Welcome to our coverage of Deep in the Valley 2023! The second year of our favorite Hudson Valley fest was again held at beautiful From the Ground Brewery in Red Hook, NY and hosted by our friends at Raven Sings the Blues. Thanks to everyone involved for their hospitality. I can’t wait to see you there next year. In the meantime, relax and enjoy some tunes from the day…
First off here’s the day’s headliner Ryley Walker, playing in duo configuration with Ryan Jewell. While not quite full-band, seeing Ryley and Ryan together is always magical and this performance doesn’t disappoint in the least. Ryley-classics “The Halfwit in Me” and “The Roundabout” take center stage here with the jams and detours we love from these songs. I’m a massive fan of Course in Fableand consider it Ryley’s finest, so I was glad to hear “Rang Dizzy” from that one. The last song is an instrumental which I’m sure has a title that is escaping me. Listening back I almost feel like I’m in a field in Red Hook, New York with some apple trees off to the side. This one’s the highlight of a nearly perfect day.
I recorded this with the MBHO omnis at the stage lip, combined with a board feed courtesy of engineer Daniel Stout. The sound quality is outstanding. Enjoy!
Ryley Walker
2023-08-19
Deep in the Valley
From the Ground Brewery
Red Hook, NY
Recorded and produced by Eric PH for nyctaper.com
Soundboard + MBHO KA100DK/603A (stage lip) > Naiant PFA >> Sound Devices MixPre-6 > WAV (24/48) > Adobe Audition CC + Izotope Ozone 5 > Audacity 3.0.2 > FLAC
Tracks [43:52]
01. The Halfwit in Me
02. Rang Dizzy
03. The Roundabout
04. Instrumental
Since my last post here (on March 9, 2020) New Yorkers have sought refuge in all kinds of places and a bewildering number of distractions. Vinyl record sales surged even more, Instagram overflowed with DIY baking, sedentary people discovered hiking, gym rats discovered the joys of being sedentary. New Yorkers moved to the Hudson Valley, New Jersey, Florida or farther-flung destinations.
Ryley Walker ended up in Vermont, running his nascent but growing label, Husky Pants and, as is his norm, recording and releasing a slew of new music. Course In Fable, the follow-up to 2018’s Deafman Glance, represents another stunning evolution in his sound. Prog-rock courses through its compositions, recorded with pristine sonics by Tortoise vet John McEntire. If anyone worried whether Ryley’s first post-sobriety album would lose the magic of his blurrier past, the answer is not only no, but the exact opposite. This is Walker’s most self-possessed work to date, bringing all of collaborators Ryan Jewell, Andrew Scott Young, and Bill McKay’s musical strengths firmly under one voice, with lyrics that can be evocative but obtuse as well as devastatingly direct. If Course In Fable is remembered as the finest album of Walker’s career, it will be worthy of the title.
It made sense to see these songs in the tiny but welcoming back room of Tubby’s, a venerable Kingston bar reinvented as a serious live music venue. The space itself feels like a refuge; its size compels an intimacy and familiarity that have been hard to come by for most of us in this part of the world recently. I’m not sure I’ve been to another venue of its size that has bookings at the level they do, and I hope Tubby’s keeps it up.
This show featured most of the Course In Fable lineup, with Walker joined by Jewell and Young, and the trio moved through this set of later-period (Course and Deafman Glance) tunes with aplomb. The Course tunes stayed fairly true to their original arrangements, with “The Halfwit In Me” serving as the 18-minute improvisational centerpiece of the set. While I’d love to hear some of those talents applied to the live new songs eventually, for this go, the thrill came in hearing the original arrangements live in a room, that special kind they were written for.
Ryley is on a west coast swing right now, and will be back east supporting Dinosaur Jr. to close out the year, followed by… well, his usual slew of tour dates in 2022. Just how it should be. See his tour dates here.
This recording was an extra-special collaboration between Kliked and I, using a combination of my Schoeps omnidirectional mics up front, his MBHO’s at the soundboard, and Zoots’ feed of the (mostly) vocals. The sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!
Personnel:
Ryley Walker
Ryan Jewell – Percussion
Andrew Scott Young – Bass
Tracks [Total Time:59:28]
01 Striking Down Your Big Premiere
02 Rang Dizzy
03 [banter1]
04 Opposite Middle
05 [banter2]
06 Telluride Speed
07 [banter3]
08 The Halfwit In Me
09 [banter4]
10 Shiva With Dustpan
11 [banter5]
12 22 Days
Chris Forsyth returned to live performance in the most exactly perfect way possible. Like most performers, he hasn’t played a proper show in more than a year, but for his two-show return last week, Chris compiled an incendiary quartet of top notch musicians, all of whom are quite familiar to these pages. Tom Malach is a founder and lead guitarist of site favorites Garcia Peoples, Ryan Jewell has appeared here about a dozen different formats, mainly with Ryley Walker, and Doug McCombs has appeared here with the seminal Tortoise and with his Brokeback project. Forsyth himself has appeared many times on this site, and always brings the goods. But this show was an entirely different animal.
