Northern Roots

A Present: I recorded a song for you to download for free and, if you like, share with your friends and family. It may be familiar to some of you from my CD Every Sound Below, but this new recording features bajo sexto.

SALE! CDs are only $12 - 20% off - here at my website from now until December 25.

More Grammy News: I just got word that my collaboration with Omar Sosa Across the Divide received a Grammy nomination in the Best Contemporary World Music category. We’ll see what happens. In the meantime, why not get a copy for your grandmother or favorite mailman here at my website -cause nothing says “Christmas” like Afro-Cuban world jazz with banjo.

YouTube: Check out my new video to see what I found yesterday…

Well, the Latin Grammy Awards were on November 5, but my nominated collaboration with Omar Sosa Across the Divide didn’t win. Of course, it having never occurred to me that there would be any reason for me to be nominated for a Latin Grammy, it felt a bit like not winning the Algerian Chess Finals.

I did, however, have some fantastic barbecue some days earlier at Everett and Jones in Berkeley, CA - a favorite spot of mine. This time I had the brisket, largely because I’d had ribs for breakfast at another place a few hours earlier. In case you’re wondering, it was actually a bit much. I could barely look at food until midnight waffles at the Santa Cruz Diner.

THANKS FOR COMING TO THE SHOWS.

It’s been a good month of gigs, and it was great to see everyone who came out. Thanks! I could write at length about each of them. The West Coast was as westy as ever. I played the SF Jazz Festival with Omar Sosa, saw some friends, taught a singing school and even spent some time with a pelican. Minneapolis was wonderful and heavy. It’s been too long since I’ve spent any time there, and I saw so many dear friends in such a short period of time that it was about as much as I could handle. That was followed by three longish days of solo driving- first to Cedar Rapids Iowa to play with Beausoleil, then to La Crosse almost via Dubuque (d’oh! still, I managed to get there a whole five minutes before I was supposed to go on, so gimme a break) and finally on to Chicago where, yes, I did have the ribs, but only because I hadn’t eaten anything but an apple all day.

Most recently I even got to play within an hour of home for the great benefit series Music for a Change in Hartford. It was nice to meet a bunch of you there, and to see my old friend Kristen who played trumpet with the Lobstermen which eventually turned into Cordelia’s Dad. (If you’re wondering what on earth that previous link is about, it’s a photo of the band’s lead singer Colin taken by Diane Arbus. At the time all of us in the band were about 19 except Colin who was like 30, a condition so inconceivable as to make him seem like a martian or a spider monkey or something. Good singer though.)

FINALLY, SOME REALLY GOOD NEWS!

I got word from Evan Chambers the The Old Burying Ground is set to be released this summer. I can’t wait! I’m really excited about this incredible piece of music, and hope I get to sing it again. Who knows, maybe it will even not win a classical Grammy.

Thanks to everyone for coming out to the Book Mill, and my apologies to those who weren’t able to get in. I had a great time - next stop California. If you have friends in the Bay Area you might let them know:

Thursday, October 22nd, 7:30 pm
Omar Sosa Quartett featuring Tim Eriksen
San Francisco Jazz Festival
Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness Avenue (at McAllister), San Francisco
Tickets: $25-65

Friday, October 23rd, 8 pm
Opening for Chris Smither
Freight & Salvage, 2020 Addison St., Berkeley
tel. 510-644-2020
Tickets: $20.50 in adv., $21.50 at the door

Saturday, October 24th, 1-4 pm
TE teaches Early American Shape-Note Singing
Freight & Salvage, 2020 Addison St., Berkeley
tel. 510-644-2020
Tickets: $25

Sunday, October 25th, 7:30 pm
Solo acoustic show in support of the new CD “Northern Roots Live in Namest”
Cayuga Vault, 1100 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz
tel. 831-421-9471
Tickets: $14 in adv., $17 at the door

NEW PHOTOS

I’ve finally come around to the realization that in my line of work one needs to have nice photos of oneself. I have some here by a great photographer, Michael Murphree, recently of NYC now relocated to LA. What do you think? Any favorites? I’d love some feedback, since my inclination would be to draw a stick figure with a banjo and I don’t have the kind of business apparatus to insulate me from such decisions. I’d be happy to return the favor with my opinion of whatever baked desserts you’re currently unsure about and feel like sending me samples of. (Don’t pay much attention to the captions; they are only there for easier reference.)

