Film honours music of the past
Contemporary artists make magic with 1920s technology on The American Epic Sessions
Forget that old-time rock ’n’ roll — the music that soothes Jack White and T Bone Burnett’s souls nowadays is from the Roaring Twenties. The two join forces in the film The American Epic Sessions, airing Tuesday on PBS.
A companion to the three-part series American Epic — which aired last month and explored how rural musicians in the 1920s started making records — this program gathers contemporary artists together for a recording session led by White and Burnett.
The twist? They’re using the only working 1920s recording device in existence to capture the magic, in honour of the musicians of that era.
“All of us have a common foe, and that’s forgetfulness — where you forget where you came from and who you are,” Burnett told Rolling Stone. “We all appreciate that link to our history. We need that.”
Said blues veteran Taj Mahal, who appears in both programs: “All these different musicians and styles of music — recordings and people I’d never heard of that just had sadness and stories — I felt, man, this is something that people really need to know about. It’s music about people’s lives in different tempos.”
A soundtrack of the series, a 100song box set and other items are available through Legacy Recordings, Columbia Records and Third Man Records.
The roster of musicians set to appear in American Epic Sessions includes Alabama Shakes, The Avett Brothers, Beck, Elton John, Nas, Raphael Saadiq, Rhiannon Giddens, Steve Martin, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard.
Clothes encounters
Hailey Gates returns with season 2 of the docuseries States of Undress, debuting Tuesday on Viceland. She continues to explore global fashion, with emphasis on why people around the world wear the clothes they do — and what it means socially and politically.
She wrote about the crew’s decision to embrace her femininity while travelling abroad in an essay for Paper: “It doesn’t feel like you really get to earn a piece on how hard it is for women to find tampons in Venezuela without getting your period yourself. We found that slowly throughout the series we could normalize the femininity of reporting, rather than extracting it to make the story feel ‘stronger’ or more legitimate, by following its leads.”
That inking feeling
Ink Master fires up its tattoo needle for season 9, premièring Tuesday on Spike. This go-round features duos from different tattoo shops going head-to-head for the first time in the show’s history; the winners pocket $200,000. Ink Masters has already been renewed for season 10, and the new special Ink Master Angels — following four women from season 8 competing across the U.S. — will debut later this year.