If this performance was an indication, Chris Forsyth emerged from lockdown with well honed new material and having maintained the precision of his playing. The quartet that performed at Sultan Room last week (and Philly the following night) were tight, focused, and thoroughly in sync. The four new songs (and new cover) were presented in almost completed form (except for the working titles) and as if these four musicians had been playing the compositions regularly. That is to say that this show flowed from start to finish and left the boisterous and rapt crowd frankly stunned at the quality of the performance.
I recorded this set with the outdoor-friendly large diaphragm Neumann microphones set up front and center of the stage and mixed with a soundboard feed provided by the most excellent Imoni Cole Palmer. I’m extremely pleased with the quality of this recording and hope you enjoy as much as the sold out crowd and I did that night.
Chris Forsyth is returning to the West Coast for a show on October 9, 2021 at the Crystal Cavern in Oakland. The band will include Doug McCombs and Ryan Jewell. This is Chris’s first show in California since 2014. Tickets are available [here].
Download the Complete Show in MP3 and FLAC at Archive.org [HERE]
Stream the Complete Show:
Chris Forsyth 2021-08-04 Sultan Room Brooklyn NY
Digital Master Recording On Stage Audience + Soundboard
Setlist: Set 1 [Total Time 57:19] 01 You’re Going to Need Somebody [Richard Thompson] 02 Tomorrow Might as Well Be Today 03 Mystic Mountain 04 Blackbird Jungle* 05 Experimental Professional
Set 2 [Total Time 1:02:48] 06 Dreaming in the Non-Dream 07 [band introductions] 08 Dream Song 09 Evolution Here I Come* 10 Robot Energy Machine*
*working title
Band: Chris Forsyth: guitar Tom Malach: guitar Doug McCombs: bass Ryan Jewell: percussion
Ryan Jewell may just be the busiest man in rock and roll. Does he eat? Does he sleep? No one knows. Between drumming with Ryley Walker, Chris Forsyth, Olden Yolk, Elkhorn, and others he’s somehow found the time to play some guitar and sing in Mosses, a duo with Danette Bordenkircher on keys and “space machines.” They’ve got a new cassette out as part of Black Dirt Studio’s Microdose series. You can listen to one song on Bandcamp but you’ll need to track down a physical copy to hear the whole thing—totally a worthwhile effort.
I recorded this from our usual location at Nublu, which is fast becoming one of our favorite NYC venues. The sound is excellent. Enjoy!
May 2020 Update: Chris Forsyth has released a multitracked recording of “Techno Top” from this show on Bandcamp. Please do head over there to purchase!
For the final night of his Nublu residency, Chris Forsyth held nothing back. The Solar Motel Band (Peter Kerlin and Ryan Jewell) are joined by Daniel Carter, Brent Cordero, Tom Malach (set one), and Ryley Walker (set two) in what is most assuredly one of the greatest Forsyth shows I’ve ever seen. For the first set Forsyth and Malach share guitar lines over tracks from All Time Present and Dreaming in the Non-Dream while Carter trades off between saxophone and horns throughout and Cordero’s keyboard pulses. Kerlin and Jewell are ever-sturdy as the rhythm section. For the second set Walker joins in on second guitar for a forty-five minute jam that begins as “The First Ten Minutes of Cocksucker Blues” and ends in outer space.
I recorded this from our usual location at Nublu. The sound is excellent. Enjoy!
Last weekend’s Elkhorn show at Nublu was something of a belated release party for their double-LP Sun Cycle / Elk Jam set from earlier this year. That album brings Jesse Sheppard and Drew Gardner together with Willie Lane on guitar and Ryan Jewell on drums for two sides of composed songs followed two more sides of improvisation caught during the same session. Like Sheppard comments during the show, the unique makeup of the Elkhorn quartet makes live outings of some of the songs pretty infrequent, so it was extra special to see the whole gang together for this one.
Their set begins with the duo playing “Darkness” and “Song of the Son” into “Wilderness,” before Ryan Jewell joins on tablas for “Subway Mirror Heart.” It gets into full quartet swing when Willie Lane joins for the back half of the set, playing with them on “Altun Ha,” “Seasonal” into “Distances,” and the set-closing “Train.” It’s great to see Elkhorn getting a long set and really settling in like this—we’re used to seeing way-too-brief outings from them. Let these guys stretch their, um, horns, and they’ll chart you out some new paths.
