Video is loading...
In order to see the video, click the Privacy icon in the lower left corner of your screen to grant consent for YouTube Video.
The Privacy icon looks like this:
|
Event
Moreland & Arbuckle w/ Cassie Taylor
MORELAND & ARBUCKLE
Guitarist Aaron Moreland and harpist/vocalist Dustin Arbuckle, along with new drummer Kendall Newby, have spent over a decade exploring the edges of American roots music. In the process, Moreland & Arbuckle have forged a relentless and haunting sound that merges Delta blues, folk, rock, traditional country, soul and numerous other echoes and murmurs from an infinitely layered musical narrative that spans more than a century.
The Moreland & Arbuckle journey began when the two met at an open-mic jam at a club in Wichita, Kansas, in 2001. Moreland had just moved into town a few months earlier from Emporia. A guitarist since age 15, his source material was admittedly diverse Led Zeppelin, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Black Sabbath, Charley Patton, Motley Crue but he'd settled into traditional blues by the time he'd arrived in Wichita in his mid-20s. Arbuckle, a native of Wichita, had been playing in a blues rock bar band at the time, but his truest sensibilities ran a couple generations deeper, into the heart of the Mississippi Delta. He counts iconic figures like harpists Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williams and guitarist Son House among his most profound influences. "It was kind of perfect," says Arbuckle of the chance encounter between the two musicians. "We had a shared vision, in a place where there really wasn't much interest in or support for country blues."
A few bass players came and went in the years that followed, until Moreland and Arbuckle discovered they could lay down a solid groove on their own. Then again, Moreland does his share of work at the bottom end. In addition to the more typical Telecaster and Les Paul guitars, his arsenal also includes a hand-crafted instrument consisting of four strings stretched across a cigar box. One string feeds into a bass amp, and the other three into a guitar amp. It's a gritty, electrified descendent of the cigar box guitars played by countless Delta bluesmen of the early 1900s who, for all of their innate talents, were too impoverished to afford the real thing.
"It's hard to say exactly what we are and what we do," says Arbuckle. "Blues is definitely at the core, but we're huge fans of all sorts of American music, and all of that comes through as well. Obviously, there are elements of traditional country in what we do, elements of vintage rock and roll, soul and all that sort of stuff. We always try to stay grounded in that traditional blues center, and at the same time branch out and do as many different things as we can while still keeping it consistent with the sound we've developed."
CASSIE TAYLOR
At age 26, Cassie Taylor is already a veteran musician. She's spent a decade playing bass and singing on stage and in the studio with her father, modern-day blues innovator Otis Taylor. Taylor's artistic evolution, which began at the tender age of 12 when she picked up a bass and played the iconic line of the blues-rock anthem "Hey Joe" perfectly after being shown the lick just once. Soon after that the young prodigy joined her father's band as bassist and backing singer.
"In concert I'll play Nine Inch Nails' 'Closer' and segue into Muddy Waters' 'I Just Want To Make' Love To You' to make a point they're equally grounded in blues; they both have the same message and the same changes, and prove that this musical tradition is relevant today."
"I like to think I see things differently," says Taylor, who will tour behind the album this spring. "The blues is the basis of all American music and of everything that I do. It's a tradition, passed down from generation to generation. Some people say I'm not blues enough, but I'm a 26-year-old woman with very light skin living in the 21st century. Had Muddy Waters grown up when I did perhaps his music would sound a lot like mine. When Memphis Minnie was coming up they didn't have electronic music or rock 'n' roll, and it was impossible to buy West African psychedelic rock records. I listen to everything from old blues to punk to drum 'n' bass to my father's music, and it's all become part of me."
|
|
 |
LocationEmporia Granada Theatre (View)
807 Commercial Street
Emporia, KS 66801
United States
Map is loading...
In order to see the map for this event, click the Privacy icon in the lower left corner of your screen and grant consent for Google Maps.
The Privacy icon looks like this:
Categories
| Kid Friendly: Yes! |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
|
Contact
|
