Tim Eriksen Fleeting Days Lost Valley, AR 4K Tim Eriksen Music 2023-05-11 | I had a great time in NW Arkansas: shapenote singing school, all day singing and an intimate solo show. The singing was strong, and I it was great to make some noise with friends old and new, including Dan Brittain again who I hadn't sung with since 2016 in Warsaw. Many thanks to Allison Langston, for everything including shooting this on her phone, and to everyone who came out.
Tim Eriksen Tapestry Of Sacred Music 2021 HD 720p Tim Eriksen Music 2023-04-13 | Two shapenote hymns, "Solitude In The Grove," and "Distress."
Tim Eriksen in the Secret Garden HD Tim Eriksen Music 2022-12-30 | Here's a selection of Songs From The Secret Garden, a UK production from a while back. I learned Sandy Boys from Dwight Diller, but I suspect he'd say I rock and rolled it, and that it should be more of a march. The second tune is an actual march, or was used that way once people got it out of the opera Atalanta by Handel, who I'd think probably got the tune off some other people in the first place. I found it in the early 1990s in the 1798 Northampton, MA publication The American Musical Miscellany where it first appeared with these words. Local musician Elias Mann most likely did the arrangement, or at least his descendants remember it being one of his more memorable musical accomplishments. It went from there to a number of other places including the 7 shape book Christian Harmony and from there into the modern 4 shape collection Shenandoah Harmony. My dear friend Eliza Carthy recorded a lovely rendition recently. There are other verses, of course- I have some recollection of figuring out they're by Barnabas Bidwell from out in Berkshire County, and came together for a theatrical production from his student days at Yale in the 1780s, but I can't remember why I think that or where I came across anything suggesting it.
Tim Eriksen Little Margaret in Bosa Sardinia HD Tim Eriksen Music 2022-12-13 | Filmed by Anja Eriksen. I've been singing this for a long time. It has a good enough tune and a bit of poignancy around regret. I don't know how useful it is to have songs like this, but I guess it illustrates some familiar stuff. As Josh Billings Jr was supposedly fond of saying "just cuz there aint no spirits don't mean they won't haunt you."
Tim Eriksen Banjo at SArchittu Sea Caves HD Tim Eriksen Music 2022-12-06 | Filmed by Luka Eriksen and Beau Guenther. I believe the tune is "Going Across The Sea," played on Bill Dunn's banjo in preparation for a little show at Casa Bagnolo in Milis, Sardegna.
Tim Eriksen - Shep Jones Hornpipe/Making a Stone Axe Tim Eriksen Music 2022-10-26 | Shep Jones was a local character who played fiddle for dances around Stony Brook Harbor in a community whose other notable fiddlers included "Black Tony" Clapp whose grave I remember visiting when I was about 8 for some reason, and William Sidney Mount who even designed one he called the "cradle of harmony" with a concave back, supposed to made it louder. His painting Dance of the Haymakers seems to feature Shep Jones on fiddle, and the tune is written on the back I believe. I don't know if he wrote it, or Shep or Anthony Clapp or someone else did. I grew up around these people, or their kin anyway, next door to Rassapeague which I heard Mount had built for some of his descendants. (Update/correction: here's some more accurate information about Anthony Clapp than what I remembered, plus a photo of his gravestonetbrnewsmedia.com/tag/slave-burial-ground/).I think the first time I ever saw a banjo was in Mount's now famous 1856 painting The Banjo Player, which lives at the Museums at Stony Brook where I had a Saturday photography class in second grade. artsandculture.google.com/asset/the-banjo-player-william-sidney-mount/swEFiexWKiAgsg?hl=enI eventually met Jeff Davis, the only other person interested in Mount's music that I knew of, who pretty immediately became a great influence on my whole approach to this arena of music and history, aesthetically, philosophically and otherwise. I've been wanting to record with him ever since, and haven't given up yet.jeffdavismusician.comI learned to knap chert from another, earlier mentor of mine, John White of Michael, Illinois and over time adapted the technique to the quartz I grew up around. I learned so much from John and Ellie. I don't know if John coined the term, but he called himself an experimental ethnographer. He was nearly as interested in his Scottish ancestry as his Cherokee/Shawnee, and I helped him build both a hill fort and a Kaskaskia village on their property. His twin interests in material and oral culture were deep and informed my own. It wasn't until much later that I began to figure out how much of my outlook was influenced by a combination of salt water and dislocation. "If you're not my ancestors, why are you buried in my woods?" With every tide or storm there were new things on the beach, moved around or washed out of the bank behind me. Old claret bottles from the vineyard at Rassapeague, quartz tools, kequok, potsherds, salad dressing bottles, tampon applicators, dead raccoons, a shark, pieces of boats, or whole boats (my brother even got in a band because of one) and one time a whole coconut still in the husk. I don't know if it was dropped overboard by someone who brought it back as a souvenir or if it was brought by a strange current, but I made a quartz blade and used it to make the coconut into a drinking vessel we could use to gather fresh water from one of the two springs I knew of on the harbor. I don't know if anything ever tasted better, although it's subject to a nostalgic glow. There's a ton more I could write about all this, but for now I hope you'll investigate Jeff Davis's music and, to come back to where I started, you really ought to read Chistopher Smith's (yeah, he's one of them, but apparently didn't know it until he started his research) The Creolization of American Culture: William Sidney Mount and the Roots of Blackface Minstrelsy.https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p080524It's amazing, and gets at both some really interesting details and some important big picture stuff about race and culture in the US and surrounds. It also has nice pictures.
