Originally published at North Country Primitive in March 2015

Here we are with another edition of the North Country Primer. This time it's the turn of Texan guitarist, William Csorba, whose recent album, The Bear Creek Child Cemetery, has been getting a lot of ear time here at North Country Primitive. Our thanks go out to William for his illuminating responses to our not always illuminating questions...

Tell us a bit about yourself and the musical journey that took you to a place where you concluded that playing an acoustic guitar on your own was a good idea... Well, for the most part, playing music by myself is the only way I’ve ever played music. I grew up largely on the country music I heard from my mom as a kid. My family has really deep Texas roots on my mom’s side, going back to the time when Texas was an independent nation. I’ve always been really aware of and fascinated by that sort of thing and I think my taste in music has been influenced similarly. I listened to a lot of Texas country music early on - guys like Jerry Jeff Walker, Waylon Jennings and Guy Clark, along with many of the greats of classic country music - Hank Williams above all, of course. So I guess a lot of the music I’ve been drawn to tends towards being a solo affair. The great Texan songwriter, Townes Van Zandt, was a pretty close relative of mine, even though I never had the opportunity to know him - I would have been very young at the time of his passing. It’s kind of funny, actually - I remember growing up and hearing that I had a cousin who “wrote songs for Willie Nelson,” which was simply based on the fact that Willie had done a rather popular cover of Pancho and Lefty and that Townes had never had the commercial success that some of those dudes enjoyed. First hearing some of Townes’ recordings years later was a rather momentous event for me. I was really blown away by them and I guess knowing that I had a connection with him by blood only heightened the profundity of his music for me. To me, he should be remembered not only as a master songwriter, but really as a substantial American poet. I first picked up a guitar pretty much because I wanted to play some of his songs - as well as some Hank Williams songs. I soon recognised that I wasn’t that interested in singing, especially since I didn’t seem to have much of a talent for it. Anyway, through Townes I encountered the hometown blues legend Lightnin’ Hopkins, who he cited as a big influence, which led me to the world of pre-war blues and hillbilly music. This became something of an obsession around the time I went to college six years back. While I was at school out in New Mexico, I fell in with a group of friends who were real into old blues and old-time music. My roommate and good friend that first year, a guy named Michael Laudenbach, played fingerstyle guitar quite well and I made him teach me some of the basics of that kind of playing, with tunes picked up from Elizabeth Cotton, the Carter Family and some other similar stuff. He also introduced me to John Fahey, who, as it must surely come as no surprise, was my inspiration for getting pretty serious about music and on whom I felt compelled to model an approach to begin trying to make some music of my own. To me, Fahey is in many ways the consummate American artist. Aside from the particulars of his work and aesthetic, the most important and compelling significance for me lies in borrowing a method from him as a starting point for a way of doing serious music. In other words, the really decisive thing I got from Fahey was a novel philosophy for composing and art-making in general. This philosophy resonated strongly with me in so many ways, although it was of course the music itself that first got my attention. I wouldn’t even say that the guitar - specifically the solo guitar format he championed - was an absolutely essential element of what I interpret to be his artistic philosophy, but I would definitely say that it undoubtedly fits into it and cultivates this approach better than anything else I can come up with. And since I was already somewhat under the spell of the instrument, it seemed to be a pretty obvious direction for me to go in. What has influenced your music and why? As far as strictly musical influences go, in addition to the spectrum of stuff I’ve already suggested, I’ve always been pretty hugely into classical music - or formal music, if you like - more or less of all kinds and from all periods. There was a fantastic class I took in college, which I can best describe as a sort of survey of Western music. It was far more than simply an overviewt really allowed me to work out a lot of my thoughts and feelings about music and to grow significantly in the art of listening, which I feel to be one of the most important things for becoming a good musician. So, I have definitely gotten a lot of inspiration from many of the classical composers and also from some of the older traditions that play into the Western musical tradition. Perhaps my most important and primal musical influence is the church and sacred music. For me, this originally comes from having been brought up in the southern Baptist Church. Probably the greatest virtue of the southern Baptist denomination is in its hymnal, which is largely composed of strongly American-feeling melodies, mostly from the latter half of the 19th century. This differs from some of the other denominations that preserve and emphasise a lot more an older generation of hymns originating from Europe. My very strong, unhappy reaction to the disaster of the crappy contemporary worship music that was beginning to replace the traditional hymns sung in church while I was growing up is probably worth mentioning as well. Different kinds of world music have also definitely been a big interest for some time, especially after encountering the sounds of India when a friend and I spent a good bit time over there after graduating from high school. I like and listen to a lot of other kinds of music, but it’s hard to say what has really had an actual influence on the music I’ve been making, but there are probably many little bits of things from all over the place that come into it, if you know what I mean. Speaking more generally, I actually came to understand music as something I wanted to do by way of my studies in philosophy and literature. At an even more basic level, I’d say that music has come to occupy