Tag Archives: Folk

Interview : Yair Yona

Israeli guitarist Yair Yona

Earlier this year, Anova Music released Remember, the solo instrumental debut by Israeli acoustic artist Yair Yona. The CD is an affectionate tribute to various American and British folk guitar styles, with Yona picking on 6 and 12-string guitars, a National-style resonator, and various other acoustic instruments.

The primary touchstone for Yona’s music is the Takoma school and the American Primitive revival movement, and it’s easy to hear the influence of John Fahey, Jack Rose, Leo Kottke and Glenn Jones. Jones is, in fact, a big fan of Yair and Remember, and had this to say :

Yair is fantastic… that album is one of my favorite guitar records of the year. Production-wise, it’s very ambitious, and quite smart, and in terms of both composition and technique, there are two or three tracks that I think are as good as anything ever done on the guitar. Obviously his album wouldn’t exist without his influences… but it rises above being merely derivative into something beautiful and, occasionally, even sublime.

As a nod to Yona’s drone and indie rock influences, there are also splashes of synth and assorted ambient effects on some of Remember’s tracks, though these are mostly relegated to background atmosphere… for the most part, Yona keeps his guitar playing as the focus of his compositions.

Yair Yona – “Remember”

I decided to get in touch with Yona and conducted the following interview. Worth noting : the entire Remember album is available as a free digital download on Yona’s Bandcamp page.

W&W : How old are you, and how long have you been playing the guitar?

Yair : I’m 28, been playing [music] for 13 years. Most of that time I played bass, until the winter of 2003, when I grabbed an acoustic guitar and started a whole new journey.

W&W : Take us through the evolution of your playing… when did you start working with acoustic instruments? Was it something you moved toward after the discovery of your European and American folk and guitar influences? Did you learn your fingerstyle techniques from emulating recordings, did you use TAB, etc?

Yair : Well, I was playing bass for couple of years, and was really into psychedelic rock and prog. In 2002, I moved to London and a couple of months afterward, I heard the first Bert Jansch album, which totally changed my life and made me realize that I’m much more into that now. His technique was so breathtaking, I almost lost the will to play. But at some point, I managed to learn one simple tune of his, which gave me the strength to move on and learn more tunes and practice. At first, I had to use TABs, as my hearing was rusty and I couldn’t figure out how the guy combined the two elements of bass string playing along with a melody and rhythm. The guy is a genius. No one plays like him, and I wish he’d be my neighbor. I’ll trade glasses of sugar and milk for 15 years, for one guitar lesson from him..

W&W : Which Bert song was the first that you learned to play? When I first started playing fingerstyle, I taught myself “Runnin, Runnin From Home” from the album, but ended up with a completely convoluted fingering that made it way more difficult to play than it had to be! A friend later found a TAB online and set me straight!

Yair : We share the exact same story! I figured “Running…” was the more “easy” song on the album, so I started with it. I had no idea about alternate bass, so I made up some terrible chord positions to try and understand how to play that. Only later I found a TAB for it and realized how it should be played. When I managed to play “Angie” for the first time, it was the happiest day of my life! (More on the day I first heard Bert’s album can be found here) One of my favorite tunes of his is maybe his easiest – “Bright New Year”. But the all time favorite song for me is “Fresh as a Sweet Sunday Morning”…

W&W : Please describe the instruments you used on Remember.

Yair : Well, in terms of my guitars, there were only three. The 6-string is an EN guitar, which a friend of mine built me as a practice for the guitar workshop lessons that he took. The EN was built based on a Martin 000 model. The 12-string was a Fender, which I sold to buy a brilliant Larrivée. The Weissenborn was actually a simple Vineyard guitar, and right after I finished the recordings, I bought a Goldtone. Still have the Vineyard, such a wonderful guitar, especially for its price. The Royal resonator is a cheap resonator I bought to see how I’m doing with this type of guitar.

W&W : You replaced your 12-string with a Larrivée 12? What body style, model number?

