Tag: alex hargreaves

LISTEN: Carrie Newcomer, “Shelter of the Sky”

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Artist: Carrie Newcomer
Hometown: Bloomington, Indiana
Song: “The Shelter of the Sky”
Album: The Point of Arrival
Release Date: March 22, 2019
Label: Available Light Records

In Their Words: “Growing up near Lake Michigan, you learn to love expanses of sky and freshwater, so I have always felt a certain kind of homecoming under the dome of an expansive sky. No matter where I am, there is the dome, the wide arms of something always changing but timeless. Because I am a touring musician, I am often a stranger who is far from home. It is easy to get ungrounded when you travel so much. But everywhere I go, there it is again, my feet on the earth and the dome of the sky above.

“The musicianship on this album and this song is nothing less than joyous. What a delight to work with such brilliant and totally original artists — Jordan Tice, Tristan Clarridge, Alex Hargreaves, Moira Smiley, Joe Phillips and Gary Walters. Together it felt like we created something that moved and expanded like fast-moving cloud banks, opening up into solos that felt like flying.” –Carrie Newcomer

Photo credit: Hugh Syme

Sam Reider, ‘Valley of the Giants’

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Accordionist, pianist, and composer Sam Reider was inspired by wandering through the surreal landscape of Valle de los Gigantes in Baja California, Mexico. The park is named for the gargantuan cardón cactus, a species that resembles saguaros of the U.S., but grows larger and taller and can live longer than 300 years. It might seem that the Sonoran desert — dotted by enormous, otherworldly plants — would evoke meditative, minimal, dreamy sounds — a musical reflection of desolation and austere beauty — but “Valley of the Giants,” off Reider’s debut album, Too Hot to Sleep, is anything but.

It’s rollicking and frenetic, lilting and energetic — more like the Wild West, replete with stampedes and tumbleweeds, than a silent, spiritual desert. The album’s roster of savvy pickers (Dominick Leslie on mandolin; Alex Hargreaves on fiddle; Roy Williams and Grant Gordy on guitars; David Speranza on bass; and Eddie Barbash on saxophone) pull from their overarching bluegrass expertise to drive the tune forward at a pace just shy of breakneck, galloping-horse-chase soundtrack speeds. Dashes of folk influences from around the world are sprinkled into its string band aesthetic like melodic Easter eggs. Reider’s accordion is the unyielding anchor, giving a dose of soulful, raw timelessness, but with a modern crispness and confidence. Somehow, it simultaneously conjures arid Baja and transatlantic scenes in an Irish pub or the countryside in France. It’s like a mini-vacation, wrapped up tidily within an instrumental.