The press for this new release featuring the legendary guitarist Peter Walker begins with a quote from Barney Hoskyns ‘Small Town Talk’, a book in which Hoskyns recreates the magic of the small town known as Woodstock(the festival which was over sixty miles away). A revolutionary place at a revolutionary time.
“…this small town (Woodstock), housing as it did so many maverick talents, fostered a scene of damage and dysfunction that endures to this day. It pulled in all manner of wannabes and hangers-on, alcoholic philanderers, dealers in heroin and cocaine, and left at least one generation of messed-up children with no direction home.”
One such maverick and longtime Woodstock resident is guitarist Peter Walker who recorded two albums for the experimental Vanguard label in the late Sixties in a style best described as American folk-raga. Vanguard also released albums for guitarists John Fahey and Sandy Bull.
He studied with Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan, and was Dr. Timothy Leary’s musical director, organizing music for the LSD advocate’s “celebrations.” On Walker’s first album Rainy Day Raga is a very cool quote from Timothy Leary…“Peter Walker plays on the ancient protein strings of the genetic code.”
He was also a close friend of fellow Woodstock resident, the late folksinger Karen Dalton, and helped produce Remembering Mountains: Unheard Songs by Karen Dalton (Tompkins Square), which features unrecorded Dalton compositions brought to life by Sharon Van Etten, Patty Griffin, Lucinda Williams and others.
Rediscovered by Tompkins Square in 2006 after decades out of sight, Walker has remained active into his 8th decade, recording for Jack White’s Third Man label, and now, collaborating anew with fellow Upstaters, Harmony Rockets. Joined in a mighty super-session with Harmony Rockets(Mercury Rev), Martin Keith, Nels Cline (Wilco), and Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth), Lachesis/Clotho/Atropos is a mind-melting inter-generational collaboration that could only have coalesced around the wool sweaters, warm teacups and moldering bookstores of “Old Old Woodstock”, both the real and mythologized versions.
Harmony Rockets with Special Guest Peter Walker
Available Worldwide on Tompkins Square
September 14th, 2018
LP: TSQ 5555
CD: TSQ 5548
Pre-Order it here: US / UK & Europe
Photo by Letitia Smith