PETER WALKER
''HAS ANYBODY SEEN OUR FREEDOMS?''
NOVEMBER 25 2013
39:00
1 /Me and My Lady
Peter Walker/5:31
2 /Johnny Cuckoo
Peter Walker/4:58
3 /Early in the Morning
Peter Walker/2:53
4 /Pretty Bird
Traditional/4:54
5 /Grey Morning Sun
Peter Walker/4:56
6 /Fifty Miles
Peter Walker/4:34
7 /Wonder
Peter Walker/7:55
8 /[Untitled]
Peter Walker/3:19
Peter Walker /Arranger, Guitar (Steel), Vocals
REVIEW
By Thom Jurek
Peter Walker, the American acoustic guitar pioneer, re-emerged as a recording artist in 2006 with four tracks on A Raga for Peter Walker, an all-star tribute recording on Tompkins Square and a collection of unreleased '70s tapes. Since that time, there have been four new albums of Spanish and steel-string guitar recordings, and the re-release of Rainy Day Raga, his 1966 Vanguard debut. Has Anybody Seen Our Freedoms? is a previously unreleased album, cut at New York's Mercury Studios. The reasons its tapes have remained in Walker's "vault" (a converted bread truck) are unclear -- but it hardly matters. Where his previous studio albums featured other musicians as accompaniment, this date is completely solo, just voice and steel-string guitar, one take, no overdubs. It is his song cycle for the end of the 1960s, composed and recorded during the heat of an era intent on ending the Vietnam War, and culturally reshaping everything that came after. But these are not "protest" songs; they are snapshots of a man's life in the process of living. His mature playing style, which weaves his formal studies of the Indian carnatic tradition, American folk styles, and Spanish and Andalusian folk and flamenco lineage seamlessly, is fully present. Even in his vocals, Walker uses the raga form, offering his lyrics as a seldom deviating drone. And his lyrics, which revolve around various poetic and storytelling forms, are as compelling as his melodies and harmonic investigations. "Me and My Lady" is a love song that slips through Spanish, Celtic, and Appalachian folk as well as modal concerns; it illustrates longing and delight. "Johnny Cuckoo," an instrumental, is more urgent, offering a dazzling display of fingerpicked and rhythmically complex strumming. "Early in the Morning," another love song, uses the raga form as it encircles flamenco, binding the two traditions. His reading of the public domain "Pretty Bird" is haunted by the folk-blues even in its dramatic modal presentation. The song "Fifty Miles" is a labyrinthine recounting of Walker's initial journey to Puerto Vallarta in 1964. "Wonder," the closer and longest cut, is a driven, kaleidoscopic number; its illustrious implementation of raga, adapted flamenco, and a collision of Andalusian folk forms is staggering. The song's narrative is equally engaging. In addition to the music, there is a self-penned 4,300-word essay by Walker, distilled by Delmore Recordings' Mark Linn from a 40-page essay (that we'd love to read in its entirety) as it details his travels and experiences that, at least tangentially, connect to the spirit of the music. Even the cover photo -- of Walker with radical attorney William Kunstler at Detroit's famed Garwood Mansion commune -- is a testament to the era. Has Anybody Seen Our Freedoms? adds immeasurably to his musical and cultural legacy, and is a must for any fan of American guitar music.
BIOGRAPHY
By Steve Leggett
Although he only released two albums in the mid-'60s, Peter Walker influenced a whole host of subsequent guitarists with his modal drone explorations of Eastern musical forms and his experiments with raga and flamenco. Born in 1937 in Boston, Massachusetts, into a musical family (his father played guitar and his mother played piano), Walker took up the guitar early, although he didn't begin to play in public until around 1959. During a stint in San Francisco he heard the legendary Ravi Shankar perform and Walker's lifelong fascination with Eastern raga was formed, along with his like passion for the flamenco tradition. He studied with Shankar for a time in Los Angeles and also studied with Ali Akbar Khan in San Francisco. Returning to the Boston area, he became a regular on the 1960s Cambridge and Greenwich Village folk scenes, where he became close friends with guitarist Sandy Bull and the tragic folksinger Karen Dalton (Walker was at her side when she passed away from AIDS). Walker released the influential Rainy Day Raga LP on Vanguard Records in 1966, following it with a second Vanguard LP, Second Poem to Karmela, or Gypsies Are Important, two years later in 1968, and then dropped away from the music scene, settling in upstate New York to raise his family. He continued his exploration of the guitar, though, and traveled to Spain to immerse himself in the tight-knit flamenco guitar community there. Rediscovered by Joshua Rosenthal of Tompkins Square Records, Walker contributed four new guitar pieces to A Raga for Peter Walker, which was released in 2008 on Rosenthal's label and featured tribute tracks from the likes of Jack Rose, James Blackshaw, Steffen Basho-Junghans, Thurston Moore, and Greg Davis. In November of 2013, Delmore Recordings issued his previously unreleased early-'70s album Has Anybody Seen Our Freedoms?
