3hattrio Brings American Desert Music to Rainshadow Recording | Centrum Campus | Fort Worden

FROM THE DESK OF EVERETT MORAN, OWNER & SOUND ENGINEER AT RAINSHADOW RECORDING:

photo by Regina Pagles

3hattrio came to be when violinist Eli Wrankle was 15 years old. The group got together when Eli's family held a small recital in their home in Zion Canyon, in Southern Utah. The intend was to raise funds for Eli's high school orchestra to perform at Disneyland.
Afterward family friends, veteran musicians Greg Istock and Hal Cannon asked Eli if he wanted to jam. A classical trained violinist, he had never played music that way before, but agreed. 
When they finished jamming, he asked for more. 3hattrio was born purely out of friendship, localness, and musical chemistry. 

Their sound reflects the landscape they live in and the musical influences they are passionate about. From that came a first album, Year One that they described in literary terms as Magic Realism. 

Reviewers gone lyrical: 

• "An ethereal magic that puts them in a field of one." ~Julian Piper (Acoustic Magazine).
• "Desert chamber music." ~ Paul Kerr (Maverick Magazine).
• The famous cowboy poet, Baxter Black, likens 3hattrio's music to a "profound Gregorian sagebrush chant." 

Check out a Utah original audio visual: Flight 

Whatever the label, one thing is certain: 3hattrio has tapped into the (musical) soul of the American desert, rendering it with a completely original, often mind bending musical approach.

If you ask most people what Western music is you are likely to hear the response, cowboys and Indians. 3hattrio has great respect for these genres but they also think there is more to the West and its music. Musicians like to identify with things larger than themselves. 

Music is often identified with place, like the Delta and its blues or mountain music of Appalachia. It can even be a city's music like New Orleans, Austin or Bakersfield. In the case of the 3hattrio inspiration comes from the deserts of southern Utah, thus, American Desert Music. 

The 3hattrio plays American Desert Music and they aim to create a new music which responds to the natural world of their sacred homeland near Zion National Park in Utah. Their songs are mostly original and even their old-time cowboy and pioneer songs have an unusual twist. The subject matter of the songs is often desert oriented, sometimes not. Mostly, they express the desert experientially from a daily-ness of watching light off distant mesas and hearing the way sound plays off sheer sandstone cliffs. Then they play music. They dont over-think it. Living in the same isolated place, surrounded by an inspiring landscape of red cliffs is what makes this group thrive.

The 3hattrio members live in a place that has a great and lasting indigenous imprint. They strive to acknowledge the cultural traditions of generations of people who have worked and lived on the deserts of the American southwest. They dont attempt to perform the music of the nomadic Native peoples who have lived here for centuries.

They are modern day settlers in a place where settlement is not all that old. 
Folklorist and musician Hal Cannon says: "From our vantage we are not all that different from other pioneers who came from diverse places to make community. From our varied musical backgrounds something truly American can be made out of the necessity to find sociability in an isolated place and to come with the intention to create something new."

Hal Cannon: voice, banjo, guitar. He's also a poet & cowboy music scholar. 
Greg Istock: voice, acoustic bass, foot percussion. He has a Caribbean music background and sings in a haunting and soulful style. Istock is a visual artist to boot.
Eli Wrankle, a classically trained violinist, started college this year at Southern Utah University and comes from a family of artists.

Since producing their first album, Year One, they released a second CD to critical acclaim, Dark Desert Night, followed by Solitaire in September 2016. 
Click on the hyperlinks for a recording journal plus CD details, lyrics and videos.

Who:     3hattrio
When:   Thursay, March 16th, 7pm (Doors at 6:30)
Where:  Rainshadow Recording Studio
             200 Battery Way, Bldg 315 (west side)
             Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend

Tickets Available at Crossroads Music and Quimper Sound Underground in Port Townsend or online at http://3hattrio.brownpapertickets.com.

Additional Info: (360) 301-09291 or centrumrecording@gmail.com

UPCOMING SHOWS

3/16/17  3hattrio

3/17/17  David Jacobs-Strain

4/08/18  Luke Winslow-King
4/22/17  Steve James

9/23/17  John Fullbright

All shows at Rainshadow Recording unless otherwise noted. Tickets available at http://www.brownpapertickets.c om.

