Dogwood Tales :: 13 Summers 13 Falls

The days get shorter and the nights get longer. And colder. As the darkness settles in we wrap ourselves in Harmonies, heartbreak, and hope. The ashes of loss still contain the embers of hope.

Wilco, Son Volt, and Whiskeytown will be obvious touch-points for many, but Dogwood Tales have crafted their own voice (with killer harmonies).

Album opener circles the refrain:

“It’s hard to be in the right place
for the right thing all the time.
It’s hard to be anywhere when I got you on my mind.”

There’s a sense of being caught in a winter storm here sometimes. Our protagonists sometimes don’t quite sure where’ they’re going or even who they are. But there is a pervasive sense of hope throughout the EP. Pedal steel laces through the often forlorn lyrics ushering us in to moments of hope. Even though the nights are long, morning’s on its way. These songs explore love, loss, and heartbreak with clear-eyed honesty. Sometimes it’s hard and we’re not sure where we’re going or if we’ll make it, but the days will again wash in and the light will eventually return. Sometimes the best we can do is hold out for the hope of a better day to see us through the long winter nights.

“Hold You Again” doesn’t back down from the truth of lost chances and lonely new realities. “I know I may never feel it again,” they sing, but we get the sense that it was still worth it. The bright melody and washes of feedback are a sonic blanket against the cold reality. The push and pull; the give and take of life and love try to find their balance in these 5 songs. “It feels like a matter of time before the dark gets hold of me.”

“25” opens with the lines “I just want to wake up and feel like I’m alive because I’ve got some cousins that didn’t see 25.” There is a stark wrestling with reality. These lyrics don’t shy away from death and loss but they don’t swirl the pity party drain either. There’s a search throughout these songs; here’s the reality; we love, we lose, we die, and we try to make sense of it all. What’s it all about? What’s it’s all for? Is the power of love enough to see us through these long dark nights? Dogwood Tales think so and invite you into their sunbaked cosmic Americana world to see what you think. Whatever your conclusion, this is music for those long dark winter nights when we need to be reminded that the light will eventually return. “we’ve still got miles of road to go” they sing on the title track and there is a sense of surety that we’ll get there eventually.

Highly recommended

The Deets:

WH065
Dogwood Tales - 13 Summers 13 Falls

01. Hard To Be Anywhere
02. Hold You Again
03. 25
04. Since Yesterday
05. 13 Summers

credits

releases November 18, 2023 on WarHen Records

Kyle Grim - Acoustic Guitar, Vocals
Ben Ryan - Electric Guitar, Vocals
Stephen Kuester - Pedal Steel
Danny Gibney - Bass, Organ, Wurlitzer & Piano
Jake Golibart - Drums & Percussion

Produced by Erik Kase Romero
Recorded by Erik Kase Romero and Danny Gibney
All tracks Mixed by Danny Gibney except Hold You Again by Adrian Olsen
Mastered by Garrett Haines
Photograph by Kyle Grim

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Check out a recent live session from earlier this year:

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Derek Piotr :: Making and Then Unmaking

Nearly every human story centers around conflict and character development. In many of these stories, we find many reoccurring characters.

The wise but enigmatic bearded wizard.

The strong but faithful hero; sure of who they are and their calling but not always sure of their circumstances.

Or, maybe the trickster, who is a cunning, sly usurper of the status quo, who can often shapeshift (including gender). leaving you to wonder who or what you just encountered; or didn’t.

The trickster might know who they are, but most people never will. Leaving everyone to wonder of even the trickster knows who they are. We can only ever know the trickster as they reveal themselves to us; in ever-changing form; in all the ups and downs; the tricks and turns; the slides and tumbles. Derek Piotr’s new album asks us to ask such questions.

Creating what he calls an “Appalachian cowboy record,” Piotr weaves trickster imagery and energy through a powerfully haunting and playful set of songs exploring the question of who we are versus who others think we are. In keeping with the up-ending energy of the trickster, Making and Then Unmaking is a sharp turn for the Piotr. The presskit calls the album his “most musically ambitious and emotionally raw project to date.” Most notably, this is Piotr’s first work to feature the guitar. Piotr has made his name so far in modern classical and DJ settings. He says that he: “had a massive taboo against guitar for my whole career... I felt it was extremely common, pedestrian, coffee-shop stuff, represented the most middling and mundane music on the planet.”

