Sarah Louise - Field Guide

Sarah Henson: 12-string guitar

Bandcamp: https://sarahlouise.bandcamp.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sarah-Louise/1501337806806446

CASSETTE - SOLD OUT

"Sarah Henson learned to play guitar and banjo at the foot of the black mountains in North Carolina. That's how the press text I've found, starts. Under the name Sarah Louise, she released two beautiful folk albums and especially her latest release Field Guide is first and foremost a great fingerstyle, solo guitar album. In some songs she sings, but it's all centered around 12 string solo guitar compositions.

Her music is definitely colored by the land and the nature that surrounds her (at least that's what I know about Ashville, NC and the Blue Ridge Mountains). I imagine a creek that tumbles down the hills, glistening in the sun. That's what her guitar playing sounds like. That's probably why she named it Field Guide." -Dying For Bad Music.

"Her new album Field Guide is coming out in the New Year on Scissor Tail Editions and it feels like a lost disc from Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. Some of the tracks are inspired by old Appalachian hymns, while others have an almost far-Eastern meditative feel. It’s really, really good." - Wake The Deaf

Edition of 100 Cassettes.

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Sarah Louise
Field Guide

Sarah Louise - Field Guide

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Sarah Henson learned to play guitar and banjo at the foot of the black mountains in North Carolina. That's how the press text I've found, starts. Under the name Sarah Louise, she released two beautiful folk albums and especially her latest release Field Guide is first and foremost a great fingerstyle, solo guitar album. In some songs she sings, but it's all centered around 12 string solo guitar compositions.

Her music is definitely colored by the land and the nature that surrounds her (at least that's what I know about Ashville, NC and the Blue Ridge Mountains). I imagine a creek that tumbles down the hills, glistening in the sun. That's what her guitar playing sounds like. That's probably why she named it Field Guide

More than anything, these songs are a reflection of my home in the Black Mountains of North Carolina: smooth-stone creek bottoms, delicate lunar-born mushrooms beneath rhododendron boughs, extreme changes in elevation. Two of the songs have a deep history with these mountains, beginning hundreds of years ago when connection to the land was common. Abstraction and repetition of elements in these songs, along with original 12-string guitar and vocal compositions, add a new layer of history. Neglected as an integral part of Appalachian music, drone makes reappearances. Raga-like structures and ornamentations reveal similarly old connections between the sacred nature-based music of East and West. I hope some of the old magic in these hills comes through.

Highly recommended and you are free to buy it or just grab it for a warm handshake.

Edit: This review was originally made for her first release of Field Guide, before it came out on Scissor Tails. It contained slightly different versions. Find her bandcamp  page here.

Sarah Henson at {Poem 88} from {Poem 88} Gallery on Vimeo.

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