May 04 - Porto, PT @ Hard Club May 05 - Lisbon, PT @ RCA Club May 06 - Madrid, ES @ Kristonfest May 09 - Bologna, IT @ Bronson May 12 - Thessaloniki, GR @ Fix Factory of Sound May 13 - Athens, GR @ Fuzz Club May 21 - Milan, IT @ Circolo Magnolia Segrate May 23 - Liege, BE @ Reflektor May 24 - Groningen, NL @ Oosterpoort May 25 - Haarlem, NL @ Patronaat May 26 - Sint Niklass, BE @ De Casino May 27 - Utrecht, NL @ Tivoli Vredenburg
Download: Come Brave; The Hired Hand; All Your Waves; Golden Blossom
On Star Treatment, Wovenhand prime mover David Eugene Edwards locates the shared space between Native American and Middle Eastern modes, with an exciting exploration of spirituality and music that draws Montana close to Mesopotamia. It’s a music parched in desert sun, lost in forest gloom, abandoned on endless prairies: land and elements dominate the imagery which Edwards declaims with stern, religiose intensity, against arrangements ranging from the Gun Club-style gothic rockabilly of “The Hired Hand” to the abstract avalanche of drums and guitars harking, in “Swaying Reed”, to the Tigris. Elsewhere, the dense, droning weave of guitars in “Crook And Flail” and “Golden Blossom” recalls The Byrds, Popol Vuh and Tuareg desert-blues. At its best, it’s quite thrilling: the galloping drums and strident guitar clangour of “Come Brave” perfectly evokes its Indian imagery, while “All Your Waves” develops a mysterious, tsunami-like power all its own. Majestic stuff.
David Eugene Edwards of Wovenhand talked to Music & Riots for their latest issue - check it out HERE, and check out their review of "Star Treatment" on page 130.
Long-time devotees may still favour the sparse, acoustic fervour of earlier Wovenhand records, but it’s undeniable that David Eugene Edwards’ band have benefited hugely from becoming noisier and more muscular in recent times. 2014’s Refractory Obdurate was almost universally acclaimed and further cemented the strange but oddly natural relationship Edwards’ music has with the metal underground. Superficially, Star Treatment is simply more of the same sublimely stormy and electrified neo-folk. No less compelling than anything else its primary composer has done, it feels more like a consolidation of the current Wovenhand lineup’s intuitive chemistry than an attempt to expand their sound, and yet despite lacking any one definitive money shot to rival the mid-song ascension of the previous album’s Corsicana Clip, there are golden moments in abundance.
The opening Come Brave is a scabrous call-to- arms, its wall of clanging guitars exuding confrontational vehemence and David Eugene Edwards’ sonorous cries piercing through the squall like a siren in a thunderstorm. It also conjures more of that unsettling but obscenely exciting wildness that this more rock-driven incarnation of the band have steadily learned to harness. The languorousSwaying Reed is almost doom in delivery, but the untamed resonance of those guitars is more redolent of Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s feedback experiment Arc and there is something deliciously Swans-like about the sheer power behind each transient crescendo. Mid-album epic All Your Waves is even more compelling; a sustained and unnerving, Nephilim-tinged mirage, its blistering evocation of windswept plains and profound revelations could have been comically overwrought in less sincere hands, but Edwards’ utmost conviction ensures that the drama is very real and his comrades’ ensemble performance is nothing short of magical. More succinct material like the gothic rock rumble of Crook And Flail andGo Ye Light’s menacing post-punk thud may not quite hit the same heights of disorientating efficacy, but they each exhibit just enough of Wovenhand’s glowering soul to earn their place. It may be bigger, bolder and louder these days but there are no discernible fissures in Edwards’ holy vision and his band of brothers march on with heads held high.
Wovenhand’s new album Star Treatment is officially out today in stores, streaming, and digital platforms. See some of the rave reviews already coming in below.
