jonathan byrd, du talent à l'état pur

Publié le 14 avril 2006 par lezarder

Voici à découvrir l’album, le dernier en date, le dernier dans les bacs dirons nous, de Mister Jonathan Byrd.

Pour ceux qui n’ont pas eu la chance de le découvrir ou de l’entendre.

Voici pour la première fois sur lezarder, un article en anglais, pour vous présenter l’artiste.

Et mieux, vous trouverez les critiques dans des journaux canadiens ou américains.

Mais surtout un texte de Jonathan himself du 27 février.

Et pour ceux qui ne comprennent pas l’anglais, laissez vous guider par la musique, qui n’a pas besoin de traduction pour s’apprécier !!

See you later !

Lien pour les albums

The sea and the sky

The Waitress

Wildflowers

What on paper looks like an odd pairing of Jonathan Byrd and Dromedary (winner of the 2003 Kerville New Folk competition and celebrated multi-instrumental duo respectively) has resulted in one of the most striking and distinct albums to come our way over the past few years. While obviously a contemporary folk album in its lyrical approach with strong characters, stories and imagery, the backing is different to almost everything that’s come before. The use of charango, flamenco guitar and cumbus that feature amongst the more standard guitars, fiddle, mandolin and dulcimer gives the disc an individual sound and it creates some sublime moments of instrumental and vocal interplay.

- The Sea & The Sky review, The Harvard Independent
The Sea and the Sky, realized in two days of live group performances in the studio, reads more like a theatrical performance. Singer-songwriter/director Jonathan Byrd conceived the album as an interrelated whole, brought it to the "cast," world music duo Dromedary, and toured it before audiences up and down the coast before fixing it to disc. The theatrical context suits Byrd's writing, distinctive not only for the imagery of its lyrics but the imagery of its instrumental parts. Even in his straight-up Americana recordings, Byrd's focus has always tended more toward the overall color of the sound than either horizontal or vertical composition. The variety of instrumental textures and musical traditions employed by Dromedary facilitate a full, rich interpretation of Byrd's writing, in which the songs often function like jazz charts, leaving plenty of room for individual improvisation. If George Russell and his contemporaries had applied their bebop theory to folk music, it might have sounded something like The Sea and the Sky. more >>

Folk legend Tom Paxton discovered Jonathan Byrd's music and sent him a quick email, saying, "What a treat to hear someone so deeply rooted in tradition, yet growing in his own beautiful way." He had just released "Wildflowers," in late 2001, simple tales of love and death that seemed to be a hundred years old or more. In 2003 Byrd released his second album, "The Waitress" and won the prestigious New Folk competition in Kerrville, TX. That year, he set CD sales records at the festival, selling more even than the main stage performers.

For his third album, Jonathan approached his friends, the critically acclaimed world-music duo known as Dromedary, often featured on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. "The Sea and The Sky" is the result, a vast, poetic suite of music that breaks new ground in acoustic music.

A native of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Jonathan grew up singing in the Southern Baptist church, where his father preached and his mother played piano. After four years in the Navy, he returned to Chapel Hill to play in rock bands in that legendary underground music scene. A friend of Jonathan's invited him to an old-time fiddle festival in the mountains of southwest Virginia, where his music was forever changed. Assimilating the sounds of southern traditional music, Byrd began to write new songs in an ancient style.

One of those first songs was "Velma," a murder ballad based on the true story of Velma Barfield, the last woman to be executed in North Carolina (in 1984) and the murderer of Jonathan's own grandfather. This was the track that prompted Tom Paxton to respond so eloquently to Byrd's music.

As Jonathan grows into a contemporary artist of increasing influence, his traditional roots are always evident in his simple, poetic storytelling and classic flatpick guitar style. But, as quoted in a recent interview for Dirty Linen magazine, Jonathan says, "Everything I do is a departure from what I've done." "The Sea and the Sky" is certainly evidence of that. Keep an ear out for an upcoming electric album, sure to take us further out on a limb without forgetting our roots.