I recorded this from our usual spot at Nublu and as usual for the venue, the sound is excellent. Enjoy!
Over the course of these residency shows (plus bonus Queens show), I’ve said my piece about Ryley Walker and “who” he is musically, so I won’t belabor the point. Suffice it to say that even if you follow all things Walker, this unique collaboration is a standout, something not likely to be repeated. Walker made it known what an honor it was for him to play with these musicians. It was equally our honor to have heard it.
I recorded this set in the same manner as the other Union Pool shows, with Doug Graham’s outstanding house mix leading the way. Enjoy!
Thanks to Union Pool and Will S for continuing to book and host interesting and experimental music in north Brooklyn.
This Nublu night was ostensibly organized as the release party for Garcia Peoples new album Natural Facts with good friend of the site Ryley Walker as special guest. When Ryley decided to take some time off for personal reasons, the band invited another friend of this site Chris Forsyth, and Chris came north from Philadelphia on very short notice. The result was one of the more memorable shows in recent memory. The first set was a solid run through GP material, but it was the second set where the magic was revealed in an incredible hour-long jam sequence that approached legendary status. With Forsyth surrounded by the GP guitar section, the band added percussionist Ryan Jewell, and the double-drummer attack propelled the action through a 32-minute jam on a new Forsyth composition “Techno Top”. What followed were two covers that took the jam-packed crowd into another stratosphere. Of particular note is the tasty 1968-style high-energy “The Other One” which started on a buzz that never wavered through 19 minutes of pure bliss.
If you live in the Philadelphia area, Garcia Peoples is returning the release show favor to Chris Forsyth, as the two will perform together at Jerry’s On Front on April 27 when Forsyth releases his new record All Time Present. Our sincere recommendation is that anyone within any reasonable distance of that show on that night should not miss another magic night.
Eric and I recorded this set from an upfront location in the venue directly behind the DJ booth. The positioning did not permit a board feed, but the fortuitously placed high-end mics have yielded recordings of superb quality. We offer both for your enjoyment!
Setlist: Set 1 [Total Time 40:07] 01 Rolling Tides 02 Feel So Great 03 Break Me Down 04 Total Yang 05 High Noon Violence 06 The Spiraling Set 2 [Total Time 1:04:44] 07 Techno Top 08 The Calvary Cross [Richard Thompson] 09 The Other One [GD]
Willie Lane has long been something of a mystery, appearing sporadically on live MV/EE CD-R’s and quietly self-releasing tiny pressings of highly-coveted solo guitar records. Until recently, you couldn’t even find them online, having to resort to in-the-know record stores that would stock these rarities. But recently a Willie Lane Bandcamp page appeared with digital downloads of his three LPs and one single, followed by a reissue of the long-scarce Known Quantity from Feeding Tube. Already down to the last box of that one, the reissues will keep coming in March when they put Guitar Army of One back out into the world. Meanwhile, on The Avant Ghetto, Jeff Conklin played an awesome live set from Scratch Ticket (Lane on guitar, Rob Thomas on bass, and John Moloney on drums), stoking excitement at the possibility Lane would down to NYC for a gig.
For this performance, Lane recruited local drummer-of-record Ryan Jewell for a mix of rehearsed material and improvisation. Though quite different from the stark, lonesome guitar on his records, their set manages to conjure those same slanted vibes.
Extra thanks to Jeff Conklin and The Avant Ghetto Presents for getting Willie Lane out to NYC and for inviting us down. Check out his show on WFMU for the good stuff!
I recorded this set with the MBHO cardioids set up in stereo DIN configuration, combined with a board feed courtesy of Union Pool FOH Doug. The sound is excellent. Enjoy!
Ryley Walker has become something of a Renaissance man in 2018, with his highly-lauded album Deafman Glance, a full-album cover of an unreleased Dave Matthews Band LP, an endelessly-entertaining Twitter account, and an ongoing series of Vice articles where Ryley’s just being Ryley. Listen to some of his between song banter and it’s clear Walker loves music and knows how to engage an audience. Yet for all his extracurricular antics, the tunes are nothing if not sincere.
Somewhat surprisingly given it’s high level of publicity, Walker and band are not touring Dave Matthews tunes, but instead continue touring this year’s excellent Deafman Glance—Walker’s best album yet. Especially great here is their rendition of “Spoil With the Rest” and a pair of tunes with trumpeter Jaimie Branch, “22 Days” and “Funny Thing She Said.”
I recorded this with a pair of MBHO cardioid mics on stage in stereo DIN configuration, combined with a soundboard feed courtesy of the Baby’s crew, Dan and Jesse. The sound is outstanding. Enjoy!
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