"Folk-inspired avant-garde music"

Thanks to Aaron from Hem of His Garment for letting me know about this show. Unfortunately work will prevent me from being there, but this looks pretty awesome. From Aaron: Old Noise and New Blues: Avant-Garde and Folk Traditions in the Southern Vernacular WHEN: Nov. 17, 2007 7:30 PM-10:00 PM [doors at 6:30 PM] WHERE: Gerrard Hall UNC-Chapel Hill 208 E. Cameron Rd. [Next to Memorial Hall, across from the Old Well] ADMISSION: FREE with UNC One Card General admission $5.00 All are welcome at an evening concert of experimental, electroacoustic, folk, and rock improvisation in historic Gerrard Hall on UNC's campus on Saturday November 17 at 7:30 PM. Performers include: R. Keenan Lawler, Mike Tamburo, Horse Operas, and The Hem of His Garment. Gerrard Hall, originally built in 1822 as a campus chapel, will provide an inspired setting for an evening of tonal and melodic exploration. The concert is FREE with a UNC One Card; general admission is $5.00. Presented by the Carolina Union Activities Board [CUAB], the UNC Curriculum in Folklore, and WXYC 89.3 FM. See bios below for more information. Questions/Contact: Aaron Smithers ansmithers@yahoo.com WHO: R. KEENAN LAWLER: Kentucky ’s R. Keenan Lawler plays a 1920s resonator guitar made of nickel-plated brass. Whether bowing his guitar with both traditional long bows and multiple tiny hand bows or coaxing piercing tones from his steel strings with an Ebow, Lawler’s plays a hybrid of folk and jazz that exhibits a disdain for expectations. Of Lawler, Pitchfork Media said he was proof that “a shiny guitar can become a magic wand.” According to Dusted, Lawler’s 2006 record, Music of the Bluegrass States, "runs through the sonic palette of bluegrass music that lands us in the liminal zone between the urban, the rural, and the suburban, between avant-garde ‘incoherence’ and the comfort of traditional music...while Fahey’s phraseology allowed each passage to stretch out, breathe, and merge into the next, the faster parts of Lawler’s playing reveal figures that emerge from other figures, melodies that aren’t quite, because they occupy both the negative and positive space of the song. Much could be written about this clamoring polyphony in the context of bluegrass music’s own gnarled history or the red state/blue state divide that the album’s title indirectly references, but one gets the feeling that Lawler’s not too big on words. Just colors.” Lawler has not performed in North Carolina since the heralded Transmissions festivals of experimental and improvisational music organized in Chapel Hill in the late 1990s. To hear his music and see him creating the sounds live in an acoustical setting like Gerrard Hall will be an extraordinary experience. http://www.myspace.com/keenanlawler MIKE TAMBURO: Pennsylvania ’s Mike Tamburo works to bridge compositional ideas for acoustic instruments and electronic techniques. Routing layers of six-string guitar, hammered dulcimer, percussion and voice through effects and looping systems, Tamburo builds folk melodies before bending them into challenging new forms. Of Tamburo’s latest album, Ghosts of Marumbey, Pitchfork Media wrote: “Marumbey…feels cosmic, infinite even. This is a record of extreme empirical and emotional breadth, its beautiful highs…and its savage lows…offering enough space for dozens of interlaced travails.” http://www.myspace.com/tamburo THE HEM OF HIS GARMENT: North Carolina ’s The Hem of His Garment is a large collective with a revolving membership comprised of musicians across the Triangle. With as many as 16 (and counting) musicians, the band builds dense, textural drones that provide a synesthetic sound experience for listeners. The band has played with downtown New York composer Rhys Chatham, noise acts Yellow Swans and Mouthus and acoustic guitarist Jack Rose. http://www.myspace.com/thehemofhisgarment HORSE OPERAS: The Midwest’s Horse Operas play craggy rock-folk with elliptical and sometimes humorous lyrics spat out over wayward guitar solos and straight-ahead rhythms. The band is currently preparing its debut album for Southern Love Records. http://www.myspace.com/horseoperas