New Jam Podcast and Guitar Musik at Casa

For those of you who have an interest in acoustic guitar music, whether it be instrumental, traditional, psych-folk, avant-garde or any of the myriad genres that have been classified from some offshoot of the form (whew!), then check out this Wednesday’s bill over at Casa del Popolo.

Mastering engineer and guitarist Harris Newman will be joining the line up along side blues-folk guitarist Jack Rose and John Fahey collaborator Glenn Jones for what is sure to be an evening of extraordinarily beautiful and spaced out acoustic guitar music. Here’s an excerpt from the Casa newsletter I received this week:

Jack Rose + Glenn Jones + Harris Newman
Co-presented by Suoni Per Il Popolo + CKUT
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Casa del Popolo 4873 St. Laurent, 21h, $10/12

Jack Rose

Jack Rose takes the stage, and it’s clear he’s been sipping some of the more Indian tea varieties as he begins with a couple of long, sitar-like ragas. Freed from the Western conventions of chord-based song structure, it’s fascinating to hear emotions expressed through discord and harmonics as well as melody. Jack is so jaw-droppingly skilful, with his plucking and sometimes Flamenco-style strumming, it often sounds like two or three guitarists up there. People are swaying with their eyes shut, losing themselves in musical meditation…

Glenn Jones

Glenn Jones… guitarist extraordinaire for Cul de Sac, in which his idiosyncratic blend of surf, Middle Eastern, Americana and acid guitar innovations are a signature of the band’s much-ballyhooed sound…. Jones befriended his idol John Fahey in the mid-70’s, eventually collaborating with him via Cul de Sac (The Epiphany of Glenn Jones, Thirsty Ear 1996). Upon Fahey’s passing in 2001, Jones went back to the acoustic guitar with renewed earnest, hints of which can be found inoculating Cul de Sac’s 2003 masterpiece Death of the Sun and their soundtrack album, The Strangler’s Wife. At long-last, the time is nigh for Jones to release his debut solo album. This is the Wind That Blows it Out - Solos for 6 & 12 String Guitar is a collection of stylistically ambitious, utterly sublime acoustic steel-string compositions, proving beyond a shred of doubt that Jones is of a rare class of modern compositional guitarists in today’s burgeoning avant folk scene…

Harris Newman

Harris Newman’s strengths lie in his dexterous ability to borrow from the traditions of the steel string guitar movement while propelling it forward into postmodern realms. Accidents with Nature and Each Other has time-honored solo acoustic grandeur on full display, but Newman brings many more variables to the table. Experiments with the raw sounds of the naked steel string and a wider palette of instrumentation augment beautifully his particular brand of guitar… The result is a rather diverse array of sounds and structures, all centered on the acoustic guitar. Languid, gorgeous melodies and hefty fingerpicking workouts bump up against ghostly harmonics and acoustic drones… Today’s avant folk movement has found a fresh new vision from the heart, soul and fingers of Harris Newman.

I’m terribly excited about this show!!

Oh, and while I’m at it I might as well mention that a new “jam” podcast has been posted. Check it out here. This is an instrumental piece that was spontaneously realized during a Saturday afternoon rainstorm over the weekend. It’s definitely a work in progress as the song lasts a total of one minute, thirty-odd seconds. So there’s some development yet to be done. But it a charming little number, I think…

Podcast Jam 2: The Rainy Sixteen Countdown