Erin Digs It: Andrew Bird - Ethiobirds
-
Artist:
-
Album:
-
Track:
A lot of people seem to be already hip to this guy, but if you haven't yet been exposed to the wonderful world of Andrew Bird, have a seat, grab a snack, and welcome.
Song #2 of the Erin Digs It series: Andrew Bird - Ethiobirds
Here he is folks, a real life virtuoso and a bonafide Renaissance man. To say that Andrew Bird has a natural knack for stringed instruments would be quite an understatement. In a live setting, he has guitars, fiddles, and mandolins strapped to him like a Wild West gunslinger--and he'll use any instrument in reach within a single song with a fluidity and grace that one has to see to believe. (And still, some don't.)
What really makes Andrew Bird a Renaissance man and artist, though, is his ability to defy time, genre, statistics, conventions, and entire eras of music. He has not one distinct style of playing, but leaps from back porch bluegrass to Cab Calloway style scat swing and blues to classical to rural Asian folk to pop. Like a master chemist, he mixes any and every combination he can think of and creates new sounds faster than their influential bearings can be identified.
What I love about his music the most? Regardless of how one describes or classifies an Andrew Bird piece, they all have one thing in common: storytelling. It's as easy to get lost in one of his compositions as it is to get lost in the Indian jungle of Arundhati Roy's God of Small Things or in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's mystical town of Macondo in One Hundred Years of Solitude. You are effortlessly transported to another time, another place, to places that have yet to exist. Which could account for why tickets to his shows, all of a sudden, sell out practically before they go on sale. And they're not cheap, folks.
This track, according to Bird's website, was "recorded live (solo) to an audience of crickets and cicadas at Andrew's home studio in a barn in rural western Illinois" on the third release of a three-part live series called Fingerlings 3, released in 2006. It's a good ten and a half minutes and you'll hardly notice that time has passed by when the song ends. I'm calling it a masterpiece, and I'm sticking to it.
Hope you dig it, too.
Comments (7)
Bird is the word!
i have to get a hold of this, thanks for posting
i heard he's wrapping up a new album
very exciting
a true original
i've seen him a few times live
makes you feel classy just listening
and as a musician, totally intimidating
I hear you, Neil--exciting to say the least! He always has me on the edge of my chair.
Did you happen to see him when he played here in NYC a couple weeks ago? It sold out before I even knew he was coming.
i didn't move on it quickly enough
craigslist had a few but i was not up for the cost
definitely my loss though
if you're in town next weekend, i'm having an ep release party at cutting room that will be lots of fun, no andrew bird of course, but some good tunes and good friends
send me details and I'll try to come check it out.
That's an exciting, adventurous piece of music. Thanks for turning us onto him.
i'd kill to see him live. he's not as popular in my part of the world, and i do believe he played one of the smallest venues in georgia the last time he was here. i'm hoping he'll do a big tour when the new album comes out. can't wait!