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<\/p>\nIt was only last February that Reed Turchi was making a trip back to his boyhood home of Swannanoa for an album release party for Speaking in Shadows<\/i> by his group The Caterwauls. Turchi was excited: new album, new band, new tour. Less than a year later, all of those things are well behind him. A series of major life changes for Turchi has resulted in the stark, stripped-down sound of his latest album, Tallahatchie<\/i>. There’s one \u2013 and possibly only one \u2013 thing thing that he hasn’t changed: Turchi returned to Swannanoa to celebrate his latest album with a show January 6 at the Root Bar.<\/p>\n
Last spring, The Caterwauls embarked on an extensive tour across the U.S. in support of Speaking in Shadows<\/i>. \u201cI had assembled a band that I was very pleased with,\u201d Turchi says. And although the shows were well-received, the band unraveled. \u201cNot because of anyone’s particularly horrible actions,\u201d Turchi explains. \u201cbut the usual life pressures pulled everyone apart.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Back home in Memphis, Turchi left his job at Ardent Records just ahead of a wave of layoffs. And then there was the presidential election, \u201ca sort of wake-up moment for everyone,\u201d Turchi says.<\/p>\n
Taken together, all of those circumstances would be enough to take the wind out of a creative artist’s sails. Instead, Turchi headed back to his roots, recording Tallahatchie<\/i>, a solo record in the truest sense of the word. \u201cThe only sort of natural and right thing to do musically \u2013 personally, too \u2013 was to get back to the most basic, square-one kind of music,\u201d Turchi says. \u201cHill Country music is what first got me obsessed with guitar. I sort of drifted away from that with different groups, but those songs are exactly why I picked up guitar in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n
The specific inspiration for Tallahatchie<\/i> can be said to have come from Turchi’s ailing grandmother. While on tour, he and his band had visited her in a Baltimore critical care facility. \u201cOne thing she really wanted to do was sing songs together,\u201d Turchi recalls. \u201cShe wasn’t much of a singer; she just liked the idea of tunes.\u201d Singing a few of the songs from The Caterwauls’ live set, Turchi realized right then that they really didn’t work in stripped-down, a cappella versions. That was an \u201cAha!\u201d moment for the guitarist.<\/p>\n
The 11 songs on Tallahatchie<\/i> are all country blues tunes written many decades ago, but they resonate with the songwriter-guitarist. \u201cNone of them are my songs,\u201d Turchi admits. \u201cBut they all have personal meaning to me.\u201d The twists and turns of 2016 sent Turchi into an introspective mindset. \u201cSo rather than trying to create something sort of complex and layered and full of pieces outside<\/i> of myself, I wanted to try to make something that was speaking \u2013 as truly as possible \u2013 from me and my guitar.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tallahatchie<\/i> certainly has that inward-looking contemplative mood about it. The record has a \u201cRobert Johnson in a boarding house with a guitar, a mic and a recording machine\u201d ambiance. Turchi describes it as a \u201ccompanion record; it’s very much a conversation.\u201d He says that the songs he chose \u201chave kind of been sitting there in my head \u2013 or my hands \u2013 the whole time,\u201d so he didn’t have to re-learn them.<\/p>\n
Turchi set an important ground rule for himself when making Tallahatchie<\/i>. \u201cI didn’t want to do anything that I couldn’t do live,\u201d he says. So he set up a field recording microphone and another mic in his bedroom. \u201cThen I sat there and recorded everything in about two days.\u201d He didn’t do any post-recording editing; he didn’t overdub or correct any of the tracks. The vocals were recorded live while he played.<\/p>\n
Turchi says that the collapse of his band and the other events of this past year feel as if they \u201cleft a hole. And I felt like I wanted to go back and fill that hole in.\u201d And even though all of Tallahatchie’s songs are covers, Turchi says that all of the songs \u201chave a little bit of my whatever<\/i> in them. They’ve sat with me long enough that I’ve been able to marinate them in something that’s not just imitation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Root Bar show in Turchi’s hometown was the start of a solo tour that will take him across the country to \u201call the main U.S. markets,\u201d he says. While he enjoys the power and volume of a full band, these solo shows hold a special appeal for him, too. \u201cIt’s really refreshing to perform that way,\u201d Turchi says, \u201cbut also to just have a sort of conversation with the people who are there. I like to talk to people between songs, just feel the rhythm and have a good time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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