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"Every Day Is Three" from Josh Billings Voyage
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"Song Of The Old Folks (Old Lang Syne)" from Josh Billings Voyage
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Versatile New England folk singer Tim Eriksen (Cordelia’s Dad, Zabe i Babe) will mark the release of his new CD Josh Billings Voyage with a short East Coast tour in late October.

Josh Billings Voyage, which will be released Oct. 23, stitches together a baker’s dozen of mostly traditional songs into an imagined tale of a young man leaving his home in the New England village of Pumpkintown to find his way in the world. Eriksen, a musicologist perhaps best known for his extensive work with T Bone Burnett and Jack White on the soundtrack to the movie “Cold Mountain,” transforms the songs through imaginative instrumentation, particularly use of the Mexican bajo sexto instead of acoustic guitar. But you’ll also hear a bowed banjo, glockenspiel, Jew’s harp and more on these songs, many of them bearing the sonic stamp of the Indian subcontinent. It’s all part of Eriksen’s fascination with the way music, time and travel affect each other.

“I’ve been fascinated by the presence of the world in every place, and the presence of every place in the world,” Eriksen says in the news release accompanying the CD. “The influence of travel and contact on music in small places.” When people talk about traditional music or folk songs, they often imply isolation. But even in the smallest places, travel has more to do with how music develops than isolation does. By making this sideways, half-told story, I can get at a number of things by implication, that take me hours to say in complete sentences.”

Eriksen draws subtly on decades of intensive study of the South Indian veena and its repertoire, on years of wrangling with the difficult but rewarding bajo sexto, and on a lifetime of singing deeply rooted, highly emotional traditional ballads.

Details of Eriksen’s East Coast tour are below. It should be a riveting show. In the meantime, take a listen to or download “Song Of The Old Folks,” which draws on Albert Laighton’s 1855 re-write of “Auld Lang Syne.” A word of warning: Though this one starts gentle, accompanied by the lightly strummed bajo sexto, the subtle electric guitar fills soon break out into a full-on rock anthem of debauched revelry, complete with some woozy trumpet-blowing. If you’re a fan of early “noise-folk” by Cordelia’s Dad, this is right up your alley.

Tim Eriksen tour (subject to change)

Oct. 20 – Putney, Vermont Next Stage, 15 Kimball Hill, 7:30 p.m.

Oct. 21 – Cambridge, Mass Club Passim, 47 Palmer St., 8 p.m.

Oct. 23 – Brooklyn, NY Barbes, 376 9th St., Park Slope, 7 p.m.

Oct.27 – Chestertown, Md. Prince Theater, 210 High St., 8 p.m.

Oct. 28 – Philadelphia, Penn. Calvary United Methodist Church, 812 S 48th St., 7:30 p.m.

 10/22/12 >> go there
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