1. Green. Photo by Michael Murphree

2. High-contrast headshot. Photo by Michael Murphree

3. On Mt. Pollux. Photo by Michael Murphree

4. Singing with Banjo. Photo by Michael Murphree

5. Singing with Fiddle. Photo by Michael Murphree

6. Portrait at a Barn. Photo by Michael Murphree

7. Holding the Fiddle. Photo by Michael Murphree

FINALLY, A REQUEST FOR SONG TOPICS

Also, I wonder if anyone has an idea of something they think ought to be a song. In a songwriting class I taught last year at Amherst College I wrote a song based on such a request, to which a student replied “well, I picked tomatoes yesterday.” I bashed out a song about picking tomatoes and it has since become one of my favorites. My most recent songs have concerned a creepy Finnish children’s book character relocating to the Quabbin reservoir, and a love song involving black trumpet mushrooms and singing gravestones in the Pelham woods. In retrospect these topics seem kind of eccentric. What else do people write about these days?

Friday October 2
The Book Mill
Montague MA
8pm
$10/12

Hey local people. In case you didn’t hear, I’m making a rare western MA appearance this Friday, celebrating the release of my new solo CD “Northern Roots- Live in Namest” on the Czech label Indies Scope. It’s the first in what will hopefully be a series of concerts in places I just like to be, whether or not they’re established music venues. I hope to include performances in regional parks and museums, in the woods, on a boat in the Connecticut and other great out of the way places. The Book Mill features two really cool restaurants, a little water fall, an independent record store and, as the bumper sticker says it “books you don’t need in a place you can’t find.” You can find directions here:

http://www.montaguebookmill.com/visit.html

Tim Eriksen Solo Acoustic
August 17, 8 & 10:30 pm
Blue Note Jazz Club
NYC
Monday nights are only $10 for a table seat, $5 at the bar!

AMERICAN FOLK FESTIVALS

The Newport Folk Festival aka George Wein’s Folk Festival 50 was a lot of fun- Mavis Staples, Balfa Toujours, Elvis Perkins and a bunch of shape note singers sounds to me like the beginnings of an interesting weekend. If they’d had Esma Redzepova and Motorhead I might have even considered buying a ticket. As it was I was working so I didn’t get to see any music, but it was still great to be there.

A highlight for me was singing from the Sacred Harp with a bunch of friends and former students. Elene Stovall came up from Alabama to sing with us, which was great. She’s a wonderful singer and one of the few remaining Sacred Harpers Bob Jones and George Wein brought up to sing at the festival in 1964. It’s really interesting to hear her talk about the experience, especially in tandem with the perspective of the festival people.

Another great moment was performing an impromptu rave up of the Old Ship of Zion with Elvis Perkins in Dearland. The youtube video doesn’t quite capture the ecstatic rock and roll moment, but it’s fun to see it anyway. Check out a better recording of my set, the Sacred Harp singing, Elvis’ set and, I believe, the entire festival, available as a free download on NPR’s website.

The Champlain Valley Folk Festival was also a lot of fun. My thanks to Pete Sutherland and everyone who came out! I got to hang out with my old friend and musical collaborator Laura Risk, a one time Cordelia’s Dad member and fabulous fiddle player, in case you didn’t know. A very welcome surprise was some exceptionally good Bosnian food from a restaurant in Essex Junction, VT. Go figure.

So Newport was Sunday, the two days before that I was in northern Vermont, the two days before that I moved house, and the night before that I got back from three weeks in Europe. By the time Pete Seeger finished singing Kumbaya or whatever on Sunday I was already asleep in a box of kitchen utensils.

