Howe Gelb Have a listen
here: http://www.myspace.com/howegelb Inaccurately yet affectionately dubbed “the Godfather
of Alt. Country” by the British press, Tucson, Arizona-based musician Howe Gelb has remained the sole epicenter and creative
force behind the ever-fluid configurations of Giant Sand for over a quarter century, giving birth along the way to an extended
musical family tree that fostered the likes of The Band of…Blacky Ranchette, The Friends of Dean Martinez, OP8, and
Calexico.
"Giant Sand is a mood," explained Howe, as if to simplify the dizzying breadth of his prolific
output as an artist. With an impressive catalog of material that stretches back to 1983, he can easily claim some 40 albums to his
credentials as both a band leader and a solo performer, each of which maintains its own genre-defying singularity while also
drawing on the not-so disparate threads of country, southwestern roots, lo-fi, jazz, and punk--or the “yippity and
happenstance“ that arises to inspire the soundscape of whatever project Gelb is involved in creating.
But
Howe’s initial signposts were planted crookedly in Pennsylvania during the 1970s, among them being the rock opera ZEQE 24,088
which was recorded in 3 hours at a PBS radio station. In 1972, when floodwaters claimed his hometown and family house, ultimately
sending him downstream to Arizona alongside the debris of his parents’ divorce, the song “Steadfast” was born as
an articulation of that disaster. Soon upon arriving in Tucson, he met his sonic soul mate in the guitarist Rainer Ptacek, and as a
result the two went on to form the Giant Sandworms. After releasing only a handful of singles and recordings, the worms were
finally put to rest, making room for Giant Sand to bubble comfortably from the soil by the early 1980s. From that time on, in one
manifestation or another, an album of Howe’s music has been recorded and delivered every 4 to 8 months.
Now
following a nearly four year hiatus, Giant Sand returns with the release of proVISIONS on September 2, 2008. Produced by Howe and
Kent Olsen (Arizona Amp and Alternator, Marie Frank), the album’s 13 tracks were recorded during a summer in Denmark, and
features the Danish musicians Thoger T. Lund (bass), Peter Dombernowsky (drums), and Anders Pedersen (slide guitar). As with past
incarnations of the band, the current lineup utilizes a more natural form of playing, relying heavily on improvisation and
“on the fly“ problem solving, as well as exploring melodic variations within Howe’s songs.
Also
lending themselves to the casual mix are a host of talented friends/collaborators--such as Neko Case, M. Ward, Isobell Campbell,
Henriette Sennenvaldt, Lucie Idlout and Lonna Kelley--all of whom ease warmly into the passenger seat to ride shotgun for a while
on an album thick with musings scattered by the desert winds and soaked with eroding guitars or dusty piano.
Providing
an alternate route around box-store labels like “Alt. Country” while ruminating on love and loss in the socio-political
climate of a modern world at odds with itself, proVISIONS is a creeping cruise down a dark desert highway, forging another
surprising and welcome byway in the completely unique musical legacy of Giant Sand.
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