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A worn-in voice over layered upright basses, guitar, trumpet and scrap metal percussion, moving from underground tunnel to circus tent to sunlit bedroom with strange coherence.

12 MP3 Songs
AVANT GARDE: Experimental, FOLK: Progressive Folk

Show all album songs: Now Down Songs


Details:
Singing over his upright bass lines and bowed harmonics, Jack Ohly has been finding his own way through a wide field of sound and tradition. He plays several instruments, but he has devoted himself to the bass for the past ten years, exploring the instrument''s great sonic range. He cut his teeth playing in jazz bands, singing country blues songs and bowing out soundtracks for plays and silent films. Living in the dry lands of northeastern Brazil, he learned folk samba from musicians he came to know. He stretched out his voice singing over the drone of his chainsaw as he worked in the trees and he honed his songwriting listening to Charles Mingus, Tom Waits, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Robert Johnson. Continually pushing himself, Jack has been captivating audiences from Brazil to New England with his varied, deep-rooted songs and his unique sound.

Jack''s first album, Now Down, took shape in a barn and in an apartment over 7 months- bone and steel sculptures, an 18 gallon tub, a Chinese zither, the sounds of water and traffic, guitar and the many voices of his bass. Out of the cities he has lived in and the stillness of the woods, Jack has sought to distill his many musical worlds into a coherent whole. Now Down is a beginning.

After years in Providence, New Haven and Brazil, Jack lives in Philadelphia where he plays live with a talented and versatile group: Todd Erk on a second upright, Gregg Mervine on drums, Kimbal Brown on trumpet and Tanya Nagahawatte singing. He also plays Romanian ballads and Serbian coceks with the West Philadelphia Orchestra and leads a Brazilian folk-samba band called Old Goats. Jack is currently working on a late fall tour, a new batch of songs and a recording project of piano and sea stone percussion.

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Keywords: avant garde experimental;folk progressive;mp3 album
File Size: 44.3 MBytes