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Post by K Tresp on Dec 27, 2021 11:56:25 GMT
There is so much great ‘old’ acoustic guitar music around it can sometimes be easy to get stuck listening or playing the same things (great as they are). Old in the the context of this thread just means the music which has been around for a while and is familiar to many forum members.
Without diminishing how great some of that music is, I sometimes get a bit bored of falling back on the same stuff.
As we head into a new year what are your recommendations for new (ish) artists, new (ish) pieces or just stuff from the road less travelled?
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Post by delb0y on Dec 27, 2021 13:36:37 GMT
I never get bored of the old stuff. In fact there's not enough listening time in my life to do justice to the old. CDs (yes, I still like a proper physical CD) from Santa this weekend included Leo Kottke, John Fahey, Blind Boy Fuller, and Blind Willie McTell. That said, John Moreland and Willie Tea Taylor and Jeffrey Foucault are (relatively) new (i.e. not pre-war) and I always enjoy them.
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Post by Matt Milton on Dec 28, 2021 23:59:15 GMT
Must admit, I haven’t heard that many new acts in recent years that have blown me away in recent years. The one big exception that springs to mind is Nick Hart. I’m a huge Martin Carthy fan and if you listen toNick Hart’s 2 albums to date - 8 English Folk Songs and the imaginatively titled 9 English Folk songs - it’s pretty easy to see why a Carthy nut would really like Hart’s stuff
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Post by martinrowe on Dec 29, 2021 1:38:54 GMT
A lot of the 'new' stuff that I manage to hear sounds, to me, too much like a copy of something that went before. When I first started to become interested in music, the whole thing was supposedly about being 'progressive'. I read that as being new, as being creative i.e. not being a copy of something else - granted, a lot of the time that music wasn't what it claimed to be, and those who were supposedly living an alternative lifestyle must have, at some point, very obediently, painstakingly practised a lot of scales - but I did understand that, for me, creativity was the main pre-requisite. Back in those days music was very much intertwined with social change - now the tackiness of the music industry seems to show through too much.
After that I became very interested in blues - not all blues, just the pieces I liked e.g.. not Leadbelly, but Robert Johnson and Leroy Carr and Scrapper Johnson, and Willie Walker, not Howlin' Wolf but John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters, etc. Nowadays nothing seems more absurd to me than the English 60's blues boom - people, mostly middle class, trying to sound gravelly voiced and singing that a gypsy woman had told their mother. It was new for it's time I suppose.
Now I find the 'new' in genres (apologies) of music that I had previously not known about, some classical (not all), Gilbert and Sullivan, Tuba Skinny because of the counterpoint, the tightness of the band, and the happiness of the music, and some bluegrass - I found myself wondering where those songs came from - aha, imported English folk songs and Irish and Scottish Fiddle tunes - given a new flavour!. Whatever the case - it is originality and creativity that I look for, and I don't find much of it in present day music - I do keep an ear out for it, and sometimes I'm surprised.
Hey ho, everyone to their own, that's my two pence worth, etc - you probably think differently, and I'm probably wrong in some places, but that's all right.
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Post by lavaman on Dec 29, 2021 10:21:07 GMT
Oh dear martinrowe , you're in danger of becoming a curmudgeonly old git , but I have to say I agree with a lot of what you say. Looking back I used to really enjoy the inventiveness of progressive rock bands like Yes, King Crimson & Genesis, but now I view that genre of music as pretty self indulgent. I still like the blues though, and it's heartening to know that somebody else likes Willie Walker. These days, I'm drawn to good songwriting and simpler arrangements from the likes of Pharis & Jason Romero, Sarah Jarosz, and local (to me) artists Robert Vincent and John Jenkins.
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Post by Cams on Dec 29, 2021 15:43:39 GMT
Punch Brothers are doing some wonderful things. I also enjoy the adjacent musicians around the old Nickel Creek band- Sarah Jarosz has already been mentioned, but there's Chris Eldridge and Julian Lage doing some amazing solo and collaborative playing. Aoife O'Donovan and Sara Watkins also do amazing work solo and together (with Sarah Jarosz as 'I'm with Her'). I like Bryan Sutton's solo work too. There's a definite Americana transatlantic vibe to all these artists.
One of my most listened to artists of the year is Dodie, a young singer-songwriter in the UK. I took my daughter to see their concert in Glasgow a few months ago and it was astonishingly good.
At the number 2 slot in my #SpotifyUnwrapped this year was Will McNicol, whom I find to be one of the most tasteful fingerstyle players on the circuit right now. Last year it was Colter Wall, a modern, gravelly-voiced American bluesy picker. In a similar vein is Sturgill Simpson.
And lastly, because I love him so much, Nick Harper is worth a listen if you're not familiar. I've been a fan of his since the beginning, when he used to do guest slots with Roy Harper. I find him to be an incredible breath of fresh air in the music world and highly underlooked.
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Post by papadon on Jan 3, 2022 1:29:24 GMT
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Post by borborygmus on Jan 3, 2022 11:11:19 GMT
Great new 'old' stuff this year: Buffalo Nichols:
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