Wovenhand begin their European tour on Monday, September 12th and will be joined by Emma Ruth Rundle on most shows. Tickets are available HERE, with a full list of dates below.
WOVENHAND & EMMA RUTH RUNDLE LIVE 2016
Sep 12 COLOGNE, DE – Gebäude 9 Sep 13 FRANKFURT, DE – Zoom Sep 15 BERN, CH – ISC Sep 16 ZURICH, CH – Bogen F Sep 17 VIENNA, AT – Flex Sep 18 BUDAPEST, HU – A38 Sep 20 SALZBURG, AT – Rockhouse Sep 21 MUNICH, DE – Ampere Sep 22 LEIPZIG, DE – UT Connewitz Sep 23 BERLIN, DE – Heimathafen Sep 24 HAMBURG, DE – Reeperbahn Festival * Sep 26 ARHUS, DK – Train Sep 27 OSLO, NO – John Dee Sep 29 HELSINKI, FI – Tavastia * Sep 30 STOCKHOLM, SE – Nalen Oct 01 LUND, SE – Mejeriet Oct 02 COPENHAGEN, DK – Vega Jr. Oct 04 EINDHOVEN, NL – Effenaar Oct 05 AMSTERDAM, NL – Melkweg Oct 06 LEUVEN, BE – Het Depot Oct 07 GENT, BE – Handelsbeurs Oct 08 CHARLEROI, BE – L’Eden Oct 10 LILLE, FR – L’Aéronef Oct 11 PARIS, FR – La Maroquinerie Oct 13 ORLEANS, FR – L’Astrolabe Oct 14 GRENOBLE, FR – La Belle Electrique Oct 15 FEYZIN, FR – L’Epicerie Moderne Oct 16 TOULOUSE, FR – La Rex Oct 18 LONDON, UK – The Dome
* Wovenhand only
“Edwards belongs to an older breed. He’s in there with Cave, Michael Gira, Carla Bozulich, Dan Higgs, Polly Jean Harvey, David Tibet. He’s a mystic wanderer, the type who seeks transcendence in darkness as well as in light. He never hides his voice. It’s a huge, barreling wail, a declamatory roar. And the music matches the majesty of that voice, calling on traditions that can sometimes go past ancestral country music and into tribal-chant territory. This is big music, a type of music that we don’t often hear anymore. It’s music for calling down heaven. There is plenty of great music coming out these days, but very little of it is concerned with summoning spirits in that same way. We don’t get many albums like this anymore.” - Stereogum, Album of the Week
"Beyond the admirable sincerity and devotion, the record is full of emotive hooks, thundering percussion, psychedelic twang, ethnic rhythms, and formless meditations on what mysteries reside in the heavens above. Edwards’ musical palette has truly become limitless, and Star Treatment takes Wovenhand’s sound to its most realized and accomplished.” - Noisey
“Star Treatment is actually a damn fine album. It's catchy, it's gritty, and it just feels like a rock n' roll album should.” - Metal Injection
On Friday, Nick Cave and his Bad Seeds will release their new album Skeleton Tree, and other than the soul-wrecking first single “Jesus Alone,” I haven’t heard it yet. Nobody has. Cave’s label has sent out no advances, which means music critics like me are tingling with anticipation just like everybody else. This is Cave’s first album since his son fell off a cliff and died last year. Cave is an artist with a long, storied history of staring deeply into the darkest parts of the human experience, of drinking that darkness in and spitting it back out all over us. The fact that he’s back to recording music so soon after such a life-reshaping personal catastrophe is a miraculous testament to his own strength. Even before hearing the album, I can feel the weight of its presence. It’s out there, waiting. And in a few days, it will be stomping all over my soul. But now, there is a chance, however slight, that Skeleton Tree will not be the best Nick Cave album that comes out on Friday.
