[Imagine my shock logging in to write up this post on Wednesday evening, to find I hadn’t actually published the previous one, written at the end of January. I published the unpublished one there and then but still want to put this one out. Hence two posts in less than a week.]
This is a video of Julian Lage’s band playing Opal, a track from his new record. A year ago I’d never heard of him. Now I want to be him.
Recently I’ve been listening to new music for the the first time in quite a long while. After getting about six albums in the last six years I find I’ve bought six already this year and it’s still February. This song is simply one of the most viscerally affective pieces of music I’ve ever heard. “I’ve never heard anything in less of a hurry in my life” as one reviewer put it.
When I say I want to be Julian Lage I mean I want my guitar playing to sound like his. The tone, the touch, the phrasing. The sense of sheer delight at what he’s doing that comes off him. All of that.
He plays a particular electric guitar, a Collings 470 JL since you ask. It’s a beautiful thing and sounds even better than it looks. When I googled it a few weeks I was amazed to find a left-handed version of that very model for sale in a music shop in the UK. In the whole country, just one in one shop.
If I played the same guitar as Lage’s maybe I’d sound that good too?! In a few moments I’d cooked up a plan to order it online, play it at home for a few days and send it back before the credit card bill, for £7k+, even arrived!
I didn’t. Disappointed but relieved, I got a grip. Next day I came across an interview in which he talked about the strings he uses. If I played the same strings as Lage………I ordered a set. £12.99.
They arrived three weeks ago. I’ve yet to put them on Wee Low - the name I’ve given the accoustic guitar I bought for myself for my 70th. A Lowden WL-22, since you ask. I am in love with this guitar. It’s been with me coming up to two years now and it is no exaggeration to say it’s changed my life. I used to play mostly electric guitar. I have about six of them that all do particular things. I had one acoustic which I only used when I needed to be ‘quiet’. Since WeeLow arrived all those electrics have stayed in their cases. It is literally the only one I play. And I play it every day. We have a very close and deeply satisfying relationship.
It’s not just the brightly dark warmth of its sound, which captivated me from the first strum. It’s also the way it feels cradled in my arms, held against my body. How the fretboard and strings accomodate my fingertips and respond to each press, pull off, hammer, sustain and mute.
But those strings are still the same ones WeeLow came with. And therein lies a rub. Why, knowing how much using the same strings as Lage will surely make me sound almost as good as him, am I so reluctant to install them? Answer - I’m scared if I did I’d destroy all that magic forever.
I could say a lot more about this. About spoiling and contamination. About string winders and lemon oil. About senseless fears that hold us back from growing. I’ll have to come back to all that another time because right now I want to talk about WeeLow, Prayer and the Land.
BECOMING PRAYER
I’ve talked a little about Prayer here before. More recently someone said something to me about Becoming Prayer. And this phrase landed like the taste of whiskey working fire inside me. Something I’ve experienced, being articulated for me. Language that helped explain me to myself.
It’s about those moments when I’m offering Prayer or Singing on the Land and something happens. No intention, no decision. Something comes through. I become a channel like an old analogue radio. Finely adjusted, attuned ‘listening’. Not choice, not Ego, but Eco. Not praying but Becoming Prayer. Beginning with a simple trope, Some words arrive, or not. Repeat and repeat, shifting, shuffling, as whatever wants to emerge emerges. Here’s a tiny taste of that process at work. The words an expression of longing to Become Prayer by Having Soul’s Song Flow Through Me
0:00
-0:55
ENCHANTMENTS and SPELLS
I’ve begun to realise my offerings to Mystery and the Land don’t need my guitar. Guitaring seems specific to sharing with people. The guitar becomes a wand that creates an enchantment. And, like Becoming Prayer, when I get it right that sound can enchant first myself and then you, the listener/participant, too. As the guitar creates this soundworld, the Song sung by Voice becomes Incantation and Spell. When all this works live, and it doesn’t always, but when it does, we all head off somewhere together. And return just a little changed. And none of us, not me, not you, not the guitar, know quite where we’ve been or what happened there.
(MMC Lyric Palimpset)
MY MANY COMPANIONS: THE TOUR
Finally reminder of the chance to take part in the lived experience of all the above falling into place. Dates and locations for the first trenche of the Cherished Land experiment below. Use booking link or email me direct for more details - steve@deepcabaret.co.uk
Sun 15/3 2pm
Deep Dale Woods at Catcastle, Lartington DL12 9DQ
https://www.trybooking.com/uk/FTBK
Sun 29/3 2pm
Windlestone Scout Site, Ferryhill, DL17 0LX.
https://www.trybooking.com/uk/FTBL
Sun 10/5 2pm nr Storth, Lancs
Link tbc. Meantime email direct.
Sun 24/5 2pm nr Ulverston, Cumbria
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.