Tim Eriksen and Friends: Magic Lantern Show at Historic Deerfield 10/13/2023 Tim Eriksen Music 2022-10-08 | October 13 2023, 7 pmDeerfield Community Centerwww.historic-deerfield.orgA follow up to last year's presentation of Pumpkintown, this iteration will feature more songs and glass slide projections, some of which are brand new.
Hallelujah at the Pinnacles Tim Eriksen and friends Tim Eriksen Music 2022-10-05 | I went for a walk up in The Pinnacles with my friends Gerald Clark, Allison Steel and Allison Langston the morning after a pretty amazing concert at Berea College in which we sang a bunch of shapenote tunes associated with the 19th century Abolition movement, along with Mat Callahan, Yvonne Moore and a stunning group of singers organized and led by Dr. Kathy Bullock. You can watch "Songs and Slavery and Abolition" on the Berea College website. vimeo.com/isslive
Mear: Berea, KY- Tim Eriksen, Allison Steel and Allison Langston Tim Eriksen Music 2022-09-20 | Filmed at Anglin Falls in Berea KY. We were in Berea for a remarkable convocation event at the college, celebrating the book, CD and film Songs of Slavery and Abolition, which we took part in filming and recording in 2018. We did our part at the David Ruggles Center in Florence, MA though much of the rest of it was done at the college. youtube.com/watch?v=HmytdAYr-s0&t=11sMear, 49b in the Sacred Harp, is the earliest known piece of American music, or rather the earliest piece of published music written by anyone born in what would become the USA, ca. 1720. I've written about it at some length- let me know if you're super interested and I can send you some stuff, but just a few things for now.Mear is pretty much ubiquitous- the most perennial piece in what would become the shapenote repertoire, with the possible exception of Old 100. It was a favorite of many well known tunes used by abolitionists at an array of gatherings, usually with texts written especially for the cause. For the concert we used a text from William Wells Brown's Antislavery Harp, 1848, a words only book that suggests the tune Ortonville. That's a good one too, but Mear is better and seems to have been more popular in the movement, at least with Black singers. William Wells Brown was a remarkable figure- one of the most well known and respected of his day. I don't remember even hearing his name before this project, despite his having been a celebrated orator, novelist, playwright, activist and doctor, and despite my having researched a lot of adjacent history including several events it turns out he attended. Brown was born into enslavement in Mount Sterling, KY not far from Berea (which has its own amazing history https://www.berea.edu/about/history/), but by the time of the Civil War he was practicing medicine in Boston, having gone through just about everything. There's a story, which he didn't dispute (though apparently didn't believe), that he was the grandson of Daniel Boone. He's now probably best known as the author of the novel Clotel, a piece of well informed fiction centering one of Thomas Jefferson's enslaved daughters. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ClotelHere are the lyrics from the Antislavery Harp. Verse 3 seems to speak particularly to Brown's biography, though it speaks to untold others as well. Check out the great and still newish (2014) biography by Ezra Greenspan. Amazing that it took that long.What mean ye that ye bruise and bind My people, saith the Lord,And starve your craving brother’s mind, Who asks to hear my word?What mean ye that ye make them toil, Through long and dreary years,And shed like rain upon your soil Their blood and bitter tears?What mean ye, that ye dare to rend The tender mother’s heart?Brothers from sisters, friend from friend, How dare you bid them part?What mean ye, when God’s bounteous hand To you so much has given,That from the slave who tills your land Ye keep both earth and heaven?When at the judgment God shall call, Where is thy brother? say,What mean ye to the Judge of all To answer on that day?
Tim Eriksen- The Southern Girls Reply Tim Eriksen Music 2022-08-30 | Pretty soon after I picked up the fiddle, around the end of the war in Bosnia, I learned this from the wildly under appreciated Jeff Davis, although I already kind of knew it from Anne and Frank Warner's recording of Rebecca King Jones of Cape Hatteras NC that I got from Peter Kennedy in Gloucester, England ca. 1988. Lots of long stories. The words first appeared in a newspaper in 1863 when people used to write poems and newspapers used to print them. The tune is obviously The Bonny Blue Flag. I'm wondering if I should turn comments off. What do you think?
Tim Eriksen SH 106 Remembering Bill Dunn Tim Eriksen Music 2022-05-01 | We had our first all day singing since March 2020 over in Chatham today. We had an extended memorial lesson for all those we lost over the past two years. It's been weird to not be able to sing properly for people. My voice finally feels normal after singing from about 9:30-3:30. I was pretty tired when I got back, but I went out to the woods tonight to make a video for Bill, on his banjo which I've been playing since he passed. He was a good man, a good friend and a good bass singer. With love to Kelly, Joey and Lizzie, and many others who miss him sorely.