But thankfully, he changed his mind.

Throughout the album, guitar, dulcimer, pedal steel guitar, clavichord and banjo work to support these explorations of identity and loss and Piotr’s unique voice. That voice and its rawness is much of what makes these songs feel like we’re privy to some sort of intimate self-exploration rather than just being academic explorations of a musical genre. Piotr’s presskit says:

“The composer’s voice is foregrounded throughout, operating in a different register to that of the more recognisable singing voice used on previous albums.”

On the opening track, “From Your Window,” Piotr sings “I consume the wind who consumes me” over a hypnotic repeated rhythm and we can’t help but wonder if the life of the trickster; a life of continually changing and keeping up while keeping others at bay will ultimately consume those of us who chase this life.

Diving in to folk, rural, Appalachian, and Irish music. Piotr finds a musical world in which he can explore not only the trickster imagery, but himself. Asked about the album title, he suggest:

"Making and Then Unmaking" refers to building and destroying relationships ... ideas ... past selves ...”

We find this theme of changing, reconciling, growing and the accompanying confusion highlighted in “Invisible Map,” where Piotr sings:

“Things I hold on to make me want to change, but the more I change, the more I find myself holding on.”

It’s this internal struggle of identity that weaves the album together, and here, with slowly stirring strings over plucked rhythms Piotr sings out life’s eternal question: Who Am I? The solo a capella “Bolakins,” (Found at the Wikipedias as “Lamkin”) offers up terrifying answer to that question in the tale of a wronged mason who vows to get even. With only his voice, Piotr lays bear this tale of revenge and sorrow.

While “Bolakins” is certainly a standout track, I wonder if “The Stake/De'il in the Kitchen” most encapsulates the album’s themes. A song with plucked banjo and bagpipes about feeling like cyborg trying to find love seems to get right to the heart of it. What is programmed? What is real? Who can be trusted and why? The organic wistfulness of the banjo plays against Piotr’s mechanical thought: “I am a cyborg.” The bagpipes highlight the confusion; are we programmed? Does it matter? What is free will? Is love free will or something that takes us over? The metallic cyborg tinge plays against the organic instruments and feels like a metaphor for many of the album’s themes.

“Snow in Paradise” continues these themes:

“It’s a wall of snow in paradise / All of us changing for that better life / Did you manifest what means most to you? / Because you can’t resist?”

Later in the song, a saxophone weaves in and out of the melody asking us to reflect on these questions. I have time for music like that, and I hope you do too. These nine songs explore the notions of identity, change, love, and free will; all while Piotr challenges himself to take on a new musical identity. I can’t think of anything better than an artist who models what they explore. Form and function. Cyborgs looking for love, all somehow without losing hope.

Highly recommended.

Pre-order the album at Bandcamp (out 05/14/21). Watch the Electronic Press Kit here.

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Jamie Barnes' 'Ex Voto"

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Louisville’s Jamie Barnes. And since musicians are people, it is only natural for us to wonder what’s he’s been up to in the years since his last release. Well, since musicians are people, we don’t necessarily get to know what Barnes has been doing for the last few years and we honor that privacy. But since he is a poet and songwriter, we do get to peek in on Barnes as he opens a window into his soul on his latest release “Ex Voto.” And the good news is that, even though we may not have heard from him in a while, Barnes’ clever and intimate songwriting sensibilities have only sharpened.

Barnes plays quiet folk-ish music that is pregnant with imagery and warm details. But this is quiet music to be played loud. Barnes has always been known for his lush instrumentation, even though he often records at home. There are new layers, intricacies, and flourishes discovered with each listen and only discovered when we allow ourselves to be in the moment and fully present with this music. Which I think is part of its message.

Barnes gives away few personal details, but as the title suggests, there is a sense of someone struggling to find gratitude and devotion in the wake of something serious; in the wake of life, love, and loss. Sometimes relationships feel like planets trying to find their orbit or two songbirds on opposite branches.