Yair : The Larrivée is a new LR-03-12.

W&W : Does Israel have its own instrument manufacturers, any popular regional guitar makers? Are the popular US brands like Martin, Gibson, Taylor etc available / widely used?

Yair : There are no REALLY famous guitar builders, maybe there are manufacturers who build really few pieces a year. The American firms have some representation, but usually in the acoustic guitar rooms, you’ll find a few Martins and Taylors, usually way overpriced, and the variety of models doesn’t exist. You won’t be able to find a good 12-string second hand. It’s not a popular instrument in general, and it’s much less in a country of 6.5 million people.

W&W : Talk about your right hand… thumb pick? Fake nails? Acrylics? All natural?

Yair : Thumb pick, plastic Dunlop one. Other fingers are my natural nails.

W&W : What are the tunings you use on Remember?

Yair : Most of the tunings are open D (DADF#AD), where “Broken Rockin Chair” is in G minor (DGDGBbD), “Floodgate” is an open C (CGCGCE), and the most complicated one is on “Skinny Fists”, which is DGDF#G#C#. It’s a tuning I learned from Glenn Jones, who’s by far my favorite guitar player in this style.

Yair Yona – “Brave Walls”

W&W : Please describe the recording of Remember… did you record it yourself or were you assisted? Studio?

Yair : I was fortunate enough to become a label manager of Israeli alternative label Anova Music and we have our own studio, so I was recorded by a great engineer called Ronen Roth. We recorded the guitar tracks on a 2 inch tape, using U-87 and 67 [microphones].

W&W : Do you have plans to do any touring in 2010?

Yair : There’s a great will, just trying to figure out how to handle the road with 3 guitars, and how to avoid work for two weeks without having to be worried that something happened to my company!

W&W : What other projects are you currently involved in that you would like to talk about?

Yair : Well, I’m writing new material and I’m working on a new band that I’ll play bass in, of some experimental, noise and psych music. I want to have my own Faust. Or Califone, whatever comes first.

W&W : What albums are you listening to most at the moment?

Yair : At this very second, I’m listening to the brilliant Pockets by Karate. I’m checking my LastFm page to see what else I’ve listened to today (because I’m listening to a lot of music, with a variety of styles) – I listened to Mudhoney a lot because they are coming to Israel in couple of days, which makes me very VERY happy. The Churchills, psych rock from Israel 1969, The Veils new album and Arthur by The Kinks. The new Califone is brilliant, and the record of the month or maybe the year is the new Black Heart Procession. YEAH!!!

W&W : Could you talk a little about your blog and your mixtapes?

Yair : Sure. I run an alternative music blog called “Small Town Romance”. Now it’s only in Hebrew, but in a month and a half, I plan to have an English version of the blog, with a translation for each post. The idea behind it is to expose people to good music that sometimes is left behind, and slips under the radar. Once a week I post a mixtape of good music, an hour of great sounds of stuff I’ve listened that week. I love being an ambassador of music and exposing people to records that may change their lives. It’s somewhat naïve, I know, but when someone comes to you and says “The record you recommended me just made my week!” – it’s the best thing ever. That’s why I went to work in a record store a couple of years ago. I remember someone told me that me selling her No Other by Gene Clark got her out of a serious depression she was in. Who could ask for more?

Download “Remember” for free from Bandcamp
Buy “Remember” on CD from Anova Music
Yair Yona on Myspace

Review : Glenn Jones “Barbecue Bob in Fishtown” LP/CD (Strange Attractors Audio House, 2009)

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by Raymond Morin

In the avant-rock band Cul de Sac, guitarist Glenn Jones and his bandmates combine fingerstyle electric guitar, krautrock rhythms and harsh electronics, creating a challenging, textured sound that defies categorization. In 1997, the group famously collaborated with acoustic guitar icon John Fahey and released the album The Epiphany of Glenn Jones. Now, over a decade later, comes the third solo outing from Jones, and on Barbecue Bob in Fishtown the spirit of John Fahey and his American Primitive approach is alive and well.

