{"id":14787,"date":"2018-07-02T05:30:55","date_gmt":"2018-07-02T09:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=14787"},"modified":"2018-07-02T08:10:20","modified_gmt":"2018-07-02T12:10:20","slug":"eric-congdon-heads-into-the-woods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2018\/07\/02\/eric-congdon-heads-into-the-woods\/","title":{"rendered":"Eric Congdon Heads Into the Woods"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Hendersonville, N.C. guitarist Eric Congdon has been recording and releasing albums since 2006, when he made his solo record debut, Green River<\/i>. Over the years, the roots-blues musician has built up a solid reputation as an sterling musical interpreter, yet one with his own style. But in 2015 he was involved in a serious automobile accident that left him unable to play guitar at all. Happily, he worked his way back to a full recovery, and that period of convalescence also yielded a new album, Into the Woods<\/i>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just couldn’t play straight for about two months,\u201d Congdon recalls. He says that he tried to pick up the guitar just a few days after the accident, played a few chords and then blacked out and fell over. He didn’t understand what was wrong, so he asked his doctor. \u201cHe told me, ‘You think you’re not doing anything when you’re sitting there strumming, but your brain is working really hard to process all that. But your brain can’t<\/i> process that right now.’\u201d <\/p>\n

So Congdon set his guitar aside while continuing his recovery. Eventually, he says his brain built up the ability to process the music. \u201cIt took me about a year to get to the point where I could play a good evening’s worth of music again, and feel comfortable,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Along with working his way back to instrumental facility, Congdon started taking long hikes in the Western North Carolina woods, reveling in the grandeur of the region. \u201cAfter being laid up for a while and not being able to do anything, it was part of my recovery process,\u201d he says. And the experience was as inspiring as it was therapeutic.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust being out there in nature and being influenced and inspired by North Carolina informs a lot of what you hear on Into the Woods<\/i>,\u201d Congdon says. \u201cThe stories, the sounds and the rootsy flavor of the music are all tied together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the best songs on Congdon’s latest album would be inspired by those long walks. And the quiet contemplation and communion with nature yielded creative ideas he would explore once he got home and began to write songs. One of those is \u201cThe Legend of Blowing Rock.\u201d Congdon says that he \u201cwrote out a story lyrically first, and then made the music to match up with the words.\u201d <\/p>\n

But other tunes, like \u201cSmoky Mountain Medicine Man,\u201d are a combination of new and older, previously-unused works. \u201cI actually wrote the music for that song almost 10 years ago,\u201d Congdon says. Then on one of his hikes, he had a moment of inspiration. \u201cThat phrase jumped into my head \u2013 Smoky Mountain medicine man \u2013 and then pretty much on the spot, I scribbled down the lyrics and finally completed the song,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Several of the tracks on Into the Woods<\/i> are stories about real people. \u201cBallad of Brando\u201d is one such song. \u201cThat’s a childhood friend, and those are real things that happened to him,\u201d Congdon says. His goal for the album was to create a unified collection of original songs. \u201cI had some stories I wanted to tell,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen people hear the CD, I want them to think of North Carolina, and the woods, and the things around here. That’s what I was shooting for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Remarkably, considering the richly evocative lyrics of Into the Woods<\/i>, the new album is the first in nearly a decade to feature Congdon’s vocals. \u201cFor a long time, I felt I didn’t have anything to say lyrically, so I focused on music,\u201d he says. But then after the accident, he found that his lyrical muse had returned. \u201cAnd they kind of tied together,\u201d Congdon says. \u201cIt just happened naturally.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another goal Congdon kept in mind when making Into the Woods<\/i> was making it a \u201cperformance album,\u201d one that could be duplicated onstage. \u201cWhen people come to see me live, I want to give them a pretty reasonable facsimile of what’s on the CD,\u201d he says. His guiding principle in making albums is straightforward: keep it simple. But that doesn’t mean rushing things. \u201cIt took a while to complete, and I really sweated over the details,\u201d Congdon says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have my little humble recording studio here at home, and I pretty much assembled everything here. Into the Woods<\/i> is personal in its own way,\u201d Congdon says. \u201cI have a lot of my heart and soul in it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hendersonville, N.C. guitarist Eric Congdon has been recording and releasing albums since 2006, when he made his solo record debut, Green River. Over the years, the roots-blues musician has built […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14788,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,41],"tags":[3471],"class_list":["post-14787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-americana","category-interview","tag-eric-congdon","cat-6-id","cat-41-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14787"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14800,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14787\/revisions\/14800"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}