Tim Eriksen used to play punk rock, widened his interests to embrace folk rock with Cordelia's Dad (FW#6), until it struck him to perform the most basic of American roots music. However, not the old-time music of the American South but, Tim being from Massachusetts, the almost forgotten roots music of New England, including the Christian choral music that is called shape note or sacred harp singing (#29). Shape note because of its music notation, sacred harp because of a popular songbook published in the 1840s (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_harp). Tim became a champion of the music, and got the opportunity to spread the gospel, for example, by working on the soundtrack of the movie "Cold Mountain". This here is a live recording from July 2008 at the Folk Holidays festival in Náměšť nad Oslavou in the Czech Republic. Tim launches straight into proceedings with "Farewell to Old Bedford". The 18 tracks include popular songs such as the haunting "Oh Death" and the love song "Omie Wise" (compare the recordings on "Classic Mountain Songs" -> #25), "Friendship", one of the few happy songs, "Careless Love", "Bonnie Bay of Biscay" (see versions and variants recorded by Casey/Doyle below, Matt & Shannon Heaton -> #39, and Tinkers With Talent -> #25). "Edward" is related to a Child ballad, and played by many a British folk artist. "Jewett" is just an up tempo variant of "Amazing Grace", and "Soldier Traveling from the North" has almost exactly the words as the well-known Irish folk song "As I Roved Out/The Night Visiting Song" as performed by Planxty (amongst many others). Tim performs acappella and acompanies himself with fiddle, 5-string-banjo, guitar and the Mexican 12-string bajo sexto. It is pure stuff, almost academic, music that demands attention, the song's topics being such hilarious things as blood and death (should have been called scared harp songs). However, you can feel that Tim has fun and this communicates with the listener. Besides, the old Northeners were not only addressing God but stepping it out, which Tim also displays with a couple of dance tunes and some mouth music.
www.timeriksen.net
Walkin' T:-)M