Shane Parish - Repertoire LP

So much ‘folk’ in the contemporary is backwards facing, looking to the past and tradition. But with his latest LP, Shane Parish (member of the Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet) asks what it means to consider the span of 20th Century music as a new contemporary folk tradition.

In the spirit of solo acoustic guitarists like John Renbourn and Bert Jansch, or American Primitivists John Fahey and Robbie Basho, or even Michael Morley’s more recent rifling through the bargain bins for classical guitar inspiration, Parish reinterprets canons, with a focus on a motley crew of titans of the last century: Ornette Coleman, Minutemen, Alice Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Apex Twin, Kraftwerk, Sun Ra, Roland Kirk, John Cage, and Fred Rogers.

By arranging these pieces down into for solo acoustic guitar, Parish abstracts the originals and boils down band arrangements drawing out parts of and approaches to these artists that I’ve always overlooked (Minutemen as THE punk rock flamenco??!!).
-Mitch