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The music here is full of contradiction. Wareham moves effortlessly between songs that confront mortality and those that consist of a recipe for pancakes. The levity of John Hartford is alive here; J.J. Cale’s influence is felt in the mellow, hypnotic grooves, and the jubilant sound of musicians all playing at once brings to mind visions of old New Orleans. There’s something grand here, but it’s shrouded in a mist of remembering, like recalling a strange dream that felt somehow more real than waking life.
Wareham also mixed the album, and got his hands dirty doing so. He discovered a hundred-year-old coal silo in an old New England mill town–a perfect echo chamber. “I used the space to add a mysterious depth to many of the songs. I like to think some of the coal residue on the walls of the silo can be heard here.” In chasing the elusive sound of analog tape, he learned to open his old Tascam cassette PortaStudio and refurbish the entire machine. “Suffer for tone,” says Wareham.
Wareham is joined here by top-notch studio band–National Bluegrass Team guitarist and singer Jack Holland, bassist and founding member of Twisted Pine Chris Sartori, and long-time collaborator drummer Karl Helander. He’s joined also on some tracks by vocalist Lily Sexton (Splendid Torch) and fiddler Kathleen Parks (Twisted Pine). The musicianship throughout is both sensitive and light-hearted, and always serves to elevate the songs.
The music here is full of contradiction. Wareham moves effortlessly between songs that confront mortality and those that consist of a recipe for pancakes. The levity of John Hartford is alive here; J.J. Cale’s influence is felt in the mellow, hypnotic grooves, and the jubilant sound of musicians all playing at once brings to mind visions of old New Orleans. There’s something grand here, but it’s shrouded in a mist of remembering, like recalling a strange dream that felt somehow more real than waking life.
Wareham also mixed the album, and got his hands dirty doing so. He discovered a hundred-year-old coal silo in an old New England mill town–a perfect echo chamber. “I used the space to add a mysterious depth to many of the songs. I like to think some of the coal residue on the walls of the silo can be heard here.” In chasing the elusive sound of analog tape, he learned to open his old Tascam cassette PortaStudio and refurbish the entire machine. “Suffer for tone,” says Wareham.
Wareham is joined here by top-notch studio band–National Bluegrass Team guitarist and singer Jack Holland, bassist and founding member of Twisted Pine Chris Sartori, and long-time collaborator drummer Karl Helander. He’s joined also on some tracks by vocalist Lily Sexton (Splendid Torch) and fiddler Kathleen Parks (Twisted Pine). The musicianship throughout is both sensitive and light-hearted, and always serves to elevate the songs.