Friendship- Tim Eriksen in the Colorado Rockies Tim Eriksen Music 2022-04-12 | Here's this song again, this time on the drive between Paonia and Boulder Colorado. I was in Colorado for back shows that were about as different as they get. Friday night in Boulder I did two performances of Follow the Birds, a suite of original and traditional songs and improvisation by a really remarkable nine piece band including hardanger, bass clarinet, amplified trumpet, laptop, home made analog synthesizer, prepared guitar and post metal quartet through a 44 channel ambisonic system in the experimental theater at CU's Atlas Institute. Saturday was a solo acoustic show in front of a tiny sold out audience at the ridiculously charming Bross Hotel in Paonia- the first show they'd ever put on. Both were great and well worth repeating. Here's a link to the livestream- an edited and mixed version is forthcoming.youtube.com/watch?v=zNhPt-Z-6K0&t=2575s
Amelia (2022) Tim Eriksen HD 1080p Tim Eriksen Music 2022-04-04 | I started writing this over 30 years ago but, as simple as it is, it's taken this long for me to feel like it's done. Several long stories are involved. A bunch of us got together this afternoon to sing recently written shapenote songs at Allison and Jan Erik's barn. It was cold but...
HOPE Tim Eriksen and Tatiana Hargreaves Tim Eriksen Music 2022-03-21 | At 50th street station in NYC. I just returned from a lovely three day run at the Irish Arts Center in Hell's Kitchen culminating in a collaboration with Tatiana Hargreaves and Allison de Groot in celebration of the release of their terrific new disc Hurricane Clarice. I look forward to more opportunities to play together, which looks likely. I have a long relationship with this song, starting with the flea market discovery of Amelia Clarke's copy of the 1848 American Vocalist over 30 years ago which I've written about at length elsewhere. (In multiple liner notes, a performance piece and especially in my PhD dissertation). This was a favorite of hers, and the title track of an unreleased album I recorded with my shape note singing friends Northampton Harmony in 1997 in the church in Searsmont Maine where Daniel Mansfield was preaching when he put the book together. Many long stories later, I wasn't able to make any shapenote tunes for about 26 years until the last couple of months. I don't really know why, although I have some ideas. The main thing is, it's done and I included it at the end in case you want to sing the other parts. The air is Keyes, which I've never seen anywhere else. Mansfield had relatives of that name, so it may be his tune, or maybe one of theirs. I've never really chased it down, despite the years of research I devoted to the book and the people around it. It may be partly that I'm so attached to the song that I'm not as concerned about its external particulars.The words are Thomas Moore's, and I think they're among his best.
Erins Green Shore- Tim Eriksen in Hells Kitchen Tim Eriksen Music 2022-03-17 | Walking around Hell's Kitchen around midnight before three nights at the Irish Arts Center on 51st and 11th. I tried to get some good rat footage but they're surprisingly shy.
Good Morning Brother Pilgrim - Tim Eriksen HD 720p Tim Eriksen Music 2022-02-22 | Singing and skating
Died For Love Fisher:A Sailors Life Tim Eriksen HD 1080p Tim Eriksen Music 2022-01-29 | When I post about my music it tends to generate much less interest than when I post about random crap that happened to me, so here's my facebook post from my hotel room in Palm Beach, FL the other day: I went down to the pool to swim but I left my phone in the room because I didn't want it to fall into the pool and I figured nothing very interesting would happen that I would want to take a picture of and then a large iguana fell out of a palm tree into the pool and got chased around by a bunch of rich people and engaged in what I imagine was some sort of defensive excretion and then they had to close the pool so I'm going to see if there are any donuts instead.The song comes from my grandfather's copy of Heart Songs with bits I remember from other places. I arranged it as a hymn tune back in the 90s and some people still sing it.
And Pass From Hence Away Tim Eriksen Music 2021-11-29 | www.timeriksenmusic.com http://www.new.facebook.com/pages/Tim-Eriksen/27966272629 www.evanchambers.net From Evan Chambers' amazing symphonic piece, a recording of which will be released in coming months. In memory of Mr. John Wood who died July 5th 1799 Aged 55 years "There is a song which doth belong to all the human race concerning death who steals the breath and blasts a comely face. Come listen all unto my call that I do make today. For you must die as well as I And pass from hence away."
