he maneuver through rhythmic patterns.įed through a pick-up, this guitar work was steeped in the 1960s folk guitar movement and the stylistic offshoots that arrived after. A few minds were blown, though, especially during “Griffith’s Buck’s Blues,” a work that weaved an Irish-accented melody through a stream of start-and-stop chords. Downtown Artery +Ġ6 – Milwaukee, Wis.Luckily, no bones were broken across an hour-long set that showcased Walker’s deft hands and solo guitar illuminations. You can preorder the album here.Ģ7 – Boise, Idaho Idaho Botanical Gardens – Great Escape Seriesģ0 – Fort Collins, Colo. His tour dates can be found below, along with the tracklist and artwork for The Lillywhite Sessions. Walker will be touring for the remainder of the year. It’s a song that would feel right at home on Walker’s latest release, May’s Deafman Glance, which is a testament to the sincerity of Walker’s intentions with the project on the whole. It’s almost shocking how similar Walker’s vocal delivery is to Matthews’ at times, and the instrumental interplay is what Matthews’ band would sound like if they came up playing at underground jazz clubs instead of East Coast college campuses. The result is something more complicated, if less breezily feel-good than the original. Walker’s take on “Busted Stuff” finds him navigating the common ground between the goofy playground jazz of the original and his own jazz-tinged post-rock vamps. Most of the songs were eventually released on the album Busted Stuff, but the unmastered quality, as well as the forbidden-fruit aspect of The Lillywhite Sessions, made it a fan favorite for years. It was also one of the first albums to gain notoriety for being shared on Napster, back when the music industry was just catching on to that sort of thing. The original Lillywhite Sessions was a “lost album” of sorts, one that the band scrapped midway through recording. With that in mind, it was prescient of Walker to choose DMB’s “coolest” album to put his spin on. But he’s worn his influences on his sleeve-and on his social media accounts-since the start, and this project finds him reimagining what it means for a band to be “uncool.” The album is “for anyone who didn’t enter this world with fully formed musical tastes,” according to a press release. Since Walker is a post-rock-influenced, instrumentally intricate indie-folk songwriter, one would expect him to hide away those parts of his musical upbringing that the cool music kids might make fun of. Walker’s unabashed love of bands considered “uncool” by the indie-rock tastemakers has long been part of his mystique. Ryley Walker has released a cover of Dave Matthews Band’s “Busted Stuff” from his forthcoming re-imagining of DMB’s lost album The Lillywhite Sessions, out Nov.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |