GUEST MIXTAPE - ADAM GNADE
Following on from Ben’s, I asked Adam Gnade to put together a guest mixtape for me.
Here’s what he came back with…
“Fuck What You Know About Americana
When I tell people I play “Americana” I think most of them get the wrong idea. In the spirit of clarification, this is the stuff, the real Americana, the backbone. We start with pre-blues field recordings (fife/chant/hand-drum jams. Definite ancestors to Crash Worship and Lucky Dragons, right?).
Then it’s some weirdo cornfield blues (Othar motherfucking Turner!) and Southern gospel. Next we jump forward in time with a John Fahey noise-folk experiment off City of Refuge and Henry Flynt’s avant-bluegrass. (I think Flynt was in the Velvet Underground for a minute, which makes sense on “Hoedown.”).
The mix ends with Wand doing “Saturday Delivery” and Castanets’ cover of Viking Moses’ “One Arm Around the Sinner,” a song about a young girl prostituting herself (wildly, joyfully) across the land. (Listen to the words, “When I was a small girl and things began to swell/I’d put my body right to work and let the people pay me well” and “Hold on Arizona/so long San Antonio/with legs spread wide and we go.”) So, yeah, that’s my mixtape. Spend some time with it and let me know what you think...”
Tracklisting…
1. Compton Jones & Family playing “Old Dick Jones Is Dead And Gone”
2. Napoleon Strickland, Jimmie Buford & RL Boyce playing “Soft Black Jersey Cow”
3. Othar Turner playing a song of his own making “Black Woman”
4. Sid Hemphill playing “Sid Hemphill’s Band/After The Ball Is Over”
5. Sid Hemphill playing “The Devil’s Dream”
6. Blind Mamie Forehand playing “Honey in the Rock”
7. Elder Lightfoot Solomon Michaux and choir playing “Happy Am I”
8. John Fahey playing “Hope Slumbers Eternal”
9. Henry Flynt playing “Jumping”
10. Henry Flynt playing “Hoedown”
11. Wand playing “Saturday Delivery”
12. Castanets playing Viking Moses’ “One Arm Around The Sinner”