Occoms Carol: Tim Eriksen at Sally Maminashs Grave HD 1080p Tim Eriksen Music 2021-11-24 | Filmed by Anja EriksenI found this remarkable song just about thirty years ago, and have been singing it ever since. I'm still waiting for it to catch on. I was doing some work for Dr. Nicholas Temperley, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Temperley whose Hymn Tune Index sought to document every hymn tune with an English text published up to 1820, and the PVMA library in Deerfield, MA had the only known copy of several issues of a magazine published locally ca. 1800-1803. The librarian David Proper wouldn't let them be photocopied (this was before cell phones obviously) so my job was to transcribe it all, with the help of Cath Tyler who I'd met a year or so before when she came to see my band at CBGB. Cath took to shape notes really quickly, and before too long managed to use them to figure out how to play bass just in time for our first European tour. youtube.com/watch?v=L4h03L49ac4 I have long believed this text was Samson Occom's but must say now that I'm not certain without further research, and I may have been the original source for its general attribution to him. I'll keep you posted!The American Musical Magazine was, I believe, the third music magazine in the US. It was published periodically by the Hampshire Musical Society in Northampton, printed at the Bridge Street shop of Andrew and Daniel Wright, a couple of blocks from where this was filmed. The known members were all men including First Church music director Elias Mann (who lived over by South Street) and a man named Alanson Anderson from out in West Chesterfield, a tunebook compiler who has so far escaped the history books, and whose Schoolmaster's Assistant I have yet to find a complete copy of. A number of the pieces in the A.M.M. are unattributed, including the fuging tune from which I remembered this bit as my tune. Another little mystery. In about 2000 I was teaching at Dartmouth College, which has a fascinating and uncomfortable connection to Mohegan Presbyterian preacher Samson Occom (1723-92) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Occom and I found this text in the Dartmouth special collections' copy of Occom's 1774 hymbook, the first published by a Native American. His most enduring text is probably Awaked by Sinai's Awful Sound, sung locally to the tune Ganges, and still sung by friends in the Hoboken Georgia area to the tune Nashville (like Garden Hymn). Not long after that I was in Oxford England, where Dave Townsend showed me a photocopy of a manuscript with this text noted as something like "sent to me by a gentleman," and the music attributed to the famous English composer William Knapp, a huge influence on William Billings et al. It wasn't this tune though. I later found in Knapp's 1761 edition of "New Church Melody" evidence of an interesting correspondence going back to 1753. Knapp doesn't name him, but someone had sent him some texts, asking him to set them to music. Knapp quotes a letter received with the text "O Sight of Anguish." "Sir, I take the liberty, tho- unknown, of troubling you with another Carol which I beg you will do me the Honour of Setting to Music. If this performance as I fear it will, should prove less animated than the occasion requires, your candor must ascribe it, in some measure, to an illness under which I have long labour'd and which has greatly depressed my Spirits and likewise to the frequency of my attempts upon the same subject this before you being the fifth Composition of the kind, you will see here too many Symptoms of a Sickly Music. And yet I expect that Music which works wonders, and is known to be Sovereign in some diseases will at least give her a more sprightly Air, if not totally relieve her." Etc. Occom seems to have been burdened with depression and drink, if you believe what you read, and read a little between the lines. But his "sickly muse" has some things to say. "Man, the worst brute, no pity shows... Thous boundless Mind our hearts inflame...Vain is mere joy, let actions bless this prodigy of Love..." Different from Watts, but substantial and apparently deeply felt work. (See Brooks, Joanna 2006 for a challenge to Occom's authorship). Knapp clearly got it, and eventually got to meet Occom when he traveled to England to raise money for what became Dartmouth College. (It was supposed to be a charity school for Native people in CT, but that's another story).en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleazar_WheelockI sang this earlier today at the grave of Occom's sister's daughter Sally Maminash, on Bridge Street in Northampton, whose memory is caught up in the "last Indian" myth. I don't subscribe to necromancy or spiritualism, but I thought it might be appropriate to sing this for her. I'll try to make a better version when it's less cold out. Dr. Margaret Bruchac has documented about all that's known about Sally Maminash. http://www.historic-northampton.org/highlights/maminash.html"
Spencer Rifle Tim Eriksen at Vance Randolphs Grave HD 1080p Tim Eriksen Music 2021-11-18 | Explicit...Filmed by Allison Langston who put together a great weekend of events for me in Fayetteville, Arkansas back in October that included a concert under the stars, a visit to 1,500 year old petroglyphs, the Arkansas Archeological Survey's ceramics collection and a webinar sponsored by Arkansas Folk and Traditional Arts and the University of Arkansas Libraries Special Collections, where I talked (and sang) about the "unprintable" (i.e. explicit) folksongs found in the Ozarks by the remarkable Vance Randolph. https://folklife.uark.edu/webinar-eriksen/ Long story short, here I am performing one of those songs at his grave. I didn't know him, but I think he would get a kick out of it. Aside from his own works, most of what I know about him comes from the great biography by Robert Cochran, which is interesting not only because Randolph is such a great subject but as an example of biography and, really, social history. I recommend it. One of my earliest encounters with Randolph was UARK Press's 1992 release of a two volume posthumous collection of this material edited by the equally fascinating and thorny Gershon Legman. Not long after it came out, my band Cordelia's Dad began performing songs from the collection, and recorded three with Steve Albini in 1997 at the legendary Slaughterhouse in Amherst, MA, a studio that made it's way into Steve's collection of anecdotes about noteworthy recording experiences, not only because of its lack of plumbing and discreet paths out into the bird sanctuary behind it. (As a side note, he flew directly from that recording session to record Jimmy Page and Robert Plant's "Walking Into Clarksdale" at Abbey Road, which I understand has not only bathrooms but prawn sandwiches). One of the strange things about being any age is the impossibility of conveying what things were like to people who weren't around yet, and how ridiculous it sounds to them- ala Abe Simpson. The year I started playing punk rock, Monty Python's Life of Brian was rated X (!!!) and Ticketmaster refused to put the band name on tickets for concerts by the Dead Kennedys. Not long prior, The Sex Pistols weren't allowed on British radio because of their (PG rated?) name and the fact they said mean things about the queen and had a song about abortion. Oh, they also said fuck a lot. Nothing much naughtier than you'd find in a mother/daughter tik tok of Bored In The House youtube.com/watch?v=YHp0o4ehT8w or pretty much anything having to do with politics, nevermind the chirpy frankness of Garfunkel and Oates youtube.com/watch?v=_mrV4ArcYhE. Even most people who were aware of Cordelia's Dad early on don't remember that part of the initial fun was not just obnoxiously loud renditions of sappy folksongs but tender acoustic versions of Anarchy In The UK and the Misfits' "I Want Your Skulls." Part of it to me was that, in the big picture of human sound production, this stuff was all pretty close, sonically, thematically, culturally and historically. It all spoke to basic human experience, or at least concerns and desires, if particularly to people of western European descent in the most recent thousand years or so. I found it all potentially wonderful and interesting, sometimes really funny. There are still songs among those Randolph found, sung by hard living timbermen and Mormon school girls, that would peel the paint off a Megan Thee Stallion billboard, and some are truly disturbing, although less for frankness than for unvarnished cruelty, even if "it's only a joke." But for the most part, and certainly in the case of the songs we chose, the songs no longer raise the eyebrows they did even as recently (haha) as the 1990s when we recorded them. Some are really tender, and get at some things I'd love to hear more about in song. At the heart of the songs we recorded was some version of consent. Consent is hardly the simple and magic bullet it's often portrayed as currently, since people will agree for all kind of reasons to all kinds of things that, if they were, for example, less traumatized by life, they would not. But it's a starting place. In this song everyone seems to be more or less in agreement at the beginning and alright in the end. In the recording we did with Albini we changed "he" to "she" in verse 7. There's a lot to be said about balancing representation, ethics, fidelity to cultural/historical accuracy and making engaging music that means something to listeners, but not now. There's also a lot to be said about putting songs like this together with sacred music- something the band thought and talked about a lot before doing it. I still feel it's constructive, and hopefully doesn't hurt too many feelings. We have one preacher friend who found it upsetting, which I'm still sad about. Patented in 1860, Spencer's rifle was an early repeater. Arf Arf. In older Ozark lingo "pork"=pussy, as does "cock" interestingly enough.
