https://jamesblackshaw.bandcamp.com/album/new-album-2023
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I first heard “Running To The Ghost” sometime in 2007. Back then I worked doing data entry for music. Quaint! Seemed normal then, even if it had its perks. Though we now have streaming and all (Rdio RIP) my old job remains the best chance I ever had to hear wide swaths of interesting music. A lot can change in 15+ years. If not always for the better, then surely things only get more complicated.
We can be surrounded by music constantly, our choice, if we want to be. We hear it and it’s then gone from immediate experience. Which for me makes live music all the more special.
Music is a gift. In the past when I heard people say that, I used to think they meant something like “you’re so gifted, thank you for sharing your talent.” Nevertheless, there’s another aspect: the gift that professional musicians give to listeners (aside from years spent practicing) is actually traveling around. (A musician friend once called himself a professional driver, which is very true.) In exchange, a lot of musicians give up whatever stability and community that the rest of us take more or less for granted.
Musicians do have their fans. They’re somewhere out there. You can’t call them up or get on a group chat with them all. You can’t really get them all together in the same place. Do they really exist?? Sometimes you wonder, in a “When I’m Sixty Four” sense. I’ve heard it said the opposite of doubt – isn’t certainty – it’s faith. Musicians would seem to need a lot of that these days when you consider the time and money involved in recording and releasing a new album, and the lack of interest by anyone else helping pay for it up front. Personally, as someone not big on faith, I’d rather go the DIY certainty route myself, and who cares about the rough edges. As in, buy some gear, and listen and learn to use it as you go. Either way. Regardless of approach, that doesn’t diminish my next point.
Powerfully, the work that artists do, is sometimes not so much commoditizing their artifact — the encaustic on the gallery wall, the sculptural metalwork, the premiere of their documentary — but the dutiful and earnest documentation of their life’s journey. Not so much in the sense of presenting an outlandish persona. Though that can be fun. More so, sharing consequential experiences. When that magic intersection happens, art / music / life is better for it. And hey, musicians, by all means sell some merch too. Just remember to give us listeners something to live by. For example:
“Running To The Ghost” was the track that drew me in with its hypnotic lushness. And over repeated listens it dawned on me that all this vast sound was coming from one guitar, one pair of hands, 6 pairs of strings, and it opened a possibility. And maybe a challenge? Further in, the meandering landscape of “Clouds Collapse” / “The Mirror Speaks” / “Stained Glass Windows” revealed to me a sensibility and pathos that took no captive prisoners of guitar traditionalists, of which there are many varieties, and in time I think I came to appreciate that even more. And with that pathos, it’s evident that this music came from a person with strong experiences, and the music’s form followed the need to express that.
Thank goodness, James Blackshaw again opens up another way. Fahey’s certainly here. So is the open ended templates provided by the likes of Can and Bo Diddley. To my ears, so are the tears and blood of the Child Ballads. I am at this point the type of grumpy person that if I hear yet another sloppy blues turnaround I’m going to publicly lose all polite decorum, so for this listener the source aquifer has to go much, much deeper than the dried up Woodstock mudpit of mainstream guitar. A music that honors its ancestors and destroys its idols is bound to reward my attention, and if you’ve gotten this far, yours too.