Though his band is known for their experimental leanings, Glenn Jones the solo artist is considered something of a traditionalist, and the Barbecue Bob… package is very much presented in the grand tradition of instrumental acoustic guitar collections of years past. From the light-hearted cover image and the eloquent, self-penned liner notes to the tuning references and instrument notes for each song, the art direction has a classic feel… the album could pass as an artifact from any point in the last 40 years. When the included booklet is flipped over and reversed, we’re treated to a photo-diary of Jones paying a visit to Belmont Nails, for what appears to be an application of fresh acrylics. All of this is the kind of stuff that guitar geeks eat up, myself included!

Well, as everyone knows, the best compliment to great packaging is great music (to listen to while staring at the great packaging, of course!) and on Barbecue Bob in Fishtown, Jones delivers some fine picking indeed. The album kicks off with the upbeat alternating bass of the title track, the bends and rolls evoking both Fahey and some of the modern purveyors of his style, such as Nick Schillace and Jack Rose. Jones’ style immediately stands apart from those players in its more relaxed attack, never quite approaching the tidiness of Schillace or the determined physicality of Rose. I find the easy, slightly ragged character of Jones’ picking to be very charming, particularly on “Barbecue Bob…”, “Dead Reckoning” and album closer “A Geranium For Mano-a-Mano”.

Glenn Jones – “A Geranium For Mano-a-Mano”

There are two brief banjo pieces on the album, and both are compelling listens. Mood and tempo-wise, “Keep It A Hundred Years” and “A Lark In Earnest” are very similar, a possible product of Jones’ relative newness to the instrument… but in spite of this, his knack for composition wins out, and the banjo songs stand up as some of the most melodically driven on the album. “Keep It…” contains some unexpected chord changes, keeping it interesting and unpredictable, while “Lark…” benefits from a simple, memorable melodic theme and some very nice finger-rolls.

Glenn Jones in action

“1337 Shattuck Avenue, Apartment D”, Jones’ tribute to Robbie Basho, is one of the most emotive tracks on the disc, and also its longest. In the liner notes, Jones explains that this loosely structured composition was one of many takes, and was chosen for its “uncertain” feel. There is definitely a palpable degree of uncertainty in the playing, with many of the notes fretting out around the 4 1/2-minute mark as Jones begins descending into dark, dissonant territory. Still, the emotional thread that runs through the song, coupled with the variety of the sections, keeps the listener wholly invested.

My favorite song on the album is “For Wendy, In Her Girlish Days”. This selection contains some of Jones’ most delicate and beautiful playing, and its primary theme is a nice hybrid of Leo Kottke-style alternating bass and chord voicings, supporting a vaguely British-tinged melodic approach.

Glenn Jones – “For Wenday In Her Girlish Days”

Glenn Jones is something of a staple in the current solo acoustic guitar movement, and Barbecue Bob in Fishtown makes a great case for why that is. Jones’ playing shows him to be a guitarist with a distinctive touch, an experienced player with a pleasing affection for traditional picking as well as a flare for varied and innovative composition.

Buy the LP or CD from Strange Attractors
Buy the LP or CD from Insound
Glenn Jones’ website
Glenn Jones’ on Myspace

Review : Glenn Jones “Barbecue Bob in Fishtown” LP/CD (Strange Attractors Audio House, 2009)

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by Raymond Morin

(MP3 Returning Soon)
Glenn Jones – “A Geranium For Mano-a-Mano”

Glenn Jones in action

(MP3 Returning Soon)
Glenn Jones – “For Wenday In Her Girlish Days”

Buy the LP or CD from Strange Attractors
Buy the LP or CD from Insound
Glenn Jones’ website
Glenn Jones’ on Myspace

Review : Tim Buckley “Live At The Folklore Center, NYC – March 6, 1967” CD (Tompkins Square, 2009)