Monday, February 27, 2006, 5:59 PM

My left rear bumper was smashed in, touching the muffler. Figuring I only had a couple of blocks to drive, I got back in the car, humble, and drove out of the parking lot onto the frontage road and up to the light at 32nd street. My car made the God-awfulest noise you ever heard for about two blocks, which was my back tire humping the crumpled bumper like a bull moose.
The sky was getting lighter and Karen and I sighed the long sigh of a long night. Grinding into the parking lot, I set my cell phone alarm for a few hours of sleep. I knew Waterbug had to be packed up and checked out of the Hilton by noon. All of that stuff, the backdrop, the bugs, the oversize cardboard leaves, coffee pots, Chinese paper lanterns, dropcords, folding chairs, bamboo poles, and more were my responsibility and I had to get them back to North Carolina in, or on top of, my crippled car.
Debbie was at the apartment asleep already and we both just tumbled into bed with her. I slept a fitful sleep and woke up to my cell phone, which might as well have been a marching band. That was not how I wanted to spend a night in bed with two women. I felt a little like Sinatra in The Manchurian Candidate.
Deodorant got used and last night's clothes didn't stink too much. I stumbled out into the AustinPontiac
I got the moose up to a full-on hormonal frenzy on I-35, headed downtown, and found a parking space in the virtual reality morning. Of course, I forgot to put money in the meter. Of course, I got a parking ticket.
While the parking gods were downstairs, shaking their heads, I was fumbling up the elevator and into the Waterbug room to assess the situation. There was a lot of shit everywhere and nothing where it should have been. Andrew Calhoun was puttering about and doing presidential things, stepping over a mattress on the floor, dodging folding chairs randomly placed for an avant garde theater piece, crunching underfoot some mysterious festive debris.
"Where do you want to start?" Andrew queried.
"I'm going to make coffee." I figured that was as good a place to start as any. After I leaped that mental hurdle in the bathroom among some cut flowers and a block of cheese left out and turned translucent, I started to put Mr. Hilton's room back together. What made sense to me was to reassemble the room and pack whatever was left that didn't belong here.
The bed had been taken apart and stacked vertically against the wall on the first night, along with the table being put in the closet, the phone stashed in a drawer, and the couch pulled into a parallel with the stage. Mary had commandeered a very large plant from the 10th floor elevator lobby. These Hilton people are so nice; they must have noticed a plant the size of a Cooper Mini missing, but they never said a thing.
Laurie and the Mayor showed up about then and helped me get the room back together, along with our President. We emptied all the drawers and found things I didn't know we had. A spaghetti strainer? Metal tongs? Did someone make pasta?
Everything got tumbled and folded into the big plastic boxes they came in. I washed coffee pots and utensils and threw the sweating block of cheese away. One of the bamboo poles left a double-ringed scar on the ceiling. All of this was like bouncing in one of those rooms full of balls, like you see in the playroom at a McDonald's, while trying to refill your mechanical pencil. My organizing skills were at least one good night's sleep away from me.
Danny Schmidt showed up and thought clearly for all of us, which he usually does. One time, he was hanging out with Karen Mal, who told him that her cat was 19 years old. After a few minutes, a bead fell off of her purse and clicked across the wooden floor. Without missing a beat, he said, "Was that one of his teeth falling out?"
I called the bellpersons and they said, "We'll be there in 20 minutes." Danny says, "We can have all this stuff down there by then." And so they did, me gazing absent as everyone picked up a cardboard leaf, a papier mache hawkmoth, a suitcase full of paper lights, and made a puppet procession down to the lobby. By this time, everyone had seen everything and the whole world was jaded, like we were waiting in the subway in New York City and 200 people were not looking at us. Human contact was old and frail. Shell-shocked people huddled around their paper cups of coffee like elevator junkies, breathing steam, dreaming vertical dreams.
Danny told me to pull my car around and showed me where, God bless him. I saw the yellow slip under my wiper blade from across the street and was too tired to cuss. I filed it under "t." Big trucks and buses were loading on fifth street, so that's where I went and pulled up in the 15 minute loading zone. I gave Freebo a copy of my new unreleased album and dawdled, wondering what I was supposed to be doing. Danny and Joanna, a booking agent from Holland, had the stuff out on the sidewalk already. I threw all the shit in my car into one shitpile, and then folded the rear seats forward and started shoving things into the rear of the car. Everything fit somehow and I tried hard to remember the things that needed to stay on top, either because they belonged to other people or because they'd be crushed before i got to Louisiana.