Tim Eriksen Amazing Grace 2007 HD Tim Eriksen Music 2021-10-12 | Here's a higher resolution version of the second video I ever posted to youtube, shot by Peter Irvine on Mount Pollux after the first Sunday singing in October 2007. At the time, trying to make decent quality files without exceeding youtube's limits involved a lot of guesswork, so I hope you enjoy the improvement.I started making videos after my wife Minja died and I was without work crashing at a friend's house with my two children who were little. The idea was to get out in the world and do something creative, reconnect with the seasons and the place and maybe get some work. Youtube acquaintance Wendy M requested Amazing Grace for a loved one who was struggling, and I hadn't thought of singing this version of song with banjo until the moment. It was meaningful to us all, I think, to have this and cool that it found an unexpectedly large number of viewers. It even did help me get some really nice work eventually.John Newton was known to have such a taste and talent for profanity that the existing words weren't always enough to convey the depth of his feeling. He later brought his way with words to sacred poetry, some of the best we have. This is one of many tunes used for these words of his, and probably my favorite. Like so many others I learned it from a tunebook owned by Amelia Clark 1850-1944 that I bought at a junk shop in Hadley (off to the left behind my head in the video) around the time Nevermind came out. It's a bit of a leap, but I took the photo at the end the day before yesterday at an unmarked petroglyph site off a country road south of Fayetteville, Arkansas (thanks to Allison Langston for taking me there and figuring out a great weekend of gigs!) Today is coincidentally a national holiday recognizing Indigenous people. Material culture was and is an important point of entry for me to a lot of the work I do, and my attention is often on liminal presences where the sea comes in "between the earth and the sky" (#Lankum). As a kid I remember thinking "if you're not my ancestors, why are you buried in my woods?" I'm not completely opposed to the "heritage" model, which can be a part of meaningful and constructive work and also figures prominently in most murder. But coming to something like this version of Amazing Grace is, on one or two levels anyway, more to do with leaning about and repurposing flotsam. (And or jetsam- no idea which is which). I had an insight some years ago talking with my architect friend and former mentor Ben Ledbetter about how I trained myself to work and how deeply and non-metaphorically it was affected by growing up on salt water. Every day the water brought new things onto the beach and if it was high enough or turbulent enough washed old things out of the bank, or up out of the sand. Salad dressing packets, hand blown bottles, 500 to 5,000 year old quartz implements, sea coal, a dead shark. I found a late woodland potsherd with a distinct finger impression, and one time a coconut still in the husk. I don't know if it came to New England on a strange tide or was bought at King Kullen and dropped off the side of a boat. Spending time with the materials, and with help from another set of mentors, especially Cherokee/Shawnee/Scottish "experimental ethnographer" friends John and Ellie White I figured out how to make reasonably good tools from quartz pieces the glacier brought. Whatever the origin of the coconut, I used a quartz blade to make it into a drinking bowl that I still have somewhere. In case I'm coming off as unclear or hasty, the non-metaphorical point has something to do with finding junk, internalizing it and making it into things I like to use and share.
Sarasa Sama Dana Tim Eriksen Music 2021-10-01 | My dear friend and mentor David Reck passed away last night. I'll be posting more in coming weeks- there's a lot to say. For now here's something I filmed for David in the Spring of 2020. I learned it from him in about 1985, and we played it in just about every double veena concert we ever did together. He learned it from Ramachandra Iyer, who I later studied with in Chennai ca.1988-89, and he learned it from Karaikudi Sambasivayyer.
