Double bill of exploratory six string playing and 'folk minimalism' from guitarists Chuck Johnson and Daniel Bachman.

CHUCK JOHNSON

Chuck Johnson is a composer and musician residing in Oakland, CA. He approaches his work with an ear towards finding faults and instabilities that might reveal latent beauty. Recordings of his work have been published by Strange Attractors Audio House, Communion, Amish, Merge, Umbrella, Phaserprone, Squealer and Three Lobed.

Johnson has performed with Eugene Chadbourne, Frank Gratkowsi, Peter Kowald, Miya Masaoka, and Pauline Oliveros, among others. He has performed at the Hopscotch Music Festival (Raleigh, NC), the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Siren Fest (New York), BENT (New York), the Festival of New American Music (Sacramento), Music for People and Thingamajigs (San Francisco), and the San Francisco International Film Festival. Johnson’s credits as a film composer include scores for several feature-length films, such as Brett Ingram’s award-winning Monster Road and Cynthia Hill’s Guestworker. In 2009 he received an MFA in Electronic Music and Intermedia Art from Mills College.

Johnson views his current work - both electronic and acoustic - as folk minimalism. In 2010 he was featured on the Tompkins Square compilation Beyond Berkeley Guitar and in 2011 his solo acoustic guitar debut A Struggle Not A Thought was released on Strange Attractors Audio House. In May 2013 his follow-up solo LP Crows In The Basilica will be released on Three Lobed Recordings.



“A first glance, the titles on Chuck Johnson’s Crows in the Basilica suggest an artist both aware of and in touch with his surroundings. There are mountains, creeks, sand; towns, streets, basilica; crows, geese. Skim Johnson’s liner notes and this sense of outward attention expands. Songs are based on raga improvisations and Chinese melodies, the Piedmont Blues of Carolina pioneer Elizabeth Cotten and the mountain guitar of Appalachian legend Roscoe Holcomb.

Johnson’s unity of thought and feeling crests during the album’s apex, “On a Slow Passing Ghost Town.” Opening with an instantly classic melody, it spends a serene, thoughtful eight minutes evoking every idea and emotion you can imagine, and a few you can’t. Here Johnson’s already-formidable patience approaches the super-human; even when the tune starts to roll and rush, he’s so in control of every nuance that I was convinced I’d heard the song before, so timeless and utterly natural is its path. I can see the ghost town passing; I can hear its rustle and smell its fog. But I can also feel it bending my bones and shifting my pulse. That’s the peculiar power of Crows in the Basilica: whether its effects are physical or emotional is impossible to figure, and unnecessary too.” – Marc Masters

www.chuckjohnson.net





DANIEL BACHMAN

Daniel Bachman is a 22-year-old musician born and raised in Fredericksburg, Virginia. He has been playing what he describes as "psychedelic appalachia" since he was a teenager, releasing small run editions of tapes, CDs and LPs for the past three years, with a sound that evolved from drones and banjos to a now guitar centered focus. Touring off and on since the age of 17, Bachman has managed to cover thorough ground across the US, sharing stages with like minded folk such as fellow Fredericksburg native Jack Rose, for whom he fashioned the artwork for the posthumous release of 'Luck In The Valley'. His newest effort is the full length LP 'Seven Pines', sprung from a year living and working in the city of Philadelphia. The sound results in a combination of homesick worried blues and the ecstatic buzz of fresh experience and a new life in unknown territory. Familiar and known, but also seeking to access memories from lives past, dead and gone.