Fourteen original songs in roots, blues and rock. Melodies to hum later, lines to quote, voice as sweet as a squashed hornet, "smooth as moonshine chased with branch water somewhere in the clouds over Memphis."

14 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Classic Rock, BLUES: Blues Vocals



Details:
Those Who Were Last Shall Be Made First

Scott Graves, CREEM Magazine contributing writer, 1976- 78.

FARFETCHED TANGMO BAND: CLOSE TO THE GROUND

Tangmo is an artist in the sense that art is a representation of reality, and the reality represented by the artist is one of personal experience and perception; he writes and sings of universal and individual truths as opposed to common and selfish things. CLOSE TO THE GROUND delivers an artist's perspective, one which is fashioned out of open eyes and ears as well as blood and bone and nerve, a point of view loaded with grace and wit and ironic distance as well as self-knowlege and the poignancy that comes with a deep appreciation for life and the sounds of folk music, rock and blues. These are songs that reflect the human condition with grit and sweat and laughter, laden with the sonic force of musical traditions brought into the twenty-first century-- and made new again.

In a connected world there are no longer limits to time and space in the pursuit of new music, and sounds and stories found outside the realm of mass-production and industrial hype will become more apparent as the future unfolds. Where once were unexplored territories will be found vistas of fertile ground that will change everything. Unfettered by superficially manipulated popular tastes, artists will breathe freely and deeply, and the benefits will be shared by those who hear and understand. CLOSE TO THE GROUND is meant to be explored and enjoyed in just this way, as a positive musical force as well as a collection of striking, imagery-laden tracks. Tangmo takes his raw material from his rambles and wanderings here and abroad, turns to the task of wringing meaning out of experience and events, and lifts up his songs and characters with the understanding that they matter, that they're real and that they, too, will reach out to embrace the wild sadness and the uproarious roll-and-tumble that is life.

CLOSE TO THE GROUND is as immediate as it is ancient. There's blues that could be cut on lacquered discs as well as electric folk for the age of technological despair. It's all in here: sounds evoking Jimmy Webb and Kris Kristofferson, Hot Tuna and Jesse Colin Young, Johnny Cash and Arlo and Woody too-- throw in early Little Feat and JJ Cale as well, if you like-- but it's all Tangmo just the same, and the great musicians and friends he's assembled into an archetypal American sound, southern and smart, rootsy and bold as love. It's a set of tracks that's warm and also edgy, smooth sometimes, and soulful, and as fine as moonshine chased with branch water somewhere in the clouds over Memphis.

The Farfetched Tangmo Band exemplifies connectivity, with collaboration and contributions to the collective sound coming from studios and players from Alabama to Illinois, from Manhattan to Manchester, England and back across to Texas and Ohio via PA and... well, you get the picture, and it's a pretty one for music-- especially considering it's almost impossible to pejoratively refer to "home studios" now, given advances that can turn a PC into Electric Ladyland or Abbey Road. It goes without saying that you have to know what you're doing, of course, but not without saying that the Farfetched musicians are adept with the technology. Phil Close, Trev Brown, Dave "Bluesman Deluxe" Brimlow, Skip Moore, Frank Teidemann, Lee Cusenbary, JC Kercheval, John Kerruish, Jay Jackson, Steve Blizin and company are all artists in their own right; they have the chops and the studio skills as instrumentalists, arrangers, and songsmiths to work supersonic magic of a kind that can't be duplicated with a studio budget. Think Neil Young's TONIGHT'S THE NIGHT, the wizardry wrought by Todd Rundgren, the intimacy of Springsteen's NEBRASKA, and you're beginning to see the light.

The group works-- and like the "supergroups" of yore it works because of musical mastery and shared focus, which will be the hallmarks of the coming "wave" of connective music. Genres are ignored, everything is explored, and collaboration becomes carnival with Tangmo in the center ring, directing and reflecting, while everyone involved plays numerous musical and production roles. Consider the title track, with its eerie, Appalachian ballad form and twilight ambience courtesy of Phil Close; note the contrast with JC Kercheval's work in the cool, brightly lit and rocking "Solitaire". Then catch the emotional expansiveness of Jay Jackson's "Mountain, Move" and "First Snow" as illuminated by Trev Brown against the bluesy rambunctiousness of "Borned Stoned" and "Handle Me", and it's obvious that everything is in synch around Tangmo's lyrics and vocals, that it's all coming from the same shared intrinsic feel for the music... and that "two of a kind beats everything".

William S. Burroughs postulated that collaborative efforts create a "third mind" which elevates the creative act with a focus greater than the sum of its parts. CLOSE TO THE GROUND provides ample evidence of that proposition from start to finish as the Farfetched Tangmo Band surveys the landscape of new music and new possibilities in a world where the limits of time and space are breaking down and the role of the imagination is ever-expanding. The mountain may not move, but it's no longer an obstacle. It's an inspiration. What it inspires is a step toward musical freedom promised by the new technology and so far only hinted at in commercial fantasy. Tangmo's music in its deepest and most visceral, at its peaks of pain and playfulness, connects with listeners in ways unique to each and far beyond what "mainstream" artists can produce within the limits of "genre" and demographics. This may very well be one of the recordings that shatters the myth of the monolithic music industry, and at the very least it is a precursor to what will inevitably happen when elitist artifice collapses before honest art.

Farfetched? In your dreams, and ears.

Scott (Savage Yet Shy) Graves, CREEM Magazine contributing writer, 1976- 78.