Logans Lament - Tim Eriksen on Fretless Bajo Sexto HD 1080p Tim Eriksen Music 2021-08-01 | There's a lot to be said about Logan and the song inspired by his famous speech. The only research I've done is in secondary sources, some of which I take with a grain of salt. If you want to look further, here's a place to start: http://greatwarriorspath.blogspot.com/2016/10/did-it-happen-logans-lament.htmlThe events described took place in the Spring of 1774 near where Yellow Creek meets the Ohio River. The speech given by Cayuga/Mingo leader Logan (sometimes called "Logan the Orator") was printed in multiple newspapers of the day, and the subject of considerable public discussion, and even quoted by Thomas Jefferson in his Notes On the State of Virginia. The poem the speech inspired is unattributed, as far as I've been able to find, but also had some circulation, including in Lydia Sigourney's notes to her poem Traits of the Aborigines of America. As far as I know it's only been found once as a song in oral tradition, by folklorist Anne Grimes. How I got the song is a story in itself. Benjamin Franklin, in particular, was deeply affected by political thought and practice in the Iroquois Confederacy, some 600 years old at the time. In the months leading up to the Declaration of Independence, Franklin and others sought the advice of Iroquois leaders as to how to govern a dispersed people. The flip side of this reverence for Iroquois people and political thought, among those who signed the document, was the declaration's complaint that George III had instigated fighting against whites by the "merciless Indian savages," presumably including Logan, his kin and others in the Confederation, in what whites then considered frontier. "Fusees" are muskets. http://www.lewis-clark.org/article/2358The song is clearly influenced by Romanticism's "noble savage." Understanding Logan involves a lot more than just identifying with him as a tragic character for a minute, and his speech tells a rather different story from the song, but it's a start. Filmed a little after sunrise on a dock on the May River, South Carolina, at a resort in a gated community on what was long a plantation. Part of what is currently the richest town in the state, in 1860 the area was home to a population that was predominantly (over 80%) enslaved, and for 8,000 to 10,000 years prior had been home to people who came to call themselves Yamassee. They all had names of course. They still do:http://yamasseenation.org/indexNOTE: It can be really easy to breezily adopt positions based on how they seem to resonate or go with our wardrobe. Not surprisingly, the actual impact of Iroquois thought and practice on Franklin and other white people is debated. In an excellent William and Mary M.A. thesis I discovered after my initial post, Nancy Dieter Egloff offers compelling analysis suggesting the story of the Iroquois impact on early US white people and their documents is at least partly academic folklore. It's a good story- just not necessarily the most accurate representation of history. It can be hard to budge stories once they've taken root. The thesis is from 1987! Of course stories with various relationships to truth, in whatever sense, can have their own things to say about people and, in the words of Homer Simpson "stuff that happened." That's part of why I bother singing them. Maybe just don't get too fixated. The black bird is singing on Michigan’s shoreAs sweetly and gaily as ever before.For she knows to her mate she at pleasure can hieAnd her dear little brood she is teaching to fly.Oh alas I am undone!Each bird and each beast are as blest in degreeAll nature is cheerful and happy but me.I will go to my tent and lie down in despair.I will paint me with black and I’ll sever my hair. Oh…I will sit on the shore where the hurricane blowsAnd reveal to the God of the tempest my woes.I will weep for a season on bitterness fed,For my kindred have gone to the hills of the dead…They died not by hunger or lingering decayThe steel of the white man hath swept them away.The snakeskin that once I so sacredly boreI will toss with disdain to the storm beaten shore…Oh alas…They came to my cabin was heaven was black.I heard not their coming and I knew not their track.But I saw by the light of their blazing fuseesThey were people engendered beyond the big seas…I will dig up my hatchet and bend my oak bow.By night and by day I will follow the foeNo lake shall impede me nor mountains nor snow.Ah their blood can alone give my spirit repose….My wife and my children! Oh spare me the tale.For who is there now that is kin to Gehale?My wife and my children! Oh spare me the tale,For who is there now that is kin to Gehale?
Tim Eriksen: Fretless Bajo Sexto Improvisation HD 720p Tim Eriksen Music 2021-07-10 | One of my projects over the past year without gigs has been to finally create and work on playing this fretless bajo sexto. I've been playing (trying to figure out) bajo sexto since 2004. That's kind of a long story. I've wanted a fretless one for a long time, and finally got around to doing it this Spring. (Thanks to the Fretted Instrument in Amherst for putting on the beautiful brass fingerboard). I've been playing it a lot, and have a lot to learn. The form of this improvisation is a sort of Americanized raga alapana. My main instrument of study has been the Saraswati veena, and much of my playing is modified from that technique and instrumental tradition (Karaikudi veena). On paper the structure of raga Shankarabharanam is analogous to Western major. In reality, not so much. I'm definitely in major here, although there may be touches of Shankarabharanam and maybe even Yamunkalyani.#sintrastes #bajosexto #carnaticmusic
