Howe Gelb has traveled many a long and dusty mile to get to his place of prominence as an elder statesman of freewheeling Americana and "Erosion Rock"; A brand of music changing with the elements on a daily basis as nature intended, like giant sand, believing that continuous evolution should be a palpable element in music, as when when songs were first handed over again and again, before the frozen capture of a recording studio.
 
Born in 1956, had moved to Tucson, Arizona, as a teen in the early 1970s after his home was destroyed by flood back in Pennsylvania. When not on the road, he lives with his family in Barrio Santa Rosa. Although "Endlessly restlessly wanderlusted encrusted", he's well settled in the desert caliche where it takes him an hour to dig a small hole in the desert floor, there where the sunrise hurts. 
 
He's collected his players and bands in Denmark and Spain, and one with a full gospel choir attached in Canada, but they call his music Americana anyway. Howe just says he's "from Earth".
 
In 1980, Gelb formed the post punk band Giant Sandworms, with his close friend Rainer Ptacek, the renowned slide guitarist and beloved Tucson icon. Rainer died from brain cancer in 1997, and you can't talk long with Gelb without his name coming up.
 
Giant Sand emerged in 1983 and released that group's debut album, Valley of Rain in 1985. In the 25 years since, he has released an estimated 40 albums or so as Giant Sand, The Band of... Blacky Ranchette, OP8, Howe Gelb solo releases and other collaborations. He's not sure of the exact amount.
 
Since his first release was facilitated by handing out a rough mixed cassette to a touring band passing through Tucson in the early 80s, he then continued the tradition by doing the same for Grandaddy and M. Ward when they handed him theirs along the way. And yes, Calexico was his former rhythm section, introducing them boys to each other and Tucson itself in the early 90s.
 
The new Giant Sand record, Blurry Blue Mountain, was released a year ago  on Fire Records, hit the #1 Canadian College Chart position earlier this year for 2 weeks and brilliantly includes all of the mashed-up genres that reflects the band's credo from the get-go.
 
Fire is also reissuing 30 albums from Giant Sand's entire back catalog (complete with remastering of the early titles) and nicely marks the 25th year of Giant Sand releases to date.

The current line up of Giant Sand now numbers 10 or 12 at any given moment, thus becoming the new band:
Giant Giant Sand
... will be exclusively featured at this years Heartland Festival in Vevey, Switzerland Oct. 28, 2011
 
Gelb's most recent solo release, Alegrias, by Howe Gelb and A Band of Gypsies, was recorded on a roof top inCordoba, Spain over the last several years. The band is a collection of Andalusian Gypsies, featuring guitarist extraordinaire Raimundo Amador, that is, quite frankly, stunning in its subtle mesh of the 2 worlds colliding.
 
Gene Armstrong, Tucson  journalist and premier music writer of the last 3 decades jots:
"How do you write about a musician who has spent more than 30 years defying musical conventions? You could trot out all the cliched rock-critic terms: seminal, hyperbole, incendiary, eponymous, masterful, achingly poignant, priceless, alt-country, old-school, outlaw. Some of those might even fit if you shoehorned them into context.
Howe Gelb long has been saddled with such titles as "godfather of alt-country" and "elder ambassador of desert rock." When confronted with such accolades, he clears his throat, amused and a little embarrassed, and he ponders. His summer-sun squint turns into a twinkle when he finally asks his questioner, 'What do you think of it?'
In three decades he's managed to combine elements of rock, country, blues, punk, garage, lo-fi, jazz, gospel, avant-garde noise and flamenco gypsy music. Guitar and piano are his weapons of tumult. He sings like a gruff angel, a town crier tapping you on the shoulder, reminding you that the world need not be seen in the conventional ways to which we revert when the world goes blurry. He weaves impressionistic imagery into personal narrative and indulges listeners in expansive observations of the world. In his early years there had been comparisons to artists along the paradoxical lines of Neil Young, David Byrne, Bob Dylan and Captain Beefheart, comparisons that all fit clumsily. Nowadays, other artists get compared to Gelb."