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Tim_Buckley_Live by Raymond Morin

I first discovered Tim Buckley about ten years ago, when a band-mate played me the sublime Happy Sad album. It was something of a revelation, on par with The Zombies’ Odessey and Oracle, The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds or Love’s Forever Changes… each of these records was able to penetrate my mistrust for classic rock and hippie-dippy affectations by offering up innovative production, unusual blends of acoustic and electric instruments, and acute musicality. Happy Sad had a vibe all its own, with David Friedman’s atmospheric washes of vibraphone and guitarist Lee Underwood’s jazzy, wandering leads… and then there was the singer, with his elastic, transcendent voice… I hadn’t heard anything like it before. I was hooked, and still remember making a point of telling everyone I knew about Tim Buckley. “Now that’s a singer!”

I was very excited when I found out that a new Buckley live document was in the offing, since his Dream Letter : Live In London 1968, Peel Sessions and subsequent Once I Was discs have always remained rewarding listens. Many fans prefer live Tim Buckley to the comparably inconsistent studio albums, including Tompkins Square label head Josh Rosenthal… and I knew that if Rosenthal was involved, Live At The Folklore Center – March 6, 1967 must be a significant recording. The story of how he came into the master tape is a fascinating one, and is recounted in detail in this Onion AV Club interview from a few weeks back. Tompkins Square is known for delivering impressive bang for the buck, and this package features rare archival photos and an unreleased interview with the singer. At 55 minutes, and featuring 6 never-released Buckley compositions, this important addition to his discography should be an easy sell for even casual fans.

…and an important recording it is. Live At The Folklore Center… captures a young Tim Buckley performing to a captive audience in an almost unbelievably intimate setting, the Folklore Center at 321 Sixth Ave in New York City. Attendance was between 30 and 40 people, and the recording was undertaken by Izzy Young, a dedicated NYC folk music enthusiast. The fidelity here is remarkably good, and though the “mix” is a little boomy guitar-wise, this proves a minor quibble. Everything about Tim Buckley, still in the formative stages of his short career, comes through loud and clear… including the fragile person behind the otherworldly voice.

Aside from the previously unreleased compositions, the songs are culled almost exclusively from Buckley’s first two studio albums, the date of the performance falling between the release of his self-titled debut and the recording of his second, Goodbye and Hello. The tracks that appeared on Tim Buckley tend to fare very well in the man-and-his-guitar context… From the outset, the setting appears casual enough, and Buckley nervously wonders whether the tape recorder will pick up his singing. Though this shy, nervous Buckley will reappear in stage banter throughout the set, he all but disappears in the opening chords of “Song For Janie”. With energetic strumming and sufficient guitar flourishes, the tune holds up well in this stripped-down setting.

Tim Buckley – “Song For Janie”
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In “I Can’t See You”, Buckley wrestles with his guitar falling out of tune, but the song easily rises above some of Buckley’s other Elektra-era folk-pop by using an interesting verse structure and a dissonant, wordless chorus. “Aren’t You The Girl” has some of the most effective guitar accompaniment of the night, and even though the chord choices don’t vary greatly from the other songs, Buckley keeps it interesting by peppering his uptempo strumming with quick arpeggios and decending bass figures.

“Wings”, though, is unable to improve on the album version. The strumming feels heavy-handed, even when Buckley (briefly) attempts to soften the song’s dynamic toward the end of the track. The album’s string arrangement, saccharin as it was, had a way of nicely filling the spaces between the verses. The faster tempo of this version feels somewhat rushed.

