Fleeting
A modern master of the so-called American Primitive guitar tradition associated with John Fahey, Glenn Jones recorded this solo acoustic album alone with his engineer in a house beside New Jersey\'s babbling Rancocas Creek. His unconventionally tuned Guild guitar sounds exceptionally present, bright, and crystal clear. There\'s a sun-dappled splendor to \"Mother\'s Day,\" while birds and chirping crickets accompany his almost symphonic fingerpicking in \"June Too Soon, October All Over.\" Jones also performs three palette-cleansing banjo solos that are no less melodically surprising than his guitar tunes.
Glenn Jones is a master of American Primitive Guitar, a style invented in the late 1950s by John Fahey, whose traditional fingerpicking techniques and wide-ranging influences were used to create modern original compositions. Jones, who led the post-rock ensemble Cul de Sac, brings his own made-up tunings, the use of custom-crafted partial capos, and a highly skilled picking style on both banjo and guitar, to create personal compositions that are lyrical, emotive and elegant. What sets him apart from the myriad guitarists playing today is his ability to tell stories with the guitar and banjo, and to convey a range of emotions. This process starts with the compositions themselves and carries through to his selection of recording environment and engineer. Fleeting was recorded in a house on the banks of the Rancocas Creek in Mount Holly, New Jersey. Cozy, cluttered with artifacts of a life well-lived (by its owner Bill Bolger), the house struck the right note for Jones and his recording engineer, Laura Baird. Jones in particular likes spaces with character that are remote from the day-to-day world. Jones and Baird made no attempt to soundproof the recording environment, happy to let sounds filtering in from the outdoors to become part of the listening experience. One of Fleeting’s underlying themes is the past and the way places and people resonate in our lives. Jones reflects on the brevity — the fleetingness — of all things, while also looking towards the future. “Spokane River Falls,” which Jones calls his “water song,” recalls the all-but-forgotten city of Spokane, Washington, where he was born. “Cléo Awake” and “Cléo Asleep” share the same melodies and the same inspiration — the newborn child of Jones’ friends (the conceit of “Cléo Asleep” is that Jones plays with a mute on the banjo — called The Happy Wife Banjo Mute — so as not to disturb Cléo, no matter where in the world she is!). “In Durance Vile,” one of the album’s more dissonant, prickly tracks, was originally written to accompany three poems by the abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky, whose texts Jones found “absurd, playful . . . sometimes cruel.” Two of the album’s songs are dedications to fellow guitarists (and friends) Robbie Basho and Michael Chapman. Jones turned away from standard tuning years ago, inventing tunings as a way of escaping the known. The pieces he writes in these tunings are his way of navigating new and unfamiliar landscapes. “But it’s my hope,” he says, “that what you hear are not the tunings and partial capos and all that, but the music — the feeling within these pieces.” Fleeting is a journey that Jones invites his listeners to take with him.
For the last decade, Glenn Jones has taken a craftsperson's approach to the guitar and the banjo, issuing a sterling but rarely surprising string of records that find him telling stories and sharing vulnerabilities sans bells or whistles, his voice or his band. Fleeting, his latest, feels familiar, comfortable, welcome.
Primitive American banjoist and guitarist returns with a bittersweet book of fables concerning the brevity of human relationships and the darkness and light which entwine to paint the portrait of femininity's multiple forms.
"Primitive" is an intriguing descriptor when marketing the lively instrumental prowess of Glenn Jones. Stylistically, Jones is an ancient bard, peddling textured six-string stories that sound as if plucked directly from the musical residue of the Appalachian Mountains.
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The renewed interest in American primitive guitar continues to grow, but for some, like Glenn Jones, the sound has long served as a calling....
Glenn Jones isn’t the only practioner of the guitar style known as American primitive, but he certainly has delivered a series of fine albums that spotlight his unique performances based on this compositional technique.