Sacred Harp Singing Tuesday July 9, 2002 Hills Chapel, Northampton, MA HD 720p Tim Eriksen Music 2021-05-01 | It was a good one- the fourth consecutive day (officially) of singing shape-note music together with local friends and visitors from Texas, New Mexico, Oregon, Minnesota, California and around the northeast. It's been a great long weekend of singing for about twenty years now, and a lot of us missed it sorely last summer. Saturday before the first Sunday in July is the Pioneer Valley all day singing in Sunderland, followed by a mixed book singing in Amherst on Sunday, Harp of Ages Monday night in Leyden and finally the weekly Sacred Harp singing in Northampton. Of course there was lots of additional singing here and there, some of which I also found on some old tapes and intend to edit and post at some point. I decided to just post this one unedited to give a better sense of things.There's a lot of backstory, which I'll mostly leave off for now, but the Tuesday singing at Helen Hills Chapel has become something of an institution that's central to shape-note singing in the region and has helped set the stage for other weekly singings around the country and beyond. I'll defer to Allison Steel for details on its origin, but I remember her starting to show up at the Amherst singing hosted by Ruth and Richard Hooke around 1997 or 98. In the land before internet, one of the main ways a lot of people found out about it was through my band Cordelia's Dad, whose shows typically devolved from torrential feedback into post-gig shape note singing. Allison and her friends Jess and Mary Ellen started the Hills Chapel singing around then, in 1998. It's always been about as informal as you can see here. For bigger, all day sings we've always used the standard practice among most Sacred Harp singers for such events- an arranging committee calling leaders they either know or who have signed on to lead a lesson. At smaller gatherings comprised mostly of people who know each other, we've generally gone around the square which is nice because it gives everyone a chance to call a song or pass the hat to the next person in line. That doesn't work, though, when you have as many as 100 people over the course of an evening, with different schedules, coming and going, switching parts and maybe only able to be there for a half hour but possibly looking forward to leading a song all week. I hadn't heard the phrase "open call" until ten or fifteen years ago- I'm not sure if that's because it's a neologism or, like most things, I just didn't know about it. In any case, it describes how the Tuesday singing has mostly worked- people calling a song when they like, trying not to hog the center, letting everyone know that they can do that (whether or not they want to lead) and trying to encourage people individually who might be shy or visiting or new to the whole thing. For a year or two before the shutdown, however, we were following our friend Becky Wright's suggestion and going around during the third, typically smaller, session. It's a work in progress.If you've gotten this far, you might suspect that I'm writing about minutiae because it's easier than reckoning with all that's going on in this video. Some of it should be clear even to a casual viewer, but much of it will not be. There's just a lot. But there's also a lot of beauty here that doesn't require you to know much of anything about the minutiae, the people, history, theology, music. I hope you enjoy the video and that, when it becomes possible, you might come sing on a Tuesday. You're always welcome.
Tim Eriksen -John Colbys Hymn HD720 (2007) Tim Eriksen Music 2021-03-26 | This was my first youtube video, uploaded in September 2007 when the maximum possible quality was very limited. I just found a stash of old media, so I'll be sharing improved versions of existing videos and adding some new ones. I'm going on 14 years of ad free music on youtube. If you'd like to support the work, check out www.timeriksenmusic.com ortimeriksen.bandcamp.com
Fleeting Days Tim Eriksen Music 2020-12-02 | Tuesday night Sacred Harp singing over zoom and jamulus. It already feels primitive- I wonder how long it will be before it feels old fashioned.
Tim Eriksen and Maciej Kaziński- Greenwood Side Tim Eriksen Music 2020-10-29 | Tim Eriksen- voice Maciej Kaziński- hurdy gurdy. I recently found this recording we made in Jarosław, Poland in 2008. It's an off the cuff study for what was to have been a larger collaboration. Sadly Maciej passed in 2018. Among his many accomplishments, he was the director of the Festiwal Pieśń Naszych Korzeni, a remarkable festival of early music on the Ukraine border. At the suggestion of Magdalena Zapędowska, and somewhat against the wishes of board members who doubted the existence of such a thing as early music from the United States, he brought me over to perform several concerts and teach Sacred Harp singing, Poland's first encounter with the music with the exception of a wonderful radio documentary Magda produced for Poland Radio 2. It's an old song from Amherst MA.
Rocky Road for Andy Tim Eriksen Music 2020-10-16 | For Rick Johnson and family, remembering how Andy loved to lead this song.
Camilles Not Afraid of the Barn- Tim Eriksen Tim Eriksen Music 2020-08-14 | Livestream concert Saturday August 15, 3pm EST (8 pm UTC+1).folkweekendoxford.co.uk/component/eventbooking/zoom-events/tim-eriksen.htmlFrom the Cordelia's Dad album What It Is.
Sacred Harp- Karens last singing, May 2000, Easthampton, MA Tim Eriksen Music 2020-06-14 | Here are some fragments of a memorable little singing in the Easthampton Congregational Church hall just a few weeks before Karen died. Karen House leads 559 in the Sacred Harp Cooper Edition, Kelly House leads 139 in the 1991 edition and I lead 448 (the tape starts around the middle). Filmed by Mirjana Laušević. You can hear her forgetting not to sing while holding the camera at the end. There are a couple of folks whose names aren't coming to mind or who I can't quite make out, but in the tenors, in addition to me, I see Phillp Saylor Wisor, Alison Schofield (Steel), Andrew Magee, Tollie and Ramona Lee, Kshama Ananthapura, Paula... and I think that's Ken Langley. Basses: Eric Morgan, Louis Freilicher, Miles and Tom Schofield, Peter Irvine, Johnny and David Lee. In treble I see Laura Timmerman, Eliza Cavanaugh, Kelly and Karen House, Cathy and Delorese Lee, Laura Risk...Altos are Linda Shea, Minja, Cath Oss (Tyler) and Laura Clawson.Update June 17: The singing was on May 14, and wasn't Karen's last. Peter Irvine remembered, and Bradford West confirmed, that she and Bradford went to a singing in Brooklyn on the afternoon of June 11. Karen passed away during the early hours of June 12.