"These recordings were done in the space between the waking world and the sleeping one. there exists a point there with a broad landscape that has seldom been loitered in. as with every previous album, none of this was planned. every record has its own atmosphere. for me they are always a new place to live in and spend some time before moving on. On this album, it happened that every session we were able to record came between work loads that rendered us at that point of sleeping and waking. like the poppy fields in wizard of oz, we went in and out of consciousness at various times during recording. This is not a bad thing. nor does it make the record sound like we're asleep. it has the momentum of that place between sleep and being awake. and in that narrow slip of existence lies a landscape of reason that most of us hurry past in daily lives. this record is planted firmly there"

"Between the crystal clear focus of your day to day and the luxury of sweet fuzzy sleep, we welcome you to the blurry blue mountain". ~ Howe Gelb

Howe Gelb and a bunch of Flamenco gypsies flowing freely from Cordoba, Andalusia.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE SOUTHWEST (of Spain)

Let's redefine the meaning of crossover. The album recorded by Howe Gelb and a bunch of flamenco gypsies in Cordoba, Spain, sounds like absolutely nothing else you have ever heard before, yet it maintains the familiar flavor of the Arizona desert Gelb has been shaping throughout the years, both solo and as the leader of seminal alt.country pioneers Giant Sand. It flows as naturally as if it had always been there, waiting for someone to grasp its pieces and put them together.

Back in the late ã80s when Howe Gelb used to live in Joshua Tree he only had three tapes he could listen to in his car: Tom Waits, Miles Davis and Tomatito, the virtuoso flamenco player. Many years later, a lucky combination of hazard and destiny found him jamming in a home studio in Cordoba (the studio has now gone professional and is named Recordoba after these sessions) with some local musicians: Lin CortŽs, Juan Punky and A–il, Ramos, Inma, çngela, Roc’o, Prin' La L‡. C—rdoba, the same city mentioned by Obama in a recent speech as an example of tolerance and cross of different cultures living together: Arabs, Jews and Christians lived together in C—rdoba for centuries, and the town retains a certain magic atmosphere you can't find anywhere else.

The gypsies didn't speak English, but they could play Spanish guitar and cajon like only drunk devils can. Howe doesn't speak Spanish, apart from a few useful words he learnt by the Mexican border, but he's got a grainy voice that disarms any listener, and started playing piano in a way the gypsies had never seen. They all instantly fell in love with
each other and played for hours without end. Words didn't work, but glances and chords did the job. That same night, in the room downstairs from the studio, Howe wrote four new songs inspired by the intensity of the moment.

In the control room was Fernando Vacas, one of the Spanish top producers of the recent years (the man behind the enormous mainstream success of young Spanish female folk- singer Russian Red). Recording everything and thinking ahead: there might be a record there, not only a friendly meeting. New songs, new sound, a million ideas in his head. On the second session, Raimundo Amador popped in, and that unleashed the magic and took it to even higher grounds. Raimundo is a huge star in Spain, a super talented guitar player who has played with the likes of Bjšrk and B.B. King. He invented the crossover between flamenco and psychedelic rock back in the late 70's with his bands Veneno and Pata Negra, and his contributions to the album are truly mindblowing, including a superb pure flamenco guitar introduction to one of the main tracks on the album, "Cowboy Boots on Cobblestones".

Mixed in Bristol by John Parish, this album, ÒAlegriasÓ, by Howe Gelb and A Band of Gypsies, is still a country-folk record, but soaked with the collision of flamenco flavor, latin rhythms and indie-rock. Gelb, Vacas, Amador et al. have managed to capture the magic of this new music and present it in the form of an astonishingly beautiful album.

last year in december, we gathered to rehearse for a benefit show to help with a local tucson school (miles exploratory learning center) and its defunct music + art programs. it was an informal cluster, 2 from giant sand and 2 from calexico, which in itself merited a sweet symbol of holiday spirit and friendship above all else. it included my old friend and band mate, john convertino on drums, jacob valenzuela on trumpet, and thøger t. lund on upright bass.

we gathered and played in a way unlike most sessions, but much the same as the fabled w. eugene smith recordings from the late 50s/ early 60s in his infamous new york ‘jazz loft’. he had wired his drafty space in order to record at a moment’s notice the scores of jazz musicians that would meet there after their club gigs had finished. those kind of jams were players playing for themselves and each other. this kind of capture was unlike any studio session or live gig.