Hiking in Southern Moravia before the Namest festival

FINALLY, THE MOUSE
Rolling back the tape a little further, two weeks ago, while I was still in Namest nad Oslavou, I was defeated by a 12 inch mouse in as much as I was only able to eat about half of it in the hours between when it was given to me and when I had to leave for Prague. Yeah, well, it was a cake in the shape of a mouse, but it was a challenge nonetheless. You see, it all happened like this (insert harp arpeggios and wavy lines to indicate the onset of a flashback):

In 2008 I had the pleasure of playing at the great Folkove Prazdniny festival in Namest nad Oslavou, Czech Republic where they put me up in a totally fine though somewhat funky hotel a longish hike from the festival grounds. My greeting there was “Hello. Mr. Eriksen? I am service man. You like hemenex?!” “Yeah man! I mean, probably. What are you talking about?” I thought. Well, I’ll tell you if you don’t already know that Hemenex is what’s for breakfast in Czechia, and it’s delicious. It’s sort of a combination of chicken eggs and salty pink meat that’s apparently meant to go with a liter of beer. (The morning kind). Anyway, there I was in the hospoda eating my hemenex, which is actually how it’s spelled, while Waterson:Carthy were eating, I don’t know what, probably caviar, up at the pension in the castle. Well, this year, possibly because of the release of my new solo CD “Northern Roots: Live in Namest” I was promoted to staying in a castle suite, which was less funky but really great. It’s really one of the loveliest places I’ve ever been put up- even nicer than the W in Hollywood, though lacking the $18 french fries.

On my first night there I did a set in the castle courtyard which was followed by a little ceremony launching my new solo CD and a book by journalist Jiri Moravcik called something like “16 stories in World Music” that has a chapter about me, as well as chapters on Omou Sangare, Eliza Carthy, Mariza and an interesting array of other folks. I’d love to be able to understand it, as Jiri is a very thoughtful writer from what I’ve seen translated, but in any case the book has a lot of nice color photos. Due to an oversight, I didn’t have a translator that night, so I’m still not exactly sure what all happened, but after my set a bunch of people, some of whom I knew and others I did not, came up on stage and said a bunch of stuff after which they presented me with a copy of the CD and book and promptly poured champagne all over them. Irony aside, I’m very proud to be associated with these folks and really appreciate their work- Dusan Sviba for producing the CD, Jiri for taking my music seriously and asking great questions, and the festival for treating me so well and being a haven of musical sanity.

The next morning I was in the castle restaurant eating my slightly fancier hemenex (chopped hem, more ex, garnish) and noticed a mouse running around the place making some of the patrons a little freaked out. I got up and cornered it, and one of the waitresses and I coaxed it into a bucket. I don’t know what happened to it after that, but a number of people told me “everyone was talking” about how I caught the mouse. It didn’t seem at all unusual to me, but I guess with perceived status (a redundant phrase, probably) comes expected behavior that might not include mouse catching. I’ve been famous a number of times before and have often been surprised by the seemingly random side effects.

Anyway, after three days of Sacred Harp workshops my final event at the festival was a midnight concert at the beautiful Baroque church on the town square, including a singing demonstration by the Sacred Harp class. I was just about to launch into “Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah” when down the aisle came a festival entourage bearing the unbelievably lifelike giant mouse I’ve spent so long building up to for no particular reason. I had a translator this time, but it didn’t help much. I got the general idea and mostly just thought “I like these people.”

Photo by Katerina Mullerova

It took me until after the show to be sure that it was actually a cake and not a sculpture that I would have to sheepishly pawn off on someone. The most surprising part is that it was an unbelievably excellent cake- a real one- walnut flour, layers of not too sweet chocolate cream and raspberry jam, covered in just the right amount of marzipan, sculpted and colored in amazing detail right down to a disgusting little pile of marzipan mouse poop. I think if you could find anything like it in the US it would probably cost a couple hundred dollars. One thing I did understand is that it was the idea of the waitresses at the castle, which didn’t surprise me seeing as how when Dusan asked for something “sharp” to pour on his hemenex they brought him a plate of thumbtacks. What a great country.

I was sadly unable to eat the whole mouse, but I tried hard and did manage to eat a big piece around 3 in the morning, a pound or two for breakfast and another big piece for lunch before bequeathing the rest to the people in the festival office on my way out to the Brno bus station. Sometimes I wish I had the kind of job that ended at some point in the day, but this big mouse was somehow reassuring that I’m in the right line of work.

