US guitarists, Eli Winter and Cameron Knowler have been playing and performing together since 2018 but there’s an easy, natural affinity in their playing and interactions that feels informed by a much older collaboration. This warm, joy-infused set, recorded at OTO in May 2022, combines cuts from their 2021 album, Anticipation, alongside solo tracks and an unexpected improvised group closer, where the two guitars of Winter and Knowler are ably joined by members of Shovel Dance Collective and Maxwell Sterling on bass.
The back catalogues of both Winter and Knowler draw to varying degrees from the American folk tradition, and in this collaboration the bluegrass-tinged side of their work is unapologetically present. But the duo cast the net wide in their palette, not only in their references to the likes of Robbie Basho, Daniel Bachman, Jack Rose and the UK’s Michael Chapman et al (explicitly so, in the case of the latter two, with covers here of Chapman’s Caddo Lake and Rose’s Fishtown Flower), but also in the weaving through of jazz-inflected, improvised sections and intricate assemblages of shifting tonality, with nods to the 20th century American avant garde scene which at times approach the yearning dissonances of Harry Partch or the effervescent contrapuntal chord structures of Conlon Nancarrow. Hints, maybe, but more than enough to leave the listener in any doubt of the depth of the well these two are drawing from (and for those somehow still harbouring reservations over the extent to which Winter and Knowler are kicking against the hermetically sealed reverence that sometimes afflicts those working within the folk tradition, the title of the third song of the set should put these fears to rest).
Ultimately, it’s the mixture of dexterity and space, weight and levity that ends up being so transfixing; conjuring a late summer pastoral haze, with Winter and Knowler’s eddies and whorls of notes carrying the listener effortlessly along like a spinning leaf on the brook. But the sweetness is never cloying, and the easy, seemingly effortless interplay between the two is never less than purposeful. There’s an unhurried focus to the duo’s playing, calm but deliberate in a way that slowly but surely draws the listener in. What leaves the deepest impression is the generosity of spirit in which these songs are offered up; something that the joyous reception that Winter and Knowler are given by an enraptured audience at the end of this set fully attests to.
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Eli Winter / guitarCameron Knowler / guitar
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Mix, master and cover design by Oli Barrett
