Julian Lage Northern Shuffle

[Ryan Painter]

Love the grittiness. Sounds maybe like the guitar strings are tuned down?

I thought the same and just found this article that mentions the tuning is C standard. Also mentions the guitar and amps used for the tune. It was a great read!

“Why you typically don’t lead a six-piece band with an acoustic guitar is because you can’t be heard! I am shocked that we are able to pull that one off”: Julian Lage on the electric shuffles and engineering miracles behind his most daring album yet | MusicRadar

[ruger9]

I thought the same and just found this article that mentions the tuning is C standard. Also mentions the guitar and amps used for the tune. It was a great read!

“Why you typically don’t lead a six-piece band with an acoustic guitar is because you can’t be heard! I am shocked that we are able to pull that one off”: Julian Lage on the electric shuffles and engineering miracles behind his most daring album yet | MusicRadar

Well that's interesting. I'm surprised no one caught it (be ear). Low C should be pretty easy to hear it's tuned down!!

[supersoul]

His playing is evolving as it should. Yes take chances experiment and show them to us.

Ben Monder has experimented alot with his own work..and applied some of that to
a pop tune..I feel Lage is doing much the same.

Here is Monder doing Witchita Line Man..I feel some of the same energy in the JL piece.

5:52 is when the last telephone line is taken down as the transition to all-cellular is complete, and the Witchita lineman gets a new job as a energy-drink chuggin' computer programmer working out of his home office, where he can read his estraged love's texts in the cascading 256-bit SSL encoded data streaming from top to bottom in a single terminal window on his curved flat-screen monitor.

[ruger9]

That was a great interview/article. I haven't downloaded the album yet, but if alot of it is like "As It Were" (the audio is in the article), I'll love it. I don't think of it as a "jazz guitar record", but as a "jazz record", period. It's interesting how the framing of it can affect your first impressions. Whereas I listen to Squint (for example) to hear Julian play his version of jazz guitar, I'll listen to Speak To Me for the overall musical vibe.... in that way it reminds me alot of Bill Frisell.

Lage sees Speak To Me as “a record of spirituals, a form of gospel,” and at times a melancholy work.“I like to think of it as a more three-dimensional emotional landscape than I have ever tackled on a record,” he says. When there are all these emotions floating around, then mood can shape the narrative and take it where it needs to go.”

[mr. beaumont]

Gave it a listen. I kind of love it. Starts off like something from a David Lynch movie, then takes a bunch of twists...

[AllanAllen]

I like the bit at 4:46 that sounds like a few Vince Guaraldi lines. He must've liked it too because he played it earlier in the song.

[Tom Wright]

Interesting album. To date my favorite is *Squint*. *Modern Lore* is the most consistent, the steady trio sound on all tunes.

Lage never seems to have improv over freely improvising drums and bass. More often a steady backbeat is the accompaniment.

[ruger9]

Just listened to the album. I really like it. I like the bigger band with a horn/woodwind. Actually makes me want to go back and listen to the acoustic Julian I haven't explore yet, like Worlds Fair.

[guitarcarver]

Phew…

I don‘t know what that’s about? Sounds just horrible to me, even if I really love his other stuff.

I get that music and art are subjective and have no problem with opinions.

Sometimes I am surprised by reactions of listeners when an artist plays something seemingly out of the box. For instance, I can fully appreciate such disparate offerings from Miles Davis like kind of blue vs. On the Corner. Or say George Benson albums like the cookbook vs. Absolute Benson. I would never expect an artist....especially a jazz artist, to keep painting the same picture.

I thought Julian's northern shuffle was just him expressing some of his Americana side. It sounded a bit reminiscent of Ry Cooder.

I liked it.

I just saw his trio with Joey Baron on drums about a week ago and I'm still so inspired by what they did that night that I've been writting tunes and playing better than I have in a while. It was truly amazing.

[ruger9]

New interview!