The set performed on Live At The Folklore Center… isn’t perfectly paced or executed, far from it… the setlist is a long one, and there isn’t much variety in approach, technique or lyrical content on Buckley’s part. The songs that would soon appear on sophomore album Goodbye & Hello sound a little hollow here, bereft of their studio treatments. One gets the feeling that these were written in/for the studio, where the band and producers could run wild with the bubblegum-psych production embellishments that were coming into vogue at the time.  In several cases, the lack of ear-candy lays bare the relatively flowery and ambiguous nature of Buckley’s lyrics. “Troubadour” features more than a few psych-pop clichés… “No Man Can Find The War” sits as awkwardly in this set as it does as the opener of Goodbye…, as Buckley, with no comment or introduction, waxes political on just one song of this sixteen song set. The lyrics fall all over themselves trying to paint a picture of the wartime conditions in the Vietnam jungle, and though I don’t miss the indulgent production of the studio version, this reading doesn’t really approach its ominous mood, keeping the song from resonating. “Phantasmagoria in Two” sounds like Buckley’s attempt at Tim Hardin’s “If I Was A Carpenter”, but lacks that song’s directness. It’s consistent with his writing from this period, the lyrical ambiguity making it hard to understand what Buckley is truely trying to say. That said, I do prefer this version to the studio take, which suffers from some unusually irritating noodling from Lee Underwood.

The forever young Tim Buckley

Two tracks from Goodbye… do work very well in this setting, equally important, but for much different reasons. In “I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain”, Buckley’s singing achieves a sublime balance of the personal and poetic. It’s a wonderful example of his vocal gift, the performance energetic and dynamic, Buckley’s excellent diction cutting perfectly through his almost violent guitar bashing… and I’ll always remember first hearing this version of “Carnival Song”, notable for the singer’s cracking voice at the end of the first verse, the only such mistake I’ve ever heard on a Tim Buckley recording. It is an amazing thing, and along with the occasionally out of tune guitar and Buckley’s aforementioned nervous demeanor throughout the set, shows the human side to Buckley’s usually larger-than-life voice and persona. 

The unreleased tracks aren’t exactly lost classics, basically evoking the same moods and images as the other songs of the period. “What Do You Do (He Never Saw You)” closely echoes the vibe of “Phantasmagoria…” and features some very tender and beautiful singing, some of the most dynamic in the set. “Just Please Leave Me” has Buckley going for a heavy uptempo blues, but sounds a little more like The Monkees, while the similarly titled “I Can’t Leave You Loving Me” offers a preview of some of Buckley’s future bombastic jazz vocalizations, featuring a toned down version of the trademark falsetto-screams of his Starsailor and Lorca albums. “Country Boy” is also indicative of future artistic directions, showcasing the bluesy turns of Buckley’s late “Honeyman” (or as Wikipedia so elegantly puts it “Sex/Funk”) period. This album’s reading of the Fred Neil classic “Dolphins” not only falls far short of the sonic perfection to be found in Neil’s original, it also pales in comparison to Buckley’s later, full-band recordings of the tune.

Though it is almost impossible for this longtime fan to analyze Live At The Folklore Center, NYC… without regard to Buckley’s studio output, it is equally impossible to deny the sheer power of his voice in just about any context, and the near-naked presentation of the material on this album makes it a fascinating document. This record has given me a renewed appreciation for Buckley’s precise articulation, near-perfect vibrato, and ability to imbue his (and songwriting partner Larry Beckett’s) occasionally banal lyrics with sometimes subtle, sometimes explosive emotional energy. I would highly recommend this CD for fans of the L.A. and NYC-based folk music of the mid-60’s, and consider it an absolute must for Tim Buckley fans, especially those enamored of his early stylistic periods.

Buy this CD from Insound
Buy this CD from Tompkins Square

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FINGERSTYLE GUITAR, FOLK, BLUES & BEYOND

Tag Archives: Folk

Interview : Yair Yona

Review : Glenn Jones “Barbecue Bob in Fishtown” LP/CD (Strange Attractors Audio House, 2009)

Review : Glenn Jones “Barbecue Bob in Fishtown” LP/CD (Strange Attractors Audio House, 2009)

Review : Tim Buckley “Live At The Folklore Center, NYC – March 6, 1967” CD (Tompkins Square, 2009)

Raymond Morin / Pairdown September Tour Dates