Thanks to everyone for coming out to the festival in New Bedford- I saw some old friends and acquaintances including Louis Killen, and made some new ones. I also ate fish and scallops and whatever else I could find that was fried and/or Portuguese in addition to  publicly proclaiming the impending meteoric rise of Northern Roots Music, or whatever it will be called when it becomes a thing.

There’s an interview with me coming up on WBUR’s Radio Boston, and a link to an extended version. I haven’t heard it yet so I don’t know how much sense I was able to make, but I really enjoyed hanging out with producer Adam Ragusea, who came out to Amherst to record the piece. He is one of an elite group of used to be high school kids who discovered Cordelia’s Dad through a mix tape given them sometime early in the Clinton administration.

I’ve really enjoyed getting title suggestions for my next record. Thanks a lot! If you need a title for yours, let me know and I’ll see what I can do- maybe something about a sandwich, or even sandwiches depending on your style of music.

I’m posting from Belgrade, where I arrived without losing any instruments this time- just two suitcases left in Paris, and they came in today without incident. Last year a banjo and guitar were two of some 10,000 bags waylaid by a strike in Rome. I eventually got them back, but I had to change a flight and nearly had to choose between canceling shows or going on without them. The part I enjoyed is that while I checked in my guitar tuned to C,  it came back in perfect standard tuning. This led me to imagine a heartsick Italian baggage handler sitting in a sea of lost luggage singing Santa Lucia.

On my last trip to the west coast people were so generous with their instruments that I decided to make this trip with only my bajo sexto and a Jews harp and see what other instruments show up along the way. With much help from booking agent extraordinaire Dusan Sviba I have high hopes.

ARCHITECTURE AND COMMUNITY IN NOVI BEOGRAD

Sounds like a term paper title- skip this if you’re bored already- but last August I started making a video about the architecture in Novi Beograd  that I would love to finish this time around. There’s an article in this month’s JAT inflight magazine about it, strangely enough, including observations by architect Rem Koolhuis. The  thing that struck me most is the incredible difference between the socialist era buildings and the ones they’re putting up now.

The older part of the new city is famous for its small apartments, miniscule by American standards, in largely identical buildings set around large public spaces. Each apartment has a little balcony overlooking a courtyard, a soccer field, a garden or a playground. In summer every window is open, and you can hear, see and smell pretty much everything the neighbors are doing. After years of  economic turmoil, not to mention being bombed, much of the area has seen better days- the play structures have mostly been reduced to scrap metal, the siding is patchy, there’s a lot of grafitti and cigarette butts around. But everyone is out! There’s always something going on- pick up soccer games, make out sessions, grandmothers out for a walk, kids playing on the few remaining swings or finding a use for a broken see saw, somebody with a guitar.In the back parking lot there’s a colorful array of old Yugos, Skodas, Zastavas, Ficas and the occasional Ford Fiesta.

Just down the street, on the other side of Beogradska Arena, there are buildings that, although they are brand new, look similar enough that you might walk by them without thinking anything. But something isn’t quite right- it’s all strangely quiet. On closer inspection, almost every window is closed, and in the evening they glow a soft, flickering  blue. There’s no public space except the sidewalk and the bus shelter, the apartments are all air conditioned and, when you do the math, appear to be three or four times the size of the older ones. Out front there are BMWs, Astras, Benzs, Hummers and the occasional Ford Fiesta.

A long time ago I was unable to write a song about the fact that when you live close to people they can all hear you, and when you live in isolation they can’t. I’m glad somebody’s making some money, keeping cool and finding some privacy around here, but there’s  something melancholy about the possible decline of the problematic and lively urban community drama that socialist architecture seems to foster, possibly in unwitting imitation of older social structures.

AND FINALLY…

Tomorrow I’m making the long drive/sail to the island Ugljan and hope to return with some new songs, possibly including a restart of the one mentioned above. I’ll try to make a video while I’m there as well, and then I’m off to Praha/Brno/Namest. If our country is gonna get through this economy thing somebody better keep eating the sandwiches while I’m gone. Thanks in advance…

bunny

I’m finally throwing down the gauntlet: fourteen unaccompanied solo songs in one take, no edits- that’s my next record. If you think I’m bluffing, ante up.
I’m not really looking for a battle, but it would be nice if it was taken as a friendly challenge to people involved in folk and traditional type music to get down to more singing and maybe a little less frantic plucking. The thing it needs is a title, which is where I’d love your help (again).Way down below I’ve included a longish thing with some thoughts about singing and related stuff that might help generate some ideas.

