SLEEP GUNNER: Fakin' Their Way Through The Louvin Brothers Catalog.: January 2014

4.1.14

in the new year.

Transitional phase continues:

although developments are developing, the album is still officially unreleased but digitally listenable/downloadable here on Bandcamp.
we're presently learning a raft of new tunes to bungle.
our top secret Spring 2014 Italian tour is probably still happening.
we're toying with Barry Harris' 6th diminished scale concepts and being intimidated by the mountain of educational information emitted by Ted Greene during his lifetime.

Etc, you know, the usual. Oh, plus Guitar Moderne amazingly named us as one of their Top 13 Records of 2013, supadupa nice.

AND: an Amsterdam gig, 12 March at the wonderful Butcher's Tears brewery/tasting room (tasting room is open at 4pm, doors for the show are at 9pm, then it's €5 to get in, we start shortly thereafter).

Ah yes, and here's a preview of a new tune! Brown's Ferry Blues. Still upset about my hair.

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Sleep Gunner is a pair of Amsterdam-based drinking buddies that has fallen hard for the music of 1950s Alabama heartbreak duo The Louvin Brothers.

Tragically we ourselves don't sing, at least not in front of other people. So we're left with trying to translate Ira and Charlie's high lonesome twists and turns of melody into something that can be delivered via two guitars (two and a half if you count the doubleneck). The lyrics, a curious mix of repeated abandonment by cold-hearted women and stern-yet-dubious Christian moralizing, you'll have to Google for yourself.

The music that we both normally (separately) play isn't very much like bluegrass, gospel, or early country music at all, and thus Sleep Gunner is no attempt to be truly authentic in any of these styles.

But it's also no attempt to be remotely ironic; we're looking for a tender balance between staying true and respectful to the original performances and staying true to our modern, arty, guitar-playing selves, for better or worse.

The fruits of this to-be-ongoing labor will be regularly posted here. In video format, of course, as testimony to Sleep Gunner's awesome stage presence and fashion sense. Also so as not to add to anyone's already-towering stack of unlabeled, forgotten CD-Rs....

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