Daytrotter Free Song Set: William Elliot Whitmore

William Elliot Whitmore is one of those (numerous) artists I keep meaning to keep up with, and now Daytrotter's done it for me with one of their free sets.

Maybe it was the number of names, or the names themselves, or their oddly mellifluous quality, but I expected something quite different--subdued colors and gleaming whites like a Whistler painting, but what I found was dust, stubble, and banjo strings. Once I got used to what I found, I liked it--Dry is unquestionably my favorite, both musically and because of his comment about it:

I’m really proud of this song too. I wrote this when I first started working on my cabin. I was cold and disoriented every morning in my freaky, silver trailer. There were these blackbirds that have this real unorthodox song. It started penetrating my dreams. It’s a crazy song, but it’s beautiful too. The bluebird can sing, but the crow’s got the soul.

His new CD is Song of the Blackbird, and Chariot is my favorite there--an odd mixture of the grisly darkness of sound that Tom Waits has traded on, and the swaying, uplifting vibe of a revival chorus. It's nice to find somebody that uses the traditions of Southern music intelligently and clearly, instead of jumping on the (admittedly appealing!) alt-country bandwagon.

tags: [Music], [mp3], [Daytrotter], [William Elliot Whitmore]