Making the Recording
I read somewhere Bruce Springsteen calling his Pete Seeger tribute record the “least commercial thing I could think of doing.” Really? Wow. It got me wondering what was the most commercial thing I could think of doing, which at the moment was 14 solo unaccompanied songs in one shot- a concept album. Actually, I think I had already made the recording by the time I read that, and it’s something I’ve wanted to do for years but never had the coincidence of technology, place and inspired moment.
They finally coincided last summer at the Jaroslaw early music festival in southeastern Poland. I’ve already written about it some, but to summarize I did an unamplified, candle lit concert, taught a week long Sacred Harp singing school, heard some fabulous music from Iran and 15th century Poland and ate a whole lot of rose petal jam buns from a magical bakery that appeared and disappeared seemingly at will. All of this really made me want to sing.
The old abbey where I was staying contains a number of lovely wooden rooms and a nice sounding chapel, so I figured it would be easy to find a place to record. My two problems were that in my only free hours there were lots of nuns banging around the place, and I didn’t have batteries or an extension cord for my Marantz recorder thingy. Finally, as a last resort and after getting permission from the local priest I got the key to a scary tower on the abbey’s fortified perimeter wall with rickety stairs and big spiders. And bats.

The Turret

After a slow, tentative climb I opened the heavy wooden door and found four things inside: a comfortable chair, a beautiful fireplace, a live bird (had to let that out first) and, hanging on the wall under a photograph of the former Pope, an extension cord. OK, five things. Anyway, I plugged in, checked levels, made a record and was out of there in just over an hour.

this is how you make a record

My next to next solo CD, I might add, I’ve been working on for a year and a half.

ANOTHER NEW CD AND BOOK
Actually I do have another other next solo CD coming out before the unaccompanied one. It’s the live in the Czech Republic recording I’ve mentioned before. I don’t know what it’s called but it’s actually coming out for real very soon, ca. July 20. There will be a CD release celebration in Namest nad Oslavou to which you are invited, followed by a book launch for journalist Jiri Moravcik’s new work that apparently features me in some fashion. I don’t know anything about it, or if it will be in a language that will enable me to ever know anything about it other than what it looks like, but there you go- new stuff, available before long at timeriksenmusic.com

LONGISH THING ABOUT  SINGING AND THE FINALLY UPCOMING CD I NEED HELP NAMING

Prognostic style
Unaccompanied singing is a missing link and a “next big thing.” I’ve been watching its slow, upward trajectory since 1980, when, under the influence of George Orwell, Ronald Reagan, William Miller and a slew of movies after the fashion of Planet of the Apes, most Americans assumed that within a matter of years whoever was left would be living in caves without electricity or guitar strings. Should the CD be called The Missing Link? No, there’s a TV show I think and also a Neanderthal vibe. How about the Next Big Thing? That’s worse, and also probably a TV show. Maybe “Big Brother.” That’d be edgy! Wait, I think that’s a TV show too.

To serve man style
Unaccompanied singing, solo or harmony, is underrated to say the least. It’s a challenge, an education, a pleasure, a spiritual discipline and a social networking tool. Instruments are nice too, but they can be kind of like cool looking masks. Imperfections, habits, influences, history and other  little betrayals sound so much more clearly in the voice. I never thought about how German I was until I noticed how I sing “tree,” or how African I was and wasn’t until I sang with a Nigerian engineering student in a rock band in Chennai, India.

In American culture there seems to be considerable discomfort around the unadorned, unprocessed voice. Around singing in general actually, but especially when it’s exposed. I may be wrong but I think it’s a localized phenomenon, temporally and spatially, that in the long run will have been short lived.
So, maybe I need a title referring to the excellence and near universality of unaccompanied singing. How about “The Glory of the Human Voice?!” Wait, that’s Florence Foster Jenkins. Rats.