''HAS ANYBODY SEEN OUR FREEDOMS?''
NOVEMBER 25 2013
39:00
1 /Me and My Lady
Peter Walker/5:31
2 /Johnny Cuckoo
Peter Walker/4:58
3 /Early in the Morning
Peter Walker/2:53
4 /Pretty Bird
Traditional/4:54
5 /Grey Morning Sun
Peter Walker/4:56
6 /Fifty Miles
Peter Walker/4:34
7 /Wonder
Peter Walker/7:55
8 /[Untitled]
Peter Walker/3:19
Peter Walker /Arranger, Guitar (Steel), Vocals
REVIEW
By Thom Jurek
Peter Walker, the American acoustic guitar pioneer, re-emerged as a recording artist in 2006 with four tracks on A Raga for Peter Walker, an all-star tribute recording on Tompkins Square and a collection of unreleased '70s tapes. Since that time, there have been four new albums of Spanish and steel-string guitar recordings, and the re-release of Rainy Day Raga, his 1966 Vanguard debut. Has Anybody Seen Our Freedoms? is a previously unreleased album, cut at New York's Mercury Studios. The reasons its tapes have remained in Walker's "vault" (a converted bread truck) are unclear -- but it hardly matters. Where his previous studio albums featured other musicians as accompaniment, this date is completely solo, just voice and steel-string guitar, one take, no overdubs. It is his song cycle for the end of the 1960s, composed and recorded during the heat of an era intent on ending the Vietnam War, and culturally reshaping everything that came after. But these are not "protest" songs; they are snapshots of a man's life in the process of living. His mature playing style, which weaves his formal studies of the Indian carnatic tradition, American folk styles, and Spanish and Andalusian folk and flamenco lineage seamlessly, is fully present. Even in his vocals, Walker uses the raga form, offering his lyrics as a seldom deviating drone. And his lyrics, which revolve around various poetic and storytelling forms, are as compelling as his melodies and harmonic investigations. "Me and My Lady" is a love song that slips through Spanish, Celtic, and Appalachian folk as well as modal concerns; it illustrates longing and delight. "Johnny Cuckoo," an instrumental, is more urgent, offering a dazzling display of fingerpicked and rhythmically complex strumming. "Early in the Morning," another love song, uses the raga form as it encircles flamenco, binding the two traditions. His reading of the public domain "Pretty Bird" is haunted by the folk-blues even in its dramatic modal presentation. The song "Fifty Miles" is a labyrinthine recounting of Walker's initial journey to Puerto Vallarta in 1964. "Wonder," the closer and longest cut, is a driven, kaleidoscopic number; its illustrious implementation of raga, adapted flamenco, and a collision of Andalusian folk forms is staggering. The song's narrative is equally engaging. In addition to the music, there is a self-penned 4,300-word essay by Walker, distilled by Delmore Recordings' Mark Linn from a 40-page essay (that we'd love to read in its entirety) as it details his travels and experiences that, at least tangentially, connect to the spirit of the music. Even the cover photo -- of Walker with radical attorney William Kunstler at Detroit's famed Garwood Mansion commune -- is a testament to the era. Has Anybody Seen Our Freedoms? adds immeasurably to his musical and cultural legacy, and is a must for any fan of American guitar music.
BIOGRAPHY
By Steve Leggett
Although he only released two albums in the mid-'60s, Peter Walker influenced a whole host of subsequent guitarists with his modal drone explorations of Eastern musical forms and his experiments with raga and flamenco. Born in 1937 in Boston, Massachusetts, into a musical family (his father played guitar and his mother played piano), Walker took up the guitar early, although he didn't begin to play in public until around 1959. During a stint in San Francisco he heard the legendary Ravi Shankar perform and Walker's lifelong fascination with Eastern raga was formed, along with his like passion for the flamenco tradition. He studied with Shankar for a time in Los Angeles and also studied with Ali Akbar Khan in San Francisco. Returning to the Boston area, he became a regular on the 1960s Cambridge and Greenwich Village folk scenes, where he became close friends with guitarist Sandy Bull and the tragic folksinger Karen Dalton (Walker was at her side when she passed away from AIDS). Walker released the influential Rainy Day Raga LP on Vanguard Records in 1966, following it with a second Vanguard LP, Second Poem to Karmela, or Gypsies Are Important, two years later in 1968, and then dropped away from the music scene, settling in upstate New York to raise his family. He continued his exploration of the guitar, though, and traveled to Spain to immerse himself in the tight-knit flamenco guitar community there. Rediscovered by Joshua Rosenthal of Tompkins Square Records, Walker contributed four new guitar pieces to A Raga for Peter Walker, which was released in 2008 on Rosenthal's label and featured tribute tracks from the likes of Jack Rose, James Blackshaw, Steffen Basho-Junghans, Thurston Moore, and Greg Davis. In November of 2013, Delmore Recordings issued his previously unreleased early-'70s album Has Anybody Seen Our Freedoms?