I’m being glib here, of course. Star Treatment, the new Wovenhand album, is not a Nick Cave album. It’s not fair to Cave to imply that it is. It’s also not fair to David Eugene Edwards, the Denver musician who has been leading Wovenhand since 2001, since it was a side project of his mutant-country band 16 Horsepower. But Edwards has been treading some of the same territory as Cave for a long time now. His music deals in the same darkness, the same obsessiveness. His songs are steeped in the history of American music, of folk and country and blues, and yet they owe as much to some of the clanging, confrontational forms that followed: punk, metal, hardcore, noise-rock. His songs sound like incantations, like prayers bubbling up from below. He’s not Cave, but he’s cut from the same cloth.
David Eugene Edwards has been an exceptionally enigmatic figure since he first began to infuse country, Americana, and dark folk with an unparalleled intensity. What started with 16 Horsepower during the rising “Denver Sound” of the mid-90’s, took on a wider palette and evolved into the more personal Wovenhand. The Denver native also filters this sound through his less-than-conventional world view. The son of a reckless biker and a fundamentalist family, Edwards is an unapologetic, old world Christian with an untamable edge. Working within a darker musical paradigm, this dynamic plays out in mysterious ways as nothing is held back. By laying it all out and letting the pieces fall where they may, the resulting music becomes a sincere blend of Biblical allegory, heavy riffs, ethereal folk, Native American aesthetics, and musical flavors from every corner of the globe.
With the new album Star Treatment on the horizon, Edwards and his band of heavy music veterans—guitarist Chuck French and bassist Neil Keener (both of Planes Mistaken For Stars), drummer Ordy Garrison, and piano/synth player Matthew Smith of Crime & The City Solution—have crafted the hardest-hitting Wovenhand offering to date. The progression towards a heavier and more powerful sound has established them as recognizable figures in the dark underground, reaching as far as rock and metal festivals across Europe and the USA. Onstage, a figure in possessed rapture leads a rock n roll procession somewhere between fire 'n' brimstone and a shamanic ritual.
Match that with the presence of American metal luminary Sanford Parker at the production helm in Steve Albini’s legendary Electrical Audio studio, and you have a sound that attracts plaid-shirted good old boys and church-burning misanthropes alike. Beyond the admirable sincerity and devotion, the record is full of emotive hooks, thundering percussion, psychedelic twang, ethnic rhythms, and formless meditations on what mysteries reside in the heavens above. Edwards’ musical palette has truly become limitless, and Star Treatment takes Wovenhand’s sound to its most realized and accomplished.
Our discussion below attempts to explore some of these forces working beneath the surface. With such a unique perspective as his, Edwards unflinchingly reveals a few of his spiritual inclinations, his distrust of modernity, and finding a home for a sound caught in the sonic middle of it all. Sparing the finer elements of production and arrangement, the details of Star Treatmentare revealed in symbol and intention. The album is streaming below, so listen to it sing as we ponder, how will the heavenly bodies bring us a step closer to truth? And where exactly does Edwards fall amongst the stars?
[[MORE]]
Noisey: You once said your goal with music is to spread the word of God. On stage you are in rapture, almost to the point of trance and possession. Can we consider Wovenhand to be solely “Christian music,” or is there something more at work? David Eugene Edwards: I don’t know what you can consider it. I don’t consider it that—I just consider it music that comes out of me.
There is a strong duality enforcing Wovenhand: You have your father’s influence (motorcycles, lawlessness, freedom) on one side, and your Grandfather’s influence (piety, church community, duty) on the other… where are you on that polarity? Where does current Wovenhand fit on that polarity? Well, we don’t [laughs]. We don’t fit anywhere. That’s just the way it is. It’s not the goal, and it doesn’t matter if you fit or not. In a lot of ways, I’m too, what people would say, 'churchy,' for the world at large, and I’m much too of the world at large for the church. So I don’t really fit in either, according to any view that anyone holds from both groups. But that’s nothing new—that’s the way it’s always been with what I do. Not that it’s better or anything—it is what it is. I don't try to reconcile any duality. I believe that all things are reconciled already. I don’t need to reconcile anything, I just let the music that comes out, come out, and just speak about the things that are on my mind.