Song of the Aliened American- Joshua McCarter Simpson Tim Eriksen Music 2020-06-06 | Filmed at the David Ruggles Center for Underground Railroad History, May 20, 2018. Originally published in 1852, this version comes from the retrospective collection The Emancipation Sidecar, 1874.Song of the “Aliened American.”(Joshua McCarter Simpson-The Emancipation Car pp. 17-18) Tune: America/My Country ’tis of Thee)My country, ’tis of thee,Dark land of Slavery,In thee we groan,Long have our chains been worn—Long has our grief been borne—Our flesh has long been torn,E’en from our bones.The white man rules the day—He bears despotic sway, O’er all the land.He wields the Tyrant’s rod,Fearless of man or God,And at his impious nod, We “fall or stand.”O! shall we longer bleed?Is there no one to plead The black man’s cause?Does justice thus demandThat we shall wear the brand,And raise not voice nor hand Against such laws?No! no! the time has come,When we must not be dumb, We must awake.We now “Eight Millions Strong,”Must strike sweet freedom’s songAnd lease ourselves, our wrong— Our chains must break.
Tim Eriksen - HOPE Tim Eriksen Music 2020-05-27 | A favorite of Amelia Clark of Northampton, MA 1850-1944, learned from her copy of an 1848 tunebook I found at a flea market about 30 years ago, with many thanks to Club Passim and its PEAR Fund (Passim Emergency Artist Relief). The organization has already helped a number of musicians, and in the meantime assembled a youtube playlist of songs celebrating resilience and hope. To contribute to this fund check out www.clubpassim.org/PEARfund
Tim Eriksen - HOPE Tim Eriksen Music 2020-05-27 | A favorite song of Amelia Clark, 1850-1944, learned from her 1848 tunebook I found at a flea market 30 years ago, with many thanks to Club Passim and their PEAR Fund (Passim Emergency Artist Relief). The folks at Passim have helped a whole bunch of musicians, and have been compiling a youtube playlist of songs celebrating resilience, encouragement and hope.
Leave Your Light On- Tim Eriksen Tim Eriksen Music 2020-03-24 | I wrote this a long time ago, and it's still one of my favorites. Long story. Short story is that it's snowing out, and I wanted to play this in the yard with my new tiny guitar that somehow sounds good with my two old Rat pedals (only effects I've owned since about 1986). When we recorded it way back when, Steve Albini took to calling it "the Tom Bodette song." Filmed by Anja.
236 Tim Eriksen tenor Tim Eriksen Music 2020-03-23 | Somebody on facebook said something about practicing leading Sacred Harp using stuffed animals. I bleeped over the idea at first, but it grew on me in the spirit of "why not" hopefully becoming the new "why." This is hardly the best I've ever sung it, but it is the best I've ever sung it in a hut in the woods surrounded by stuffed animals. I hope you enjoy singing along!Anja and Eliasz helped make this.
Tim Eriksen - Sugar Baby Tim Eriksen Music 2020-03-03 | Tim Eriksen live at Klub Letka, Prague, CZ. March 15 2020, 8pm. https://www.earthmusic.eu/en/tim-eriksen-prague-klub-letka-15-march-2020/
Every Sound Below- Tim Eriksen Tim Eriksen Music 2020-02-14 | From the Magic Lantern Musical "Pumpkintown" featuring Peter Irvine, percussion and Susan Brearey, paintings and projections with an 1880 magic lantern.
Dress It In Blue with Buffalo Tim Eriksen Music 2018-06-24 | Just after sunrise near Moran, WY. Could have been a famous last selfie, it occurs to me. Stupid tourists.
Distress Tim Eriksen Music 2018-06-14 | Near the opening to a network of old smugglers' tunnels beneath Robin Hood's Bay.
My Country Tis of Thee/Northfield: Shape-note Songs and Abolitionism Tim Eriksen Music 2018-05-21 | Here's a glimpse of the recording session a bunch of us did yesterday at the David Ruggles Center for Underground Railroad History in Florence, MA. Thanks to Sara Lennox and all at the Ruggles Center for welcoming us, to Gerald Clark for multiple roles in making it happen, to Tristan Gordon for setting texts to tunes and to all the singers who came out. Thanks, also, to Matt Callahan for getting the ball rolling, to Don Fiero for recording and Reto for filming! More news as the project develops.Song Of The Aliened Americanby Joshua McCarter Simpson, 1852(This version from the retrospective 1874 collection "The Abolition Sidecar")Tune: America/My Country ’tis of Thee)My country, ’tis of thee,Dark land of Slavery,In thee we groan,Long have our chains been worn—Long has our grief been borne—Our flesh has long been torn,E’en from our bones.The white man rules the day—He bears despotic sway, O’er all the land.He wields the Tyrant’s rod,Fearless of man or God,And at his impious nod, We “fall or stand.”O! shall we longer bleed?Is there no one to plead The black man’s cause?Does justice thus demandThat we shall wear the brand,And raise not voice nor hand Against such laws?No! no! the time has come,When we must not be dumb, We must awake.We now “Eight Millions Strong,”Must strike sweet freedom’s songAnd lease ourselves, our wrong— Our chains must break.
Anna and Elizabeth and Tim Tim Eriksen Music 2018-04-21 | How Come That Blood. April 18, 2018 Ashfield, Massachusetts.
