(ban)jolin, (ban)jolin... (to the tune of jolene)/ controversy on the american primitive scene

so horsemouth now has ayesha’s banjolin to play with. what a beast. that was his morning.

last night ayesha and horsemouth adjourned to a little pub round the corner from hers, sank two halves (an almost perfect amount of beer), and in mixture reminisced and cast a wary eye over the political situation. in the cold light of day the brexit party victory in peterborough has not come about (they’re still a protest vote phew). it all continues to be rubbish. social housing is not getting built.

emma (of emma and rob) was coming up to visit - horsemouth said to say hi.

in the day horsemouth wandered eastwards as far as baker’s arms tescos and south/ westwards in a loop back, succeeding in getting lost, passing leyton parish church (closed for reclamations) and the almshouses, approaching the asda business park from the wrong direction.

it is the point of transition in horsemouth’s year where he has to learn to live without the structure of work, to set himself tasks, but also to go and do the things that are important rather than avoiding them (as is his wont). for the rest of the month? saturday he goes to pick up his guitars from howard’s (and perhaps pass on the banjolin to him). he needs to get up to his parents at some point, solstice on the 21st, probably leave time for the leigh folk festival. then it is the midpoint of the year.


horsemouth was recently involved in some controversy on the american primitive scene - over on john fahey some gentleman had taken against young american primitive guitarist gwenifer raymond’s playing (he wanted slow and contemplative rather than fast and furious, with taste there is no arguing).

consequently when horsemouth found a bbc wales mixtape show by gwenifer (one of her tunes followed by a mixture of welsh indie pre-war blues and such like) he thought it better to post over on american primitive guitar (which is much more the spot for young american primitives or people posting their own stuff). it got likes. it’s good stuff.

then, perhaps somewhat unwisely he mentioned that perhaps he might post it on john fahey too. only to be told that no john fahey should be left for john fahey.

at this point loads of people weighed in to defend horsemouth’s freedom of speech and right to post wherever he chose. (thank you people). having used the word controversy horsemouth found himself at the heart of a controversy. so far so cash from chaos - ‘create generation gaps’. (or indeed edward bernays’ crystallizing public opinion).

what horsemouth (free speech hero) should do now (of course) is advertise his own material - but he might wait a while until it appears less crass.

confiding in the evening star

such was the spare title howard had sitting around - he also had a new song - horsemouth combined the two but he is worried that he may have done to much ‘work’ to it and clouded howard’s original intention.

they have at least one more rehearsal (friday) before the gig (saturday, waterintobeer) to get everything up and running and ship-shape and bristol fashion.

 the slide guitar makes sense to horsemouth but he is still in a quandry about the standard tuning guitar (he normally takes two guitars so he can avoid doing any onstage retuning) - he’s been using howard’s old acoustic (which is a bit buzzy and sitar-like for some tastes), horsemouth wants to leave it droning on with the e-bow on it while he plays the slide but that needs it, at a minimum, to have a metal cored d-string. he may put one on one of his nylon strung guitars and give that a try.

for blue crystal fire (re-imagined by howard as a waltz) he’s abandoned (at least for now) the discordant strummed guitar (‘have you been listening to sonic youth?’ asked howard in horror) and is just concentrating on playing a theremin-like e-bow line (whilst trying not to put howard’s off).

once they’d rehearsed for a bit they went for a walk down to the thames and ate some rice and drank a bottle of beer.

horsemouth then went home and watched seraphim falls a revenger type western which (unlike the revenant) fails because it is unwilling to show its central characters in anything other than a good light. by the time angelica huston is wheeled on (literally) it’s all gone badly wrong.

the night before he’d watched kurosawa’s i live in fear broadly this is a conventional japanese family drama - except that the family patriarch wants to move the family to brazil to escape the impending nuclear war. the family don’t want to go - in the end he’s in a loony bin looking up at the sun believing it’s the earth on fire.


horsemouth has found himself singing the confiding in the evening star  chorus - so he thinks it's a runner.

horsemouth puts up links to two promising american primitive projects - one of which features e-bow on acoustic guitar (but very subtly applied).