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Wednesday, March 2, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
Nathaniel Talbot to play The Barn
The Nathaniel Talbot Trio
CD release concert is sched-
uled at The Barn in Sisters on
March 3, at 7 p.m. The con-
cert will feature Nathaniel
Talbot on guitar and vocals,
Anna Tivel on violin, and
Sam Howard on bass.
Sisters’ own Raman Ellis
and Benji Nagel will open the
show.
Nathaniel Talbot’s music
has dirt under its fingernails,
the product of decades of hard
work and crafting — retuning,
replanting, and retelling. The
result is true American roots
music, combining the soul-
ful edge of tradition with the
Pacific Northwest’s legacy of
freedom and innovation.
It’s a busy life for singer-
songwriter and farmer
Nathaniel Talbot, who runs
an organic vegetable farm
on Whidbey Island, in
Washington state’s Puget
Sound.
“I work on the farm 60
hours a week between March
and October. An average
week during the busy season
has two harvest days, one
market day, and three days of
weeding, planting, and every-
thing else,” he said.
In addition to farming, he’s
just released his fourth album,
“Swamp Rose & Honeysuckle
Vine,” on Portland’s Fluff &
Gravy Records. The album
marks the harvest of a differ-
ent sort for Talbot, who has
also spent over two decades
tending to the crafts of song-
writing and guitar-playing.
His songs on the new album
are intimately tied to the lush
farmland and windswept
vistas of Whidbey Island,
deeply rooted in the earth and
American traditionalism.
“The folk music and
big trees that surrounded
my childhood were hugely
impactful,” says Talbot of his
upbringing just a few hundred
miles south of his farm, in
the foothills just southeast of
Portland. “I spent most of my
free time running around the
forest and making up adven-
tures with the neighbor kids.
The natural setting certainly
imprinted on my sense of self
and how I make music.”
Raised on the music of
Paul Simon and Eric Clapton,
Talbot began playing at a
young age, learning piano at
seven and turning to guitar
around thirteen, later steep-
ing himself in the sounds of
local artists like Soundgarden,
Elliot Smith, and Kelly Joe
Phelps.
Produced by Talbot along
with Rob Stroup, Swamp
Rose & Honeysuckle Vine
marks a big step forward in
Talbot’s evolution as a lyricist
and a storyteller. Becoming a
farmer, he began to dig deep
into our most human trait:
storytelling.
“There was all of a sudden
all this raw, untapped mate-
rial to write about. Stuff that
people used to sing about –
stories about farmers wres-
tling the landscape, loving it,
abusing it, old tractors get-
ting stuck in the wetland, kids
leaving the farm, soil blowing
away in the wind, long hard
days of work and the amazing
sense of reward and connec-
tion with the land.”
Swamp
Rose
&
Honeysuckle Vine captures
the raw, live energy of Talbot’s
guitar-playing, and has a more
stripped-down approach than
his previous albums — no
drums, fewer string arrange-
ments, and sparse vocal har-
monies. Tracking guitar and
vocals live and solo, usu-
ally in just one or two takes,
Talbot then brought in his
quartet of Portland all-stars,
Anna Tivel (violin, vocals),
Sam Howard (double bass),
Lincoln Crockett (mando-
lin) and Benji Nagel (dobro),
whose auxiliary instrumenta-
tion is used intentionally and
sparingly to great effect, fill-
ing in and conversing with the
core of Talbot’s playing and
singing.
Local singer-songwriters
and musicians Raman Ellis
and Benji Nagel will open
the show. The duo will per-
form music from Raman
Ellis’ soon-to-be-released
new recording, “The Tides,”
recorded at the Brent Alan
studio. The debut album is
full of eloquent, personal lyr-
ics brought to life by vocal
harmonies, with violin, cello,
dobro, mandolin, banjo, gui-
tar, and piano.
L o cal mu s ic ia n a n d
Sisters Folk Festival Creative
Director Brad Tisdel says,
“Raman is a hidden gem in
the myriad of songwriters
that are from Sisters and have
come through the Americana
Project. This album demon-
strates the depth of his writ-
ing, the quality of his sing-
ing, and the overall original-
ity of what he is going for
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Nathaniel talbot is a farmer and a singer-songwriter of note. he will play
the Barn in Sisters on March 3.
musically. It is a beautiful
collection of songs, produced
to present the very best of his
artistic insight.”
Tickets for the Thursday,
March 3 show are $12 adult
and $10 youth, and will be
sold at the door. The Barn is
located at 68467 Three Creek
Rd., three-quarters of a mile
outside of the town of Sisters.
Doors will open at 6:30 p.m.
For ticket and show informa-
tion call 541-408-0200.