Tim Eriksen's concept of music as a link between the past and present, between individuals and communities, between the world's spirit and his own, has led him to the ten traditional American folk ballads he reanimates and the four haunting original compositions that complete the microcosmic view of pre-20th Century life and its 21st Century resonance on "Every Sound Below," his long awaited second solo CD.
Already recognized as one of America's finest young traditional balladeers through his live appearances, 2001 solo album and numerous CDs with internationally popular "folk noise" group Cordelia's Dad, Tim's abilities and expertise in authentic folk music earned him three featured songs as a vocalist and two as an arranger on the hit "Cold Mountain" movie soundtrack in 2004. That Tim is probably the only performer to have shared a stage with both Kurt Cobain and Doc Watson is an indication of his contemporary appeal and audience.
On "Every Sound Below," Tim brings sounds of the American past into the "now," starting with the first track, "The Stars Their Match," an original a cappella salute to sunrise in the strong, brave tenor voice that has won him awe in folk circles. He follows with two chilling accounts of the Civil War ("The Southern Girl's Reply," "The Cumberland and the Merrimac"), the hopeful lament of a traveling preacher in 1810 ("John Colby's Hymn," one of two songs utilizing harmonic, "overtone" singing that imitates the buzz of nature), murder ballads ("Omie Wise," "Two Sisters"), and sprinkles in a pair of instrumentals (the twinkling banjo original "Bassett Creek" and the traditional fiddle tune, "The Soldier's Return"). Several songs were drawn from Frank and Anne Warner's field recordings of East Coast traditional music, which Tim was instrumental in persuading Appleseed to release on two CDs (see bio). Tim has a scholar's instinct for uncovering obscure and often unrecorded folks songs, and his liner notes give a fascinating insight into their history and his own sensibilities. Tim's two other compositions on "Every Sound Below" are the enigmatic "A Tiny Crown," a fragmented tale of imagination, reality and sea monkeys, and the eerie, hovering title song, a walk through moonlit soundscapes of memory and matter
Using the same minimal, live-in-the-studio technique as on his first CD in 2001, Tim performs alone here, cycling between guitar, banjo, and fiddle without overdubs, a stark approach in keeping with the direct connections between Tim, his music and his listeners, whose numbers include British folk master Martin Carthy, old-time folk performer and expert John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers, and T Bone Burnett, musical producer of the surprise hit bluegrass-packed soundtrack to "O Brother, Where Art Thou," "Cold Mountain" and "Down from the Mountain." In May and June 2004, Tim will join many of the musicians from those soundtracks on the "Great High Mountain Tour" in more than two dozen cities. And listen for "I Love Music," a song from his first CD, on the soundtrack of Billy Bob Thornton's upcoming movie, "Chrystal."
TIM ERIKSEN BIO:
Based on his musical interests and abilities, singer-songwriter-ethnomusicologist Tim Eriksen might have been born in a splintery wooden crib during the Revolutionary War, in a backwoods North Carolina church, in a hut along the Ganges, maybe even in the CBGBs bathroom. But no, the late-30s Eriksen was born in Massachusetts and grew up surrounded by the sound of his parents singing and by "natural sounds," says Tim. "I always loved listening to bugs and wind and water and stuff."
While absorbing a love of America's history and early music from his New England surroundings, the sounds of The Beatles, Kiss, and Motorhead were mingling with his family's voices. When the Eriksens moved to Long Island, the punk-rock roar of the Ramones reached Tim's ears. He was soon involved in hardcore/punk/garage bands like The Lobster Men, which gradually evolved into Cordelia's Dad, an acoustic/electric "folk noise" band that recorded a number of albums (including "Spine" for Appleseed in 1998) and built a strong European following before lapsing into current but impermanent retirement. England's Mojo magazine lauded the band for "examining the full, rich depth of the American folk tradition with startling conviction."
Even as Tim was thundering along as a bass-playing teenage rocker, he was also tuning in to Indian classical music (and subsequently studied the seven-string vina for ten years, during and after college), the challenging 20th Century composers Edgar Varese, George Crumb, Harry Partch and Krzystof Penderecki, and the blues of Mississippi Fred MacDowell. The source of these enthusiasms: parents, concerts, and "a lot of weird friends."
During Tim's four years of vina-study at Amherst College in western Massachusetts, he and some of his "weird friends" started singing together, often in the traditional "shape note" style encoded in the 1844 "Sacred Harp" songbook. Shape note singing uses printed geometric shapes - triangles, circles, squares - to help untrained vocalists perform choral hymns.
Tim kept amassing different musical influences. During the 1987-88 period when he spent months in India and England studying the vina and the connections between the two countries' music, Tim also heard a cassette of the archival recordings of traditional American songs collected by Frank and Anne Warner on the eastern seaboard of the US between 1940 and 1966 - bedrock Americana like "Tom Dooley" and "Deep Elm Blues" that helped trigger the folk revival of the late 1950s. Tim was instrumental in the first commercial release of two volumes of these recordings in 2000 as "Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still" and "Nothing Seems Better to Me" on Appleseed Recordings.
After his studies overseas, Tim's return to the US led to membership in the Northampton Harmony quartet with his friends, the resurrection of Cordelia's Dad, and more Indian music studies at Wesleyan University, where Tim met his future wife and fellow ethnomusicology student Minja Lausevic and formed the Bosnian/Balkan band Zabe I Babe with her.
Tim spent the early '90s in graduate school, touring the U.S., England, and Europe with Northampton Harmony and Cordelia's Dad, and recording with those groups and Zabe I Babe. The various bands appeared on MTV, the BBC, CBC, Belgian National Television, All India Radio, and America's syndicated "Mountain Stage" live performance radio program.
The most recent decade of Tim's career has been spent in working with his many bands (all currently on hiatus), serving as visiting professor of American Music at Dartmouth College and the University of Minnesota, conducting ethnomusico- logical research with Minja in the US and abroad, recording and touring as a solo artist, and immersing himself in the Sacred Harp community that exists in unexpected pockets around the country. His "Cold Mountain" work took him and his family to Romania, where much of the movie was filmed, and Tim found himself employed not only as the offscreen singing voice for actor Brendan Gleeson's character but coaching stars Nicole Kidman, Jude Law, and 50 Romanian extras in the shape note style for the movie's two Sacred Harp songs. He also organized and participated in the chorus that backed Allison Krauss on the Oscar-nominated "The Crimson Tide" in the 2004 Academy Awards telecast.
Tim's musical explorations have not gone unnoticed within the international cultural community. His collaborators and fans, aside from T Bone Burnett and Billy Bob Thornton, include famed record producers Joe Boyd and Steve Albini (who engineered "Spine"), South India vina virtuoso K. S. Subramanian, bluegrass banjo virtuoso Tony Trischka, classical cellist Yo Yo Ma, and England's legendary singer/guitarist Martin Carthy. Of Eriksen, Carthy says, "The watchword is Passion." FRoots magazine echoed that sentiment, calling Tim's music "dangerously sparing and utterly compelling," and pronounced Tim "a balladeer of the best kind."
Aside from the upcoming tour, Tim's plans include recording a CD of Ethiopian Oromo music, the release of a Sacred Harp project co-produced with Burnett, teaching Sacred Harp singing schools around the country, solo acoustic performances, conducting ethnomusicological research in the US and Bosnia with his wife Minja, and raising two young children.
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