FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1998 All Rights Reserved.
| MUSIC Howe Gelb There are no substitutes for love and sadness when it comes to artistic experiences. Both emotions - in one form or another - have fueled most of this civilization's great works in all disciplines of creative expression. And when you combine the two, the possibilities are endless. Unfortunately, what sometimes gets lost in the resulting pathos - no matter how well the artist conveys him or her self - are the very real and sometimes terribly tragic events which initiated it. That's why it's rather sobering to talk to someone who's still dealing every day with a personal experience that has been addressed in a recent work. Right from the beginning, songwriter Howe Gelb lets it be known that ours won't be an upbeat telephone conversation, although presumably more so than if we'd talked six months to a year earlier. "I think perhaps the worst is over," Gelb says, a weight still audibly present in his voice, "and the sun is coming out again." What Gelb is still working through, and what he successfully transformed into raw and wrenching songs on his latest disc, Hisser, is the loss of longtime friend and musical peer Rainer Ptacek to brain cancer. Ptacek, a guitarist who was discovered by Robert Plant, had been friends with Gelb for nearly two decades and together the two grew as individuals and musicians, linked by that intangible something that makes some people forever inseparable. While Gelb stops short of calling the solo recording a tribute album - that distinction goes to The Inner Flame CD, a remarkable fund-raising disc recorded before Ptacek's death which features Ptacek, Gelb and varied artists like Plant and Emmylou Harris - his friend's presence can undeniably be heard throughout. "I couldn't say that this record is for him or a tribute to him because it's not enough, it wouldn't be enough per se. It would be like an almost clichéd attempt, a 'This is what I do, so therefore it's for you.' "But instead, everything I do - the way I play, the way I look at things, the way I hear things - is more of a tribute because he had such an effect on me." High praise indeed coming from Gelb, who, with his band Giant Sand, their side-project with Lisa Germano, OP8, or his solo outings, has had his own impact on contemporary musicians. Gelb's work successfully runs a gamut of styles and sounds ranging from Neil Young electric vibrations to sparse, haunted American acoustic music - making him as equally at home in rock show settings as he is on the folk festival circuit (Giant Sand have played the Calgary Folk Music Festival the past two years). Hisser, released on Gelb's own label Ow Om, takes the sparse side of Giant Sand and peels it back even further into a realm that's so esthetically barren yet emotionally packed. Recorded at his home on a four-track reel-to-reel (hence the name) with help provided by everyone from Germano and the band Grandaddy, to his dog Rosa gnawing on a chew toy, it's as honest a recording as you're likely to encounter. As Gelb explains, the reason to record it that way was as natural as his friendship with Ptacek - which, it turns out may not be that intangible after all. "The theory I've got is it has to do with heartbeat, literally, the physical rhythm of an individual's heartbeat and how it relates to any other given heartbeat. I think that's what allows certain people to be able to play together, jam together, and other people not to," he says thoughtfully. "It's also what makes something like over-dubbing more difficult to make sound natural because it wasn't falling into synch at the moment of impact with everybody's heartbeat. Everybody's heartbeat is at the very core of their rhythm. You've got a drum inside your chest from before you even remember...." And, as Gelb can attest to, it's a drum that can echo long after the beating has ceased. |