Imagine: It’s sometime in the back half of the 19th century, America. You’re sitting in the parlor of your mansion, or in the only room of your shack; things are dusty and smell like sweat and hair, no matter how wealthy you may be. You don’t own a phonograph, and you don’t know who Tony Hawk is, but you have an inkling of how good the word “shred” is going to feel when it enters the local slang. Suddenly, a tall, elegant figure with beautifully maintained fingernails emerges from some corner of the room, carrying a guitar. He says in a soft voice, “I have a transmission for you, from the coming few centuries. Would you like to hear it? I figured you wouldn’t have a dongle, so I brought my guitar.”
You may be apprehensive, but you shouldn’t be. Shane happens to be an internationally renowned virtuoso of the guitar. Specifically, he’s the kind of virtuoso who is as deep on style as he is on technique. His technical prowess is almost maddeningly complete; aiming paradoxically for the yards-long target called “breadth” he’s somehow hit all of it, 500 arrows piercing every pore of the landscape. He has that much technique not for the sake of guitar worship but to best bring the music forth clearly and in his own hand, like a pearl formed in a specific sea. I know this because I’ve sat next to him in multiple countries and American states and seen him deliver transmissions of that extreme honesty, with that extreme capability.
Like Derek Bailey’s “Ballads,” this record brings you into the room and the breath of a true musician whose mastery does not overshadow his appreciation of the music that inspired it. The title, “Repertoire,” underscores the beautiful songs he chose to perform, all standards of 20th century musical excellence. The in-time persistence of his blues-walked “Lonely Woman.” The grand registral descent he performs on “Pithecanthropus Erectus,” like a rare document of the trip down from Everest. Dig how “Better Get Hit in Your Soul,” emphasizes the folk blues water coursing through Mingus’s Ellingtonia, how Aphex Twin’s “Avril 14” and the Minutemen’s “Cohesion” sound so much older than Cage’s “Totem Ancestors.” “Repertoire” puts forth the idea that time is arrangement: time and arrangement are each only as successful as they are faithful to their origins and expansive in their style.
Again, lest you fear the alien smoothness some associate with the concept “virtuoso,” remember here we’re dealing with a time- traveler. His virtuosity is home grown, born of human work rather than some abstract or divine touch; the aim is not to go beyond the realm of human technical possibility but to expand it in the direction of human, meaning, timely. This guy can play anything, and for you, for this record, which sounds intimate and as present as a transmission from a time-traveler, he chooses to.
— Wendy Eisenberg
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Over the past decade I have arranged a lot of music for solo fingerstyle guitar. My source material, more often than not, is music composed and originally performed on other instruments. I play jazz tunes, vocal ballads, folk songs, electronic music, anything I happen to be digging. For this record, I adhered to two principles: Andres Segovia’s famous statement that the guitar is an “orchestra in miniature” and Thelonious Monk’s observation: “they came for the melody.” Note that everything here was recorded live without overdubs.
Lonely Woman by Ornette Coleman — I treat this tune guitaristically with a pulsing bassline in drop-D tuning, which gives it perhaps a John Fahey-ish vibe. But the bridge is more inspired by the “Preludes” of Brazilian classical composer Heitor Villa-Lobos.
Serenade to a Cuckoo by Roland Kirk — My intro is an homage to some of the many songs that use this descending chord progression: “Walk Don’t Run” by Johnny Smith/The Ventures, “Promises Kept” by Sonny Sharrock, “Angi” by Davy Graham. The overall arrangement of the A section owes a debt to “Angi.” The bridge features some fingerstyle variations and a walking bassline as the song moves through more conventional jazz harmonic motion.
Avril 14th by Aphex Twin — a perfect song, reminiscent of Satie in color, with trickier rhythmic displacements.
Cohesion by D Boon/Minutemen — The first of two guitar covers on the record. This is THE punk rock flamenco song! It employs a steady rolling arpeggio pattern that is often associated with a few of Leonard Cohen’s most powerful songs: “The Stranger Song”, “Teachers”, “The Partisan.”
Pithecanthropus Erectus by Charles Mingus — “Man walking upright.” This is such a dark and powerful rocker of a composition. Released in 1956, it is proto-metal. I play it in two different registers and emulate Mingus’ driving quarter note feel in the bass.
It’s You I Like by Fred Rogers — Mister Rogers studied composition in college, and it is apparent in his use of chord substitutions (though I’ve added a few of my own) on this touching song about my genuine appreciation for you.
Totem Ancestor by John Cage — I was first drawn to this piece when I heard the Kronos Quartet version on their 1997 album “Early Music.” It is originally written for prepared piano and is one of Cage’s most melodic and romantic compositions.
Europe Endless by Kraftwerk — When Florian Schneider from Kraftwerk died in 2020, I made an arrangement of this song for electric guitar and loop pedal and posted it to my Youtube Channel. Bill asked me if I could make a solo acoustic version for this album. I gave it a try. The tuning is BGDGBD, which was my solution to the problem of executing the song’s three key changes while playing in an open tuning. I hope to do more electronic music on acoustic guitar in the future.
Reincarnation of a Lovebird by Charles Mingus — I used to play this one on dinner gigs with a trio way back in the day. For this solo version, I tried to pull out as much color from the instrument as I could. It opens with a flamenco strum called a “rasgueado”.
Out to Lunch by Eric Dolphy — This song comes with no chords. On the 1964 album, “Out to Lunch,” after they state the melody, the players improvise across a sprawling openness dotted with micro-events. When I am arranging vocal tunes for guitar, I often ignore the chords that are written in charts or played on recordings, and I try to determine the harmony that the melody is implying. That’s what I did with this tune. I wrote my own chord progression for it. It’s out there!
Better Get Hit in Your Soul by Charles Mingus — This is in open-D tuning. For the intro, I tried to capture all the instrumentation—bass, piano, trombone—that appears on the 1959 recording “Mingus Ah Um.” There is an overall Elizabeth Cotten feel to this arrangement. A joyful gospel