GHOST OF ELECTRICITY
Junk Genius
Songlines, 1999Ben Goldberg/Clarinet
John Schott/Guitar
Trevor Dunn/Bass
Kenny Wollesen/Drums
"For our second release, we again wanted to have a unifying project that would tie the record together. The present CD is in some measure a commentary on American folk music, a catch-all label for the many musical traditions that spring from rural Southern cultures. The raw material for our study was provided by the field recordings of Alan Lomax, the famous Folkways anthology of Harry Smith, and the vast archival project of the Austrian Document label. Artists such as Dock Boggs, Clarence Ashley, Son House, and the Carter Family, combined with Sacred Harp singing and work songs, provided a template for what song might mean. We set ourselves the challenge of writing music that could take its place among these recordings, songs that could almost have been passed along through oral tradition. We wanted to preserve the messy, knotted and tangled pictures the music presented us, and not prettify it or put quotation marks around it. We didn't want to simplify or needlessly complicate."
—John Schott