Weaving imagery that oscillates between the here and now; being grounded in nature along with with scenes from the stars (“Perseid and Leonid fall,” “Mercury's in retrograde,” “Binary star,” etc.) Barnes holds a liminal space for the listener. It exists in the moment between inhale and exhale. Maybe it’s a Fall record caught in the moment between expected freeze, remembered warm breezes and the reality of nature’s passing everywhere around us. Does it bring us comfort to know that we’re not alone in our cycle of death and rebirth? Or does it reinforce our hurt, leaving us hopelessly caught in a never-ending cycle? That’s for the listener to decide. But throughout, Barnes evokes that sense of pain, loss, and longing. The opening words set the stage:

Turn the Earth upside down
Shake the dead things from their holes
While the memories drape
Like white chemtrails in our souls

Barnes explores the tension between endings and beginnings, trying to make sense of them both. In “Low To The Bird” (previously released as a single), Barnes laments, leaving us to wonder if his broken relationship is with a lover, himself, or maybe even his God (or maybe all three?):

Now I'm too many words lost down the drain
Gather me like rivers, gather me like rain
I don't mean to accuse, I don't mean to complain
I'm too low to the bird for my prayer to be heard anyway

Maybe we should expect nothing less from a man whose Twitter bio reads “Per aspera ad astra” (“through hardships to the stars") but this interplay between the imminent and the transcendent; that in-between space where life occurs provides the perfect canvas for Barnes’ clever and often insightful words. But the music is just as vital as the words. They weave in and out of one another; melodies softly soar and swirl, uplifting the soul even while the words might keep us grounded. Exploring that “in-between” space, “Ex Voto” is a record that doesn’t shy away from the hurt of life, but it is also not a record which leaves us in the mire.

Though Barnes acknowledges and explores despair and hurt and the dark realities of life, love, and loss, there is never a sense of despair or defeat. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Consider these lines from album opener “Pennyrile”

“And its shadow found me
There beneath it all
And with lifted hands to high we gasped and wondered at the writing on the sky
What a thing it even is to be alive”

Despite it all, “what a thing it even is to be alive!” Even though “crooks and carnivores are closing,” “Ex Voto” finds Barnes “holding fast, holding fast” (“Hollow Dusk”). The mountains may be crashing in to the sea, but Barnes is struggling to be still and make sense of it all; all without giving up the still small light of hope in the darkness. It’s that quiet sense of hope that seems to not only keep Barnes afloat but able to still try and make sense of it all. In “Christ of the Ozarks,” he sings:

“Christ of the Ozarks, hold out your kind arms to me
I lost my landmarks,
I lost my family
Bring down your home
Hold me in mystery
Hold me till the end and then always”

Sometimes we just wish we could make sense of things. There are days when we need to be held and assured and that’s part of what it means to be human. “Hold me till the end and then always.” Even now in the in-between. The night may be dark, but Barnes will not let us give up searching for the meaning behind it all:

“I wish there was a liturgy for the hour soon forgotten
I wish there was a prayer for the when and they why
I wish there was a litany for the names evanescent
A benediction for the long goodbye”

I don’t know if “Ex Voto” is Barnes’ “long goodbye” to something or someone, but it’s an album that deserves our full attention. It is a timely record for a culture caught in societal grief. Hopefully it will help us make sense of suffering while not giving in to despair. We may be broken, but only “just enough” that it’s like blood-letting; for our good. We may each have a vision of what we need to be purged of, but Barnes reminds us that even if the “great cloud of witnesses dissolves overhead,” we are not alone. Wherever you find that “Silent Partner,” Barnes reminds us that there are other hands reaching out in the dark. There are other people caught in the in-between just like we are.

Barnes may not chart a clear path back to daylight and out of the suffering, but he will “hold the space” for us as we “sundown” and in that, he has reminded us of the beauty of life, and love, even when there’s loss. Winter might be coming but, we can still “harmonize our sorrows and sighs and brace for the winter gloom.”

“Hear them now, crooks and carnivores are closing
Bar the door and guard my ruby heart 'til morning
Catalog what's left and wake the weary dawn

Holding fast, holding fast.”

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