a place for me previously chiefly held by more explicitly religious concerns. My relationship to music definitely has a strong religious dimension, which I would say is right at the centre of what I’m trying to do with it. To put it more concretely, a lot what inspires me often comes from a desire, or maybe a need, to express various reflections on personal history, particular places and landscapes that have stuck with me and the diverse emotional states that make up the inner life. In addition to sometimes just going off of a kernel of what I’m feeling at a particular time, simply, I often try to write music while holding in mind certain mental images or memories - sometimes including, for instance, a feeling for the earth itself in a place I’ve been before, if that makes any sense. You know, like nature and stuff, although I’m not confident that’s quite my meaning exactly. I think what I’m trying to get at comes through most perspicuously in the first recording efforts I made last summer with an album I called The Bear Creek Child Cemetery, which is probably why it’s still my favorite thing I’ve made so far. What have you been up to recently? Well, I’m still in school, so I’m doing that stuff. But mostly my real preoccupation these days is, as much as possible, with the music - trying to write music and get better at composing. I’m also just starting to play out in public some lately, which is a lot of fun and pretty challenging. What are you listening to right now, old or new? Any recommendations you’d like to share with us? The first thing that comes to mind right now is that guy Abner Jay, who I listen to quite a lot. If you’re not familiar with him you got to check it out. The dude was a genius, and I don’t say that easily. I feel like he deserves a lot more recognition than he has probably gotten. I’ve got a CD in my car right now of some of Bartok’s piano music, which is pretty great. I’ve also been on a bit of a Brahms kick recently: the violin concerto, which is pretty new to me, but also the piano concertos and symphonies, which I’ve always really dug - especially the 3rd. I always have a healthy dose of old-time music going on at any given time. I guess that’s just like an essential nutrient or something at this point. I’ve been listening a bunch to this clawhammer banjo album by a guy I knew from New Mexico named Ariel Winnick. He’s a fantastic player. The album’s called Glory Beams and can be found on the web. I’d definitely recommend it, especially to folks already into old-time music and such. I should also mention that I’ve been checking out a lot of other the guitarists who I’ve been finding out about since I started trying to get my music out there over the past several months. I had no idea how many great players there are out there nowadays doing this kind of thing. Specifically, just to name a couple things I’ve come upon recently, I really like Chuck Johnson’s album Crows in the Basilica, which I’ve been listening to a lot. I’ve also got to mention that dude Daniel Bachman. I was super impressed by him when I first heard him sometime this past year and it still hasn’t worn off a bit - his playing really resonates with me. But yeah, it’s been really fun and, I guess, encouraging in a way, to check out all these similarly-minded musicians that are now coming to my attention. Oh, and because I just thought of it, that Irish guy Cian Nugent. The other day I listened to a pair of his pieces called Grass Above My Head and My War Blues. I really enjoyed those a lot. The guitar nerd bit: what guitars do you play and what do you like about them? Is there anything out there you’re coveting? I am honestly pretty ignorant when it comes to guitars and whatnot. I play a Johnson guitar, OM size, I think, which I bought off a friend a few years back. It’s not a particularly nice instrument or anything, but it works good and I like it a lot. It’s got a nice, pretty wide fretboard and the neck has a sort of v-shaped cut, which I really like the feel of. Maybe it’s just that I’ve gotten real comfortable with the thing. I like the size of it too. I’m not sure I’m really coveting anything, maybe just because I am not particularly aware of what’s out there, but I would really like to have one of those big, loud Martin Dreadnoughts one day. I’ve played some of those before and they felt and sounded really great. Banjos: yes or no? Oh yes. Personally, I love the banjo. As I actually already mentioned, when I lived in New Mexico there was a really great clawhammer player named Ariel Winnick at my school and I was just totally mesmerized by his playing. It made such an impression on me that I felt that I had to learn how to do it, so I began to pick it up. I still fool around and play fiddle tunes and stuff on the thing all the time. I’ve also always been a huge sucker for that classic hard-driving bluegrass banjo sound. There’s something marvelous about that relentless, cascading sound you get in really good Scruggs-style picking. I really could go on and on about banjos. They’re weird and American and really very attractive to me all round. What’s that Mark Twain quote about banjos? Something about smashing pianos and taking up instead the “glory beaming banjo.” What are you planning to do next? Well, I want to try to make another solo guitar record in the near future, but I want to try to take more time with it than I have with most of my releases so far. I feel like I want to work more deliberately on some much more fine-tuned composition. I also want to get better production values with the recording and get it sounding real nice. I’ve also been trying to start playing publicly a lot more and give that a shot. This means that I’m trying to pull together a more fully worked out repertoire of my songs - most of the stuff I’ve written and recorded over the past while, I haven’t really committed to memory. Oh, and I’ve actually been trying to work out some music to play with another musician I know, which is a lot fun and different for me. What should we have asked you and didn’t? Hmm… I don’t know. These have been very good, wide-ranging questions that have allowed me to talk about a lot of things that I like to talk about. I really appreciate the opportunity to reflect on these topics and share some of my thoughts. And forgive me if I went on and on a bit much - it’s hard to keep it brief when responding to questions like these.