Currently the Standing Rock Sioux in the Dakotas are in the midst of a stand-off with oil companies pushing the DAPL (Dakota Access Pipeline) through their ancestral land, and we are keenly reminded of our disgraceful past and present with the first peoples of this continent. The perennial Native American element appears more prominently than ever before on this latest album. How does that fit in your personal life, and how does it fit in your music? It’s like living in someone else’s home. To be an American, for me, is like living on someone else’s property or home. The things around you that are part of that home and make up where you are, as of course you’re born into it here, has always been a big part of my life growing up—Native American this and that, family history, local history. It doesn’t mean I’m all directly involved in it, it’s just part of my life. Aesthetically and everything else, I’m living in someone else's place, I’m seeing the things and that’s what surrounds me. That’s what I know. The things that we the people who have taken this place over have to offer, to me, is bullshit. From top to bottom. Whether it is doctors, or Walmarts, or trains. It’s all bullshit. So I just look at the things that are actually of this place and actually have something to do with this place, and put my attention there.
Wovenhand has been embraced by many of an adversarial spiritual bent—for example, multiple members of prominent Satanic metal bands have professed admiration for your work. How does that sit with you to have such an antithetical fan base? What do you think is the attraction? There’s even been an attraction from the beginning with 16 Horsepower. I think folk music in general is popular with the music [community] you’re talking about, be it from Sweden or Norway, or from Portugal, or wherever. These people dig into the folklore and the culture of where they are coming from, and use that. That’s something that 16 Horsepower did, and what I do now, so that’s a connection. Singing about spiritual things, whether it’s adversarial or not, are spiritual things in general. I identify with the aggressive stance they take against what people say I represent. I would agree with those who are aggressively against something, rather that those who just say, 'Eh, I’d rather just sing about something else.'
Since, like I said, we never really had a home, Wovenhand or 16 Horsepower, we didn’t fit into alternative country even though that’s what we were: it’s folk instruments but those who listen to folk music won’t be interested in what I do. We’ve never had a musical home. But now we’ve been taken in by the metal community, and I’m happy about it. It’s nice to have a place to be[laughs]. All the people I’ve met are all so complimentary and kind and welcoming. Star Treatment is a thunderous rock 'n' roll album colored with folk, country, and world music, but it’s definitely still a rock album. It seems like your music always will carry that “Denver Sound” pioneered by the collective works of Bob Ferbrache, Slim Cessna, Munly, and anything around Absinthe Studios. Is the newer direction a conscious departure? Not at all. I always have that in me, but it doesn’t always come out. When I’m playing with the guys I’m playing with now, Chuck French and Neil Keener, they are coming from this heavier world completely. That’s what they bring, and of course I know that. They complement what would be typical Wovenhand stuff, but they also really complement the stuff that I'm doing that is more heavy. It’s easier for us to collaborate. If I stay in that heavy direction it’s easier for us to communicate and make something new.
What can you tell us about the formative days of that blossoming Denver “Gothic Country” movement? I’ve heard whispers of psychedelic infused intensive prayer, engaging in Native American spiritual rituals, and other practices that might be considered unorthodox. Is there any truth to that? No, there is no truth to that—I don’t know where that would be coming from, really! I go to pow wows all the time with my son all over America: Wyoming, South Dakota, Montana, New Mexico. But I would never even consider entering myself into what they consider sacred. I got no business being there, and I wouldn't do it in the first place. I just like to go and spend my money there with those people. The money that I make, I spend on them. I buy the things they make. That’s how I like to spend my time when I’m not playing music or whatever. But, no, there’s no voodoo [laughs]. But I did do a lot of drugs and all that kinda shit! [Laughs] And that’s voodoo in itself, I guess. But nothing laid out in terms of trying to get somewhere spiritually by doing something like that. I don’t believe in anything like that.