Teens & Young Adults Soar at PT Workshops & Blues Fest

It's heartening to see how many teens and young adults are participating in the workshops and jam sessions. They're all over the Centrum campus, boys and girls with or without guitars, players and singer, engaged in conversations about music, and who knows what. Some of them I've seen before. A lot happens in six years, they've grown literally and in their craft, they're on to something good, and they know it.

As is the case every time I come to the Blues Fest I'm a little overwhelmed the first few days, but eventually I settle into a pace that's comfortable. Sometimes I skip a period, go for a walk on the beach, take a nap, or practice in my "cell"by myself. Every night there are jam sessions in the dorm, in the hallways, in people's rooms. There's a curfew now, no all nighters allowed, at least not in de dorms. what happens elsewhere I don't know. I'm sure the kids do. I did when I was their age.

My old bud Everett Moran was doing sound at the McCurdy Pavilion for Maria Muldaur and her Red Hot Bluesiana Band. Hanging out with Ev off stage left was just the right place for me, old stage hand that I am.

Tonight and tomorrow night it's Blues in the Bars in Port Townsend proper.
Centrum's Acoustic Blues Show Case on Saturday afternoon is going to be too, follow the link, and take a listen. All of that'll bring a lot of folks to town, glad I've got a place to stay already.

Embarrassment of Riches at Port Townsend Blues Fest 2014

Yes, I'm back. Not that I haven't been at Fort Worden since 2011, I've taken a few intensives that I didn't report on here, but I'm finally back for the Blues Fest and settled in my solitary cell at the dorm.
Solitary, yeah, right ;-)

As long as you can hear your next door neighbor tune his guitar (no co-ed on my floor) and here the guys in the hallways jam, solitary is an oxymoron. And that's fine by me, I'm here to connect with, and learn from other musicians.

Centrum's Blues Program's Manager Mary Hilts made sure we all have our little Red & Blues book, and man its overwhelming to see who all are here, and what we can pick up by being in any of these artists' workshops.

Not sure yet whether I'm going to schedule the whole week, or play it by ear.
Puns intended where ever applicable.

DVD Guitar Lessons Work

My work schedule as a stage technician is so unpredictable that it's practically impossible to take classes so I was really glad to find that some of my favorite musicians have teaching DVDs out.

I highly recommend Mike Dowling's Swing Series produced by Homespun.
Also John Miller's Mississippi John Hurt Vol. 1 + 2 and his Intro to Chord Theory, all produced by Steve Grossman's Guitar Workshop

 My latest find is Learn the Classics of Bossa Nova Guitar taught by Aaron Gilmartin also available through Homespun.

DVDs are the way to go for folks like me who can't take a regular class because of their work.

Blues Fest 2010 Musicians Play the Pubs in Port Townsend WA

Jeffrey Scott at Undertown in Port Townsend

At breakfast yesterday morning Jeffrey Scott told Mark and me to always carry our guitar with us, "Just like your credit card, never leave home with out it."

On the last night of Blues Fest 2010, I rode the bus down the hill, downtown Port Townsend was where it was at, not out at Fort Worden, the beach or the lighthouse. Blues was in the clubs downtown Port Townsend and I strolled from one to the next with my guitar on my back. Found Steve James, Lightnin' Wells, Suzy Thompson, Terry Bean and Jeff Scott playing full houses.

Nobody seemed to be where I thought they were going to be according to the paper, and I wasn't the only one, even the musicians were running around finding there next venue. On my way to one or the other I ran into Terry Bean. Got a chance to thank him for his generosity, the ease with which he brings reluctant musicians to sit down and play.

Jeff Scott meanwhile had moved from the Undertown Coffeehouse and Wine Bar to The Boiler Room. I stood listening to him, with an eye on the bus stop, when I heard him say, "There's a student of mine here, who might want to play." So I did, doing my best to keep the rhythm while he let the audience hear his fancy fingerpickin'.
"I hear you, I hear you," he said now and then.

"Always carry your guitar with you," is the line that I keep on hearing, that's the line I take with me from the Blues Fest.

Phil Wiggins and Nat Reese at Centrum's Blues Fest

This is how it works at the Blues Fest, you pick the classes you want to take and then when you come outside, you find great guys like Nat Reese and Phil Wiggins sittin' on the porch, playin' like they do, and if you've got some licks left in your tired paws you join and otherwise you hang out and listen. Listen and watch. Wow.

Michael Kline did a great article on Nat Reese in 1998, I wanted to say interview, but Reese is a storyteller and he only needs a hint of a question to get started.