Review by Will Csorba. Originally published at North Country Primitive in December 2015

Blood Moon Boulder is the third in a series of guitar albums released since 2011 from Chuck Johnson of California. His previous release Crows in the Basilica, which came as my first encounter with Johnson, quickly became a personal favorite of mine, so it is not without significance that this one did not disappoint in the least. There are a lot of new departures here from his previous work, both thematically and technically, including new instrumentation in the use of a Weissenborn-style lap guitar. He is accompanied on a couple of tracks - incorporating violin, pedal steel, and even electronic sounds similar to those heard on his recent cassette release, CJ-​1. The opening track, Corvid Tactics is the lengthiest piece on the album, and it’s a beauty. Performed on a lap steel slide guitar, it consists structurally of two distinct sections that have an interesting but definite continuity with each other. The first is a longer, very spacious and rhythmically open free raga section in which the slide approach is utilized marvelously, taking full advantage of the access it provides to the full, un-partitioned range of tones, which at the hand of Johnson results in some really substantive and coherent melodic content. It recalls, perspicuously, the traditional music of India and pictures it evocatively, with sensitivity as well as sophistication - there is no gimmickry with the exotic to be found here. By way of a rather abrupt culmination of the first part, which nevertheless somehow feels natural and really satisfies, the closing section moves along at a much quicker tempo in an evenly paced, driving alternating bass rhythm, where the melodies are supported by the strength of full chord changes in the tradition of deeply American harmonic sensibility. The fact that Johnson’s timing is impeccable, that the tone of the instrument and the precision of his playing are immaculate, only heightens the beauty of the composition. It’s quite something. Silver Teeth in the Sun comes out aggressively, even menacingly, as though to remind the listener of his or her mortality after having been brought to such heights by the pull of the opener. It’s a hard-driving and relentless piece of music, except for a couple of ominous pauses which only reinforce this character. It works nicely as the second track, restoring balance that keeps us moving forward. At the center of the album are its two briefest tracks. Medicine Map may perhaps be interpreted as a reworking of the blues guitar tune, Vestapol, as it recognizably contains some of the same changes, especially since Johnson played a great version of that tune on his previous release. But if that is the case, this would be all the more a novel and adventurous composition, one feature of which is a very nice and effective contrasting section to the theme first introduced.  To me, its feeling is like that evoked by a tune like Vestapol if it were slowed down and embued with an added dimension of contemporary sentiment which seems – appropriately - just beyond the reach of language to describe. With a vibe I would describe similarly in terms of the reimaging of an old-time sentiment for the contemporary, Inversion Layer is a fairly simple and yet compositionally strong one - and quite pretty. ​ The Deer and the Snake challenges the opener as perhaps the best piece on the album. Here, Johnson returns to his slide technique on lap guitar, as in Cor​vid Tactics, but with what seems to me maybe an even more deliberate attention to the subtleties to be found in the spaces between notes.  It has a strikingly darker mood than the opener and seems to address itself to a matter of great weight. Interestingly, this track features accompaniment for the first time, firstly from a haunting droning violin, then some electronically produced drones overlapping with the violin and, finally, some kind of chimes or bells that continue on at the track’s conclusion for a couple minutes after the guitar has ceased to play. The closer, Priv​at​e Violence, which includes instrumentation by Johnson on both electric guitar and pedal steel as well as with electronics, really reinforces some of the vibes strongly felt in Corvid Tactics, but with an entirely different tone. It feels like a dramatically slowed and elongated country and western ballad, evoking the finality of the setting sun on the desert horizon, and for me at a personal level, it conjures the memory and emotions associated with where I used to live in New Mexico, in which the landscape at dusk suggests a portrait of reality that lays bare the meeting of dusty earth and vastness of sky. As with his previous releases, Johnson’s restraint and maturity as a composer and technician are once again most impressive. The result is an album that succeeds both at the level of the particular and also as a coherent and meaningful whole. In the end, my only complaint might be with the length of the album, since after clocking out at 38 minutes, I find myself wanting more: on the other hand, I must concede that its brevity is simultaneously one of the album’s strengths. Nothing is superfluous – Blood Moon Boulder is concise and purposeful throughout.