Chip on the shoulder style
In American popular singing these days, at least the Euro-American leaning stuff, you generally have a choice between airy warbling and manly mumbling. Some common beliefs I find unfortunate are two sides of a coin-

1.    The belief, or attempt to believe, that you can buy the gimp, as the Irish call it.
2.    The belief that singing is just natural, so the less you sound like you’ve actually worked on it the more real it is.

Beyond that, as Connecticut preacher Lorenzo Dow complained about the English ca. 1805 “They’re afraid to make a NOISE!”  With regard to the kinds of music I usually sing these days, when the old people sang, they SANG. Forget “old”- whey did I even say that? There are so many young Sacred Harpers and a few ballad singers like Rosie Stewart whose singing will take the top of your head off, the result of careful listening and long work as much as just being around it, as far as I can tell. It’s not just that it’s often loud and certainly not that it’s considered honest, authentic, raw, traditional or any of the other conventional epithets. Maybe I just like hearing people sing without having to worry that if I close my eyes they’ll take my stuff.Well, maybe it does have something to do with honesty, but not in the touchy feely way- more in the “get your hand out of my pocket” way. Maybe my record should be called “Look at Me! I’m so Honest!” And humble too.

OK, that’s more than enough of that- it’s kind of tiring. Probably better to stop talking and get back to singing. In summary I mostly just want to make something useful and/or positive that sounds good to people and will help me “put food on my family” as one old Yankee had it. Oh yeah, and it needs a name.
If you’ve read this far, please to be rewarded with this indigo bunting.

I had the strange realization this week that, although I’ve been extremely busy with music, my shows coming up this week and next in Santa Cruz, Berkley and Northampton will be the first regular solo acoustic shows I’ve done since last summer in Poland.

I was struck by the odd combination of things I’ve done in the meantime.
For example:

-I did a music video for a documentary at D.H. Mansfield’s grave
-celebrated the release of a Sacred Harp CD at Paste Magazine, a record store and a rock club in Atlanta
-did a pre-show lecture demo for the band Crooked Still
-taught shape-note singing to ethnomusicologists and elementary school children
-performed with students in NYC in a night or music and stories put together by Joe Boyd
-sang with a Balkan brass band at Lincoln Center’s Home of Jazz
-made my first wax cylinder recording
-performed in the large, experimental multimedia piece “What I Saw at the Apocalypse”

-taught a songwriting course at Wesleyan University
-traveled down the west coast with rock band Elvis Perkins in Dearland
-did six nights at the Blue Note with Omar Sosa
-did a bunch of recording, Sacred Harp singing, filmed for an avant garde video at Lady Foot Locker and wrote a fifty page paper on a mid 19th century guy who owned a copy of the American Vocalist.

I guess I do this stuff because it interests me or because somebody asked, usually both, so I can’t really complain about people calling my work uncategorizable. But some days I wish I could just say “yeah, I play Burmese Polka. It’s great for parties.”

Here’s some stuff from NYC (podcast and video)
WNYC podcast of in-studio with Omar Sosa (click on “Listen”)

UPCOMING EVENTS: It would be great to see you!

Saturday, April 25, 2009
1 pm – shape-note singing school
All Saints’ Chapel
2451 Ridge Rd, Berkeley, CA
Free and open to everyone, beginners welcome.

4 pm - in-studio at KALW
Listen online: www.kalw.org

8 pm - solo acoustic show
Cayuga Vault
1100 Soquel Ave.
Santa Cruz, CA
(831) 421-9471
www.cayugavault.com
Tickets: $14 in advance, $17 at the door

Sunday, April 26, 2009
8 pm – solo acoustic show
Freight & Salvage
1111 Addison Street
Berkeley, CA
(513) 548-1761
Tickets: $18.50 in advance, $19.50 at the door

Sunday, May 3rd, 4 p.m.
Acoustic Celebration
Temple Shearith Israel
46 Peaceable St.
Ridgefield, CT
(203) 431-6501
Tickets: $15 in advance, $20 at the door

Thursday, May 7th, 2009, 7 p.m.
Iron Horse Music Hall
20 Center Street
Northampton, MA
(413) 584-0610 (house), (413) 586-8686 (tickets)
Gideon Freudmann opens
Tickets: $12.50 in advance, $15 at the door