Someone asked what we were doing and I knew what the hell to say to that. "We're all going to Polvo's and get something to eat." If there were any misgivings present, they weren't mine. The Mayor is always up for Polvo's, so we all swayed that way, figured out who was riding with whom, and moose-humped on down to South Austin.
When we got to Polvo's, Southpaw Jones, Bill Passalaqua, and Tiffany Ginn were sitting there already chomping on chips and salsa. The mayor was so familiar with the place, he just went over to an empty area of the patio and started unfolding big plastic tables to make a place where we could all sit together.
Tiffany, usually a smashing Texas girl with big ol' sassy eyes, was pasty and grim. She had on the biggest pair of I-don't-want-to-be-seen sunglasses you ever saw. I said, "Hey, Tiffany, those sunglasses are sooo rock 'n' roll." She said, "You should see what's behind them. That's rock 'n' roll."
I've never had such a benign culinary experience in my life. Joanna ordered a margarita and I thought that was just brilliant. What a smart woman. Wanna book me in Holland? I almost ordered a cup of coffee; what a mistake that could have been. Tequila is the perfect homeopathic for a morning like this. Breakfast tacos, one with potato, chorizo, and cilantro and the other with eggs, tomato, and beans. The mayor looks at the waitress and says, "I'll have the regular," and she knows what he means. That's a real bachelor.
I keep forgetting what we've ordered and time is totally cocked up. Have I been here an hour? Five minutes? I don't know; the Austin sun is beating white against our table and I feel really good. Just being in Austin on a sunny day with these people is such a blessing that nothing else matters, except that I am hungry and I keep getting up, thinking that we need to order, but we already ordered. Always trip with friends you trust.
The food comes and it's like manna from heaven. Better. My body goes from black and white to color, and - poof! - I am in the land of The Little People. After a long, flowing meal of words, food, and friends, the whole world is green. Time is ours and we wield it slowly.
Southpaw's got to take off, Bill and Tiffany gotta scoot and I suggest that we might follow the yellow brick road to a disc golf course on this fine, sunny afternoon.
Everybody's into it, even Andrew, who has never played before. The Mayor knows a great course in town and Joanna says maybe she'll read a book while we play.
We cruise back to the Mayor's house for a little session and I wander outside while they listen to music. After a weekend of listening to music all day and night, everyone is critical and Ben is disappointed. He just wanted some tunes, you know? I've had enough music and criticism for the year, so I'm lying down on the concrete driveway in the Texas sun and I know why snakes live in Texas. I start yelling, "Hey, ya'll, we're in Texas and the sun is shining." I just keep saying that, eventually walking into the house to say it. It's so dark and smoky in there, stale. Outside is glorious, looking up through the live oaks, the trees are black dragons painted on a robin's egg.
We eventually do go and many discs end up in the river, which is generously empty. Whatever pools have collected in the bottom call to our discs like the primordial frisbee womb. There's so much grass, so little river, yet we feed it, freely swearing into the fickle wind as our errant charges tilt to the right against the blue sky and go dipping into the gaping run.
Joanna didn't read no book. She didn't even think about it, once she saw what we were up to. Well, 18 holes are long with six people and it got dark. We threw handfuls of discs down the line, racing the fading daylight to the parking lot, barely seeing our discs lying in the grass, up against a tree, snuggled in a root. I wanted to snuggle in a root.
I don't remember much more about that day. It's lost in a grinding hump-dream back to the apartment, where Icarus fell out of the sky onto the hardwood floor of Karen's apartment, a violent cloud of feathers blowing about the room while he lay broken and dying. Karen said, "You have to take a shower." Good friends are honest. She made popcorn and we watched Chocolat up to about the point where Johnny Depp shows up, which is where the movie turns to shit, anyway. I remember half of one eye watching Karen turn off the movie and thinking I was the luckiest man in the world. sun, scratching my head and wishing I had time for a shower. I walked by a fire red convertible and, stuck and hanging from the side window, there was a copy of someone's paper on the first law of thermodynamics. Matter can neither be created nor destroyed.