Tuesday 3 November 2009, 8pm
Pre-WW II American folk music has long been a calling card amongst many musicians in the underground and aboveground scenes -- usually updated to fit some version of whatever's contemporary, used as basic fodder to give credence to one’s own songwriting and/or music-making abilities, or presented as a note-for-note reenactment of the past. Ultimately all of these approaches fall short and sound artificial.
Jack Rose and the Black Twig Pickersprefer to set their compass by the likes of Michael Hurley, John Fahey and the Holy Modal Rounders, all of whom knew the American songbook backwards and forwards and transformed the material into something personal and individual.
On their own, Rose and the Black Twigs have won plenty of accolades -- Rose is regularly described as in the top tier of today's acoustic guitarists, distinguishing himself with finger-picked rambles that veer from ragtime to raga, while the Black Twigs have been described by Bluegrass Unlimited as "exciting old-time music at its finest" and by Sing Out! as "more akin to the previous generation of masters than ... many of those plying the trade today."
Of the Rose/Twigs collaboration of the past couple years, writer Justin Farrar had this to say:
"What blows me away is how these guys are innovators from within the tradition. Most musicians coming from an indie/underground background are content to experiment with American folk music as outsiders and nothing more. This, however, doesn't produce terribly interesting work. That's because the secrets of old time, country blues and other related styles only reveal themselves to those musicians open to the concept of full immersion. This is what these four are all about."
C JOYNES
"English acoustic guitarist C Joynes uses traditional country-blues and early ragtime to explore alternative melodic traditions: the English folk-tune; North and West African music; elements of classical Indian music;
proto-minimalist and impressionist musics from the European classical tradition. His approach contains a subtle and unassuming experimentation, with a penchant for reworking over-familiar pieces and stripping them of their kitsch and cliché, presenting them afresh. Joynes' music is instinctive, placid, and evokes a certain simplicity and naiveté." - Rhodri Davies
He has recorded a live broadcast session for Andy Kershaw on BBC Radio 3, and played extensively across the UK and Ireland, sharing bills with performers including Alasdair Roberts, A Hawk And A Hacksaw, Jack Rose, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, Sir Richard Bishop and Steffan Basho-Junghans.
