For the last year and a half, the Trackpacking series has focused on musicians that inspire me to travel. Today, I’m highlighting an artist who reminds me of home, whose sounds somehow conjure the ice-limned window panes and silent white pine forests of Wisconsin winters.
Bon Iver, a purposeful misspelling of “good winter” in French, is the project of Justin Vernon, a man the same age as me who went to high school in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, just 90 minutes north of where I went to high school. Living in western Wisconsin during my adolescence was a difficult time, all country music and shining and chewing tobacco at the gas station. It wasn’t my scene – I didn’t do those things – and listening to Bon Iver, I suspect Justin didn’t either. Read more...
I was eating breakfast again, shoveling beans and rashers into my face with the poise of a narcoleptic zombie. The fourth and final (sort of) day of the Shetland Folk Festival was upon me, and, based on the lack of tragic news at breakfast, I figured nothing untoward happened to the festival club the night before (i.e., it hadn’t collapsed).
My body withered in the absence of caffeine so I sucked down cup after cup of the black stuff before hitting the streets of Lerwick. This was it, the final day of the festival, the grand finale. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, the bodies of exhausted and desiccated festival-goers to crumple into heaps. Me. Read more...
The alarm on my iPhone was ringing again. You know that annoying marimba sound? Yeah, that one. 8am.
Where was I again? I sat up on my single bed and put my glasses on. Oh yeah, Lerwick. Shetland. I could hear people laughing down the hall. So I had made it home last night through the primordial darkness of Shetland. I’d even had enough wits about me to set my alarm so I wouldn’t miss breakfast.
Day Two: The Day I Tried to Spang
Despite not getting much sleep and being hungover, I still felt refreshed since I had actually gotten some sleep. Such was not the case for many of my festival compatriots. I learned that the place was flooded with people last night. Who knows, maybe I was there last night too… Read more...
What could send me trawling the waves of the frigid and desolate North Sea?
After all, it takes more than a passing fancy to journey to Britain’s northernmost islands. Shetland. Cast like stones halfway to the Arctic circle from the hand of some primordial giant, today it’s known for little more than ponies and wool. It’s an austere, treeless place where the sounds of human industry are rarely heard over the din of the wild and unchecked wind.
Except, that is, during the Shetland Folk Festival. For the last 31 years, the end of April and beginning of May have born witness to four nights (more like six) of folk musicians taking back the night. And day. And wee hours of the morning. I quickly found the endurance of Shetlanders to be legend. Read more...
by Keith Savage on April 20, 2011 · 1 comment
Thievery Corporation has introduced me to entire genres of music I would have never found a way to enjoy on my own. From Bhangra to Afrobeat and Cumbia to Arabic hip hop, the guys of Thievery have a masterful way of curating talent and finding musicians to slot into their songs and remixes. They’re not shy about looking in their own backyard, either. Enter Nickodemus, a Brooklyn-area DJ/producer with world-spanning musical tastes that make him right at home on Thievery’s ESL Music label.
Let me put it simply: this is feel-good house music. Read more...
A hunter, oft-stubbled and bleary-eyed, driven by an insatiable hunger for exploration and experience - and perhaps a chance to thin the herd of caffeinated and alcoholic beverages. From the highlands and islands to Edinburgh, Glasgow, and the Borders, I explore Scotland with a pen in hand and a fire in the belly (which could be partly from the whisky). 
