I
Richard Dawson severs his discordant fingerpickings from the rest and gives us the beheaded remains; the larynx, the pharynx, the lips, and
tongue of his perfect (yes, perfect) Northumberland bellow; in two parts.
II
We sit in the front room of a friend’s Aunt’s cottage. I’ve just filled the bird feeder and can still feel the soggy bread and seeds on my soap-sticky palms. I’m reading Chuck Klosterman’s Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Pops aloud to my friends and we’re discussingkicking a Clydesdale horse to death. The answers very quickly shift from morality to practicality.
We are utterly unprepared for adulthood and yet realize that any recognition of this fact is one of the surest signs of adulthood’s approach. Such thoughts circulate pretentiously for some time.
III
The sense of place in Richard Dawson’s work is almost overwhelming. It’s not just in the clear love for stories, song, and community. It’s not the folk of enclosure or conservation, but of lived, shared, enjoyed experience. It can be messy, funny, and rambling, and it is all the better for it. Live, it can border on a gloriously comedic kind of communitas; on record, it takes on the kind of intensity and situated precision that eludes even the best tour guides or maps. But this shouldn’t be folk’s purpose — bird’s eye views and static places — and The Glass Trunk knows this.
IV
We’re passing through Berwick-Upon-Tweed towards Edinburgh and a group of elderly American tourists lean over and ask, “So, how new is Newcastle castle?”
I’m not even sure.
• Richard Dawson: http://www.richarddawson.net
• alt.vinyl: http://www.altvinyl.com
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