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16 Horsepower.
greetings to my friends ~
(this is different from the current head noise rumbling through here...)
WARNING! rhetorical question:
is there a single one of you that is all about stripped down grit and honesty?
16 Horsepower is all about that.
grittiness, frightening honesty, raw intensity.
David Eugene Edwards and his hired hands are currently
moving over this land and telling their tales as they go.
i will clearly be present at the Detroit show.
i strongly encourage all of you to partake in what they have to offer.
i've witnessed their performance twice (Club Gotham - Cincinnati /
Gold Dollar - Detroit), and it is like nothing else. i take in many
experiences - many ideals and styles. i tell you the truth my friends,
there is nothing like 16 Horsepower...
(...scroll further below...)
edward jay
NP: Swans - _Various Failures_
"i am yours lady - scrawled an thin"
David Eugene Edwards - 16 hp
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<{---o<(\,- Sir Edward Jay, thee Second ov Harnish -,/)>--o---}>
^v^ ^v^ ^v^ ICQ #13819982 ^v^ ^v^ ^v^
http://members.aol.com/jaharnish2
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http://listen.to/16horsepower
Date City State Venue/Event
July 06 Denver CO - Bluebird Theater
July 08 Minneapolis MN - 7th St. Entry
July 09 Chicago IL - Double Door
July 10 Detroit MI - Magic Stick
July 11 Toronto ON, CAN - Horseshoe Tavern
July 12 Montreal QU, CAN - (to be announced)
July 14 Pittsburgh PA - Rosebud
July 15 Cambridge MA - Middle East
July 16 Philadelphia PA - Trocadero
July 17 New York City NY - Knitting Factory
July 18 Washington DC - Black Cat
July 20 Carrboro NC - Cat's Cradle
July 21 Atlanta GA - Cotton Club
July 22 Athens GA - (to be announced)
July 23 Lexington KY - Lynagh's
July 24 Memphis TN - Hi Tone
July 26 Boulder CO - Fox Theatre
Sixteen Horsepower:
The Ghost of Old America
CMJ New Music Report
Issue 558
February 23, 1998
By Colin Helms
"America doesn't want to hear old American music, really," explains Sixteen
Horsepower's frontman, David Eugene Edwards. "It makes them think of early
America, which is a drag to think about if you're an American -- if you're
seriously thinking about it and looking at it." When Edwards talks about
early America, he is of course referring to the darkest aspects of our
country's past: the enslavement of Africans, the slaughter of Indians and the
rape of a fertile land. He's also thinking of the moral fortitude of the Old
Wild West that found sinners and other outlaws having to answer to a form of
justice much higher than that of Man's. It was a younger, more primitive
country, one in which the lines between right and wrong were more clearly
defined than they are today, and the punishments for wrong-doing were much
swifter and more severe. The word of God was also the word of the state, the
jailer and the executioner. Edwards and the music that he creates with
Sixteen Horsepower exists solely in this world.
Born the grandson of a traveling Nazarene minister, Edwards spent his
earliest years in Colorado, drifting from one congregation to the next,
absorbing his grandfather's teachings through the sound of the churches'
somber hymns. "The music of the church was the most important thing to me
when I went there," Edwards says. "That's where I learned the doctrine, where
it came to me. That was how I was spoken to." Consequently, his lyrics are
steeped in spooky religious allegory and images of a bygone era, part Western
adventure, fire-and-brimstone justice, and Southern Gothic weirdness, while
his musical inclinations lean towards the gloomy atmospherics of centures-old
Appalachian gospel, bluegrass and blues music. Edwards' careening backwoods
holler and twisted scripture has found and equal partner in Sixteen
Horsepower, a Denver-based combo employing almost exclusively antique and
acoustic instruments. On the band's second album, Low Estate (A&M), Edwards
mans a banjo, bandoneon (an old push-button accordion), hurdy-gurdy and slide
guitar, while his mates use fiddle, cello, stand-up bass, organ and drums to
evoke a ghostly, haunted kind of American music that is worlds away from
anything heard on contemporary U.S. radio. "Seems like music that has a
Western feel or a country feel to it nowadays has to have some sort of modern
thing going along with it for people to accept it," says Edwards. "What we
try to do is play that type of music and just intensify it. The feeling that
I get from the music that I love that's old timey, like mountain music -- we
tried to do that same thing, but with more intensity because I have an amp
that I can use to do that. But I don't try to make it sound modern. I try to
make the intensity of it stand out even more, which I think freaks people
out."
"Every instrument, at least old ones, has a mood," he explains further.
"Pretty much everything that we use is old. Just because we like the way it
sounds, the way it feels, the way it looks. Everything about it really. And
we pretty much dislike everything that's new, everything about new
instruments. I would never get one or play one. It doesn't interest me at
all. I like the fact that [our instruments are] old. There's so many
instruments that nobody even uses anymore, 'cause it got down to this thing
where everybody uses the same instruments -- bass, drums, guitar. It's just
boring. It's just kind of a preferred lifestyle [for us]. Some people wear
tennis shoes and sweats all the time, and I wear cowboy boots. It's a style,
it's what I like and appreciate. I like older things. [In] modern country
music they'll throw a banjo in, but it's kind of a novelty for them: 'Oh,
isn't this neat? This is an instrument that used to be in country music.' I
don't understand that type of thinkin'."
Even a cursory listen to Low Estate reveals Edwards' undeniable knack for
re-tooling old-world Biblical allegory into rich, shadowy poetry that has as
much to do with the influence of Nick Cave as it does with the Old Testament.
"When will I hurt for Heaven's sake / When will I suffer for the sake of
Heaven?" he wails on "For Heaven's Sake" with such pure wickedness in his
voice you have to wonder whether he's referring to the same heaven of which
we're thinking. He opens "Dead Run" with "The devil's brand is on my bones,
an' from inside the Holy Ghost groans," the struggle in his voice mirrored by
the galloping percussion and spirited cacophony of fiddle, slide guitar and
banjo swelling beneath him. One has to wonder: Are Edwards and his bandmates
truly possessed by the spirits of a time past? Are these dark,
sin-and-redemption-stained tales the product of an active imagination, or the
real manifestations of man caught in a world not of his making?
"I just sing about what I think about and what I believe in," Edwards says
plainly. "I feel like I have some sort of insight given to me, nothing of my
own. Yes, sometimes I do sing about people who are religios in a worldly sort
of way rather than a true spiritual kind of way; the oppression that
[man-made religion] can cause and the effects of that; the way it causes
people to view Christianity. I hear on the news that 95% of Americans say
that they believe in God, but that's just ridiculous to me. They say that
because they would be afraid to say no, basically. But they don't really care
about God, they just say that... The views people have of Christianity are so
warped. And that goes for people saying they believe in God but don't really.
And that goes for people who are preaching on TV and preaching in the church
and they don't really believe in God, they're just doing it. And that's what
causes people to have such a bad view of Christianity. But that's okay, it
doesn't really matter because everybody's a screw-up anyway. Everybody needs
God. Everybody does. Everybody's a sinner (I believe), and nobody's good,
even if they do good things... [Some religious conservatives might say] 'You
concentrate too much on the darkness and dwell too much on the sin' or this
or that, but I would say to them that I believe this is what God wants me to
say. I'm not making this music for people who are truly believers in God, I'm
making it for people who aren't. It's very prevalent in today's world for
people to believe that they don't do anything wrong. As long as they're good
people and they don't go around murdering anyone, they're good people. And
I'm here to say that's not the case."