(long version of bio)~ updated September 3, 2013
Spirits of the Red City
Call the music time-weathered folk or strewn remnants of Americana or something else entirely. Here is what you will hear: Opaque lyrics, at once lonely and longing and hopeful and weary and love-strewn, given breath with explorative structure and melody, and supported by an ensemble of guitar, string bass, cello, viola, drums and found percussion, banjos, accordions, horn, mandolin, and vocal harmonies.
Spirits of the Red City describe themselves as a collective of friends and wandering musicians led by Will Garrison. Dense with musical and cultural influences which span traditional ballads, folk and classical music to avant-garde jazz, the band pulls the best qualities from genres that perhaps don't normally overlap.
Garrison writes his music with a sincere desire to speak to the listener, to share the joy and sadness in life. Spirits work together to create the orchestrations and strive to perform with their one soul that is 'community.' The 'Red City' might be defined as wherever the spirits of the musicians and the spirit of the listener come together, or any definition that the listener finds meaningful.
This singer-songwriter folk ensemble has been performing all over the country since 2008, everywhere from theaters and art galleries and coffee shops to back yards, basements, outdoor parks and ocean piers. Whether as two musicians or nine, Spirits have played with many friends, collaboratively with other bands, secret shows at SXSW in Austin, in a cave in Louisville, or on a farm in Oregon where the co-performing band that night made a chorus to sing with some of Spirits' songs.
'Home' is Minneapolis, Detroit, New York, Louisville, Colorado, Alaska, and California. These musicians lead full-time lives in myriad work settings, teaching music and performing in New York, organizing folk festivals in Alaska, playing jazz in Detroit, creating puppet shows and theater projects in various settings, and more. Two or three times a year they take time to passionately come together as 'Spirits of the Red City' to rehearse, record and tour--on the West Coast, in Texas, Minnesota, Chicago, New England, or the South. Due to their wide geographic bases, this coming together is somewhat a self-described 'celestial event'--lots of moving parts have toincredibly come together to actually make it happen.
Spirits count eight musicians as the current core members of the band:
Will Garrison, singer-songwriter, steel-string acoustic and electric guitar, Minneapolis
Jason Overby, guitar, vocals, tenor banjo, ukelele, accordion, from Alaska
James Waldo, cello and vocals, New York
Anthony Poretti, drums and found percussion, Detroit
Alyssa Overby, vocals, Alaska, Denver and Minneapolis
Rachel Overby, string bass and vocals, Alaska and Denver
Ben Waldo, viola, mandolin, and vocals, Minneapolis
Danah Olivetree, cello, west coast.
Yet the "family" of musicians who is Spirits has included from time to time other great friends and musicians, such as singer-songwriter Joe Manning, guitar and vocals, of Louisville KY; Macon Terry, string bass and bass guitar, from the band Paper Bird,Denver CO; Tyler Archuletta, trombone and vocals, Sutton, Alaska; Amanda Rino, vocals, from the band Spectre Spectre, San Francisco CA; Brian Voerding, trumpet and pump organ, Winona MN; Will Markwardt, guitar and vocals, from the band Absent Arch, Minneapolis MN; Jonathan Waldo, viola, Minneapolis MN, and more.
Spirits of the Red City has a full length record, Hunter Moon, plus two 7-inch releases: "Serves You Right" with "Young Girl's Heart," and a split 7" with the band Some Say Leland from Austin TX that incudes the Spirits' song, "Long Hand Luke." Spirits' second full length album, Jula, was recorded at La La Land, Kevin Ratterman's Louisville studio, with a release date of September 24, 2013, by Denver-based Collectible Records.
Website:
YouTube video from Bismarck, ND
Music Video, "Mirror"
Shows:
Press:
"(Spirits of the Red City) plays with the airy intimacy and elegance of a minimalist duo, with wistful themes and relatively spare orchestrations: a simple cello line, a gently strummed guitar or a lonely fiddle. Spirits of the Red City singer Will Garrison has a whiskey-soaked voice that's a little weary but full of honesty and passion."
- National Public Radio
"(The) cello/viola/guitar-laden wall of sound is experimental enough to elicit the anticipation and uncertainty of dream, but familiar enough to be the calming reassurance needed upon waking, all beneath the confident strain of Garrison's voice and quiet triumph of his lyricism."
- Leo Weekly (Louisville, KY)
"Surprisingly spare for such a large group, Spirits create a loose-knit, cello-drenched concoction of mournful folk-Americana. It's sad and thoughtful, and drifts along beautifully like the hazy dreams of a bone-tired man who's finally found a moment of rest."
- The Onion
"It's the sort of heartbreak you don't want to let go of, the joy you can't fully embrace. Taken together, though, all these emotional ambiguities and musical disharmonies somehow add up to something that, in the end, is incredibly pretty."
- Max Ross, City Pages
"(They) deliver a distinctive sound somewhere in the crevices between wistful, haunting, arty and folk ... But most of the time it sounds like a chamber group scoring a kitschy thriller, with Neil Young's lower-voiced older brother singing the dialogue. And cinching it into an oddly compelling, unified bundle."
- MinnPost
"His [Will Garrison's] music strikes me as independent among independents--at once removed from fashion, and plugged in to a vast, peculiarly American cultural landscape."
- Elephant Micah [Joe O'Connell, folk musician and songwriter]
"There is a sincerity in the way they approach their songs that breathes new life into the most old-fashioned sounds ... an honest and heartfelt approach to the form that sets Spirits apart from all of the other players in their field."
- Andrea Myers, City Pages
Contact:
Sharon W. Moulds
Representative for Spirits of the Red City
(828) 423-8317