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American Gothic

Going alt-country, with a backwoods twist
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By Darrell Jónsson
For The Prague Post
May 30th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Edwards draws on deep, unadulterated Americana for his distinctive brand of music.
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Woven Hand


When: Saturday, June 2, at 7
Where: Palác Akropolis
Tickets: 330 Kč, available at the venue

There is something about the sound of David Eugene Edwards’ Woven Hand that is as American as the debris of a house torn to shreds by a hurricane, or an early 20th-century lynch-mob picnic. Haunted stuff, to say the least.
Much has already been written about Edwards’ childhood tours with his Nazarene preacher grandfather through mining towns in rural Colorado. But there is more than the somber organ drone of white gospel to Edwards’ heavy, brimstone alt-country sound.
As in his previous band, 16 Horsepower, Edwards continues to hammer some of the meanest banjo to ever grace rock ’n’ roll. And his rustic riffs bite with a Gothic sensibility. On Woven Hand’s 2006 release, Mosaic, his mountain-man growls harmonizing with the ghosts of Cheyenne hallelujahs are an ongoing testament that he sings to a distinctly different drummer. In 2002, such evocations attracted the Belgian choreographer Wim Vandekeybus, and resulted in Edwards composing the soundtrack for a dance production titled Blush for Vandekeybus’ Ultima Vez troupe. Edwards also contributed both acting and music to Vandekeybus’ 2005 work Puur, again with Ultima Vez.
Given the often grave and deep quality of Edwards’ singing style, it was surprising to hear him answer the telephone at his Denver home with a soft-spoken Midwestern voice. As to what role deep Americana plays in his sound, Edwards says, “Americana is the basis of where I started from musically, and it is something that never goes away. It’s always there, under the different layers of everything else that I’ve come up with.”
Many artists, from Wilco to Nick Cave, claim to mine the diverse wealth of Americana folklore for their sound. But few achieve the epic proportions of Edwards’ backwoods imagery. His alt-country detour came from “just listening to primarily mountain music. In the late ’80s, I immersed myself in that through the Library of Congress recordings, like those of Alan Lomax, looking for music as American and as old as possible. I take it from that point rather than a more established basis of what later became country music or bluegrass.”
Although Edwards’ lyrics quote Dante-like biblical phrases, his song ideas are often drawn from visual impulses that he describes as “memory, short little films in my head of childhood and short little pictures. But I’m not afraid to let it become something more than it actually was, in the way that if you remember something from childhood you are probably embellishing it somewhat. Sometimes I’m factual, but other times I just let it go where it goes. A lot of it is fairly abstract, like an abstract painting.”
The lineup on the current tour, according to Edwards, includes “Pascal Humbert from 16 Horsepower on bass, Ordy Garrison on drums and guitar player Peter van Laerhoven from Brussels, who has been playing with us for three years now.”
Supporting Woven Hand will be an exciting new local collaboration that combines band members from Prague’s alt-country Selfbrush and the Tabor-based post-rock band Some Other Place. In a melding of the lyricism of contemporary country music and the progressive space of minimalist rock, this new local act, calling themselves Please the Trees, are a perfect opening act for Woven Hand and a name to keep an ear out for in the future.

Darrell Jónsson can be reached at features@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (30/05/2007):

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