(it should be noted that all the rehearsal sessions to my favorite thelonious monk recording of all time were recorded here in smith’s loft with hall overton presiding. ironically, the entire accumulation of all that taping has been since stockpiled and stashed in a secret room right here in tucson at the university of arizona since 1978.)

[perhaps one footnote more, previously to smith leaving his family in jersey and setting up residence in the dank jazz loft, he was hired by the cia to shoot a series of photographs in spain in the 50s to be used as propaganda in order to influence this country’s conscious in supporting the “poor” peasants of spain and bolster such assistance by setting up a military base there.]

but i digress … the point being that the session you have here called ‘melted wires’ is symbiotic with the sound of that jazz loft. players playing for the sheer love of it. it has a wonderful looseness, a playfulness that couldn’t happen in any formal recording or live presentation. an accidental conclave. a spin of the room. a stop of the clock.

especially here in the approaching season, a shared moment, a glimpse of happenstantial yippity, a sonic embrace. you can hear the band grabbing old songs and playing inside them like it was recess time in the school yard as well as new piano excursions with their own exploratory spelunking.

these songs were as they were, done live and unadorned with dubs or arrangement, except for the exceptional frolic of “holiday eyes”. on that track john added vibraphone and i added my 7 year old talula.

the name ‘melted wires’ was said to be of my invention, but i have no memory of it, and so simply allow it to tag us rightly. some fun in a room with the record button on. although not everything recorded correctly, and not everything recorded rightly, but all of it done as the fates determined and with a definitive joy and splendor of cluster. may you have a wonderful season and a better year ahead. maybe these ‘melted wires’ can assist in such inception, or at least fill the void between connections, electrical or time elapsed, where wires matter less then.

onward,
howe gelb
(thanksgiving, 2010)

this record is the 4th in my endless piano triology.

once completed, its usefulness was realized. stuck in rush hour one afternoon, this record fused nicely with the choke hold of commute and served the drive well by ridding the ride of traffic snarl. it can now be recommend as a handy tool when transit is seized by gridlock. play this thing to get the traffic flowing again. the barriers of roadway clot bend with recourse of mood change and here is where we might as well offer a money back guarantee.

another ingredient worth mentioning is that this record employs a form of improvisation, making up songs in the moment of impact, never intended to be played again. they are a chance dance of the fingers, choreographed for the instant incident, captured for the re-visitation by what recording was ever meant to me; a record of what happened on that day.

the particular sound of the piano was due to the laying on of 3 guitar pick-ups across random strings so as to allow a dimensional effect. sorry if it perturbs some tender lobes, but it turns out to be very useful within the snarl of traffic.

the first 7 tracks are recorded with peter dombernowsky on drums and thøger t. lund on upright bass, at wavelab studios in tucson, AZ by chris schultz in january 2010.

track 8 was done at home on my 1888 88s, with peter on cajon and thøger on upright bass and track editing. no guitar pick-ups were utilized. it should be noted the piano is tuned a whole step down as was per intended by manufacturer before the standard of ‘concert pitch’ was instigated in the early 1900s. therefore C is really Bb.

the final 2 tracks are with thøger on bass again, but feature john convertino on drums and jacob valenzuela on trumpet for track 10. this session was a missing track from the ‘melted wires’ recordings that can be found at our web site for further investigation.

i hope you will be happy with the quality of our product. we aim to please. especially, as in this case, when stuck in snarl.

- howe gelb feb. 22, 2011