photo credit: Simon Skreddernes
Star Treatment has an expansive, sublime feeling, like gazing at the night sky—stars, heavenly bodies. What forms does this theme take in your mind, and on this record? They take every shape! That's the point of the record—the stars are everything to us. The heavenly bodies since the beginning of man are what’s above him. These are the lights that light up his life. These are the lights that guide the seasons, and everything else is tied to it. Basically all the religions of the world are astro-religions. They are all based on the stars, the movements of the stars, assigning characters to the stars in the Zodiac. This is a worldwide event, not just in one place but everywhere. People coming up with the same images for what they are seeing in the sky. How that translates into daily life for people. Into art, literature, culture, and, as I said, religion, which is the basis for all of that. There is no escaping it. I just took it head on and started talking about it in very abstract ways. It’s a many layered imagery. It’s very ethereal. Just like the sky.
As we look to the stars and imagine worlds beyond our world, do you ever consider the end of this one? It can be a humbling experience, especially since we’re living in such a volatile and frightening place right now. Are we living in the end times? Is that something you consider? I’m not so hot on that topic. I don’t think people really know what that means. My worldview is very different from the majority of people I speak to. I don’t believe there are billions and billions and billions of universes. I don’t believe all this. I believe we’re being lied to on a constant basis, for many reasons. The main reasons being money and, well, control. They just feed on whatever the people's fears are and adopt the stories and things to control these people. I believe that all of the universe is centerd around the Earth, not that we all revolve around the Sun or something. I believe that the Sun and everything else revolves around the Earth, and was created for the Earth. The Earth is the center of all things. Whether it’s time for the end or not, that’s beyond my understanding.
But I do believe that it is the center of things, yeah. We’re not just some irrelevant, strung up life form on some planet hurtling 60,000 miles per hour through space with no rhyme or reason. Just hurtling through space and it all just happened to come about? I don’t believe in all that, of course. The Earth to me is central, Man himself and the Creation around him is central to all things—not the stars.
WOVENHAND TOUR 2016: 09/12 COLOGNE, DE @ Gebäude 9 * 09/13 FRANKFURT, DE @ Zoom * 09/15 BERN, CH @ ISC * 09/16 ZURICH, CH @ Bogen F * 09/17 VIENNA, AT @ Flex * 09/18 BUDAPEST, HU @ A38 * 09/20 SALZBURG, AT @ Rockhouse * 09/21 MUNICH, DE @ Ampere * 09/22 LEIPZIG, DE @ UT Connewitz * 09/23 BERLIN, DE @ Heimathafen * 09/24 HAMBURG, DE - Reeperbahn Festival 09/26 ARHUS, DK @ Train * 09/27 OSLO, NO @ John Dee * 09/29 HELSINKI, FI @ Tavastia 09/30 STOCKHOLM, SE @ Nalen * 10/01 LUND, SE @ Mejeriet * 10/02 COPENHAGEN, DK @ Vega Jr. * 10/04 EINDHOVEN, NL @ Effenaar * 10/05 AMSTERDAM, NL @ Melkweg * 10/06 LEUVEN, BE @ Het Depot * 10/07 GENT, BE @ Handelsbeurs * 10/08 CHARLEROI, BE @ L'Eden * 10/10 LILLE, FR @ L'Aéronef * 10/11 PARIS, FR @ La Maroquinerie * 10/13 ORLEANS, FR @ L'Astrolabe * 10/14 GRENOBLE, FR @ La Belle Electrique * 10/15 FEYZIN, FR @ L'Epicerie Moderne * 10/16 TOULOUSE, FR @ La Rex * 10/18 LONDON, UK @ The Dome *
Wovenhand will be touring with SubRosa and King Dude in 2017. 8/31 and 9/1 will be with Emma Ruth Rundle and Jaye Jayle.
