“It’s definitely a Woodstock album”
Straight outta the Catskills, a harmonious new collab between Mercury Rev and folk guitarist Peter Walker
“Woodstock was a haven from the city, a small
artist community surrounded by redneck neighbours,” says Peter Walker, the renowned folk guitarist who has lived in the woods just outside the famous New York town for nearly 50 years. “through the ’70s there was a large influx of people trying to support themselves in the country lifestyle. It was cheaper to live here, but harder to make money. People came from far away to act out their fantasy of what Woodstock was – or what it should be.”
since its heyday in the 1960s, Woodstock has been celebrated more for that huge hippie festival on Max Yasgur’s farm than for the many artists who migrated there throughout the entire 20th century, starting with the furniture makers at Byrdcliffe art colony in 1903. But Walker is helping to recapture some of that old creative countercultural spirit on Lachesis/
Clotho/Atropos, a new collection of improvised songs conceived and recorded with members of local Americana fantasists Mercury Rev, released under that band’s longrunning alias Harmony Rockets.
Mercury Rev have long been associated with Woodstock, even recruiting two of its most famous residents – the Band’s Levon Helm and Garth Hudson – to play on their 1997 breakout album, Deserter’s
Songs. still, they didn’t cross paths with Walker until very recently. “I knew Rainy Day Raga pretty well,” says multi-instrumentalist sean
‘Grasshopper’ Mackowiak, referring to Walker’s 1966 album, “but I didn’t know any of the music he’d made
recently [Walker has released a handful of solo guitar albums since being coaxed back into the studio by Tompkins Square in 2006]. And I didn’t know about his connection to timothy Leary and all that stuff.”
“All that stuff” is an understatement: a teen runaway who taught himself guitar, Walker became a fixture on the Greenwich Village folk scene, befriended karen dalton and sandy Bull and participated in timothy Leary’s “psychedelic celebrations” with Lsd. Before he became a fulltime Woodstock resident in 1970, he was organising small music festivals out in the countryside.
“He said he had played harmonica when he left home at 14, so I wanted him to play harmonica,” adds Grasshopper. “He also said he had played slide guitar during the ’60s, so we wanted him to do that as well. We wanted him to do stuff he hadn’t done in a while, along with the Indian and spanish music he plays now.”
Recording at Water Music in Hoboken, New Jersey, they recruited Nels cline from Wilco, Jesse chandler of Midlake and Mercury Rev, sonic Youth drummer steve shelley and bassist Martin keith. during rehearsals and recording sessions, Rev frontman Jonathan donahue directed proceedings with homemade signs that read “More Intensity!” or “Bring It down!”. Mixing bits of raga, drone, folk, flamenco and psychedelia, the songs don’t resemble anything Walker or Mercury Rev have done before, although it does sound rooted in the catskills soil.
“It’s definitely a Woodstock album,” says Grasshopper, “although that can mean many different things. For me, there’s a free-spiritedness here, a sense that you can do whatever you want.” His new friend may be a big part of that legacy, but these days Walker largely avoids the town, preferring to find inspiration in nature. “My paradise is a creative haven,” says the 81-year-old. “I feed breadcrumbs to the fish in the stream and take note of the deer and bear tracks. the country life is a healthy one, and lends itself to creativity. there is a lot going on here, but it is nearly all private.”
Harmony Rockets’ Lachesis/ Clotho/Atropos is out on Tompkins Square on September 14
“There’s a freespiritedness here, a sense that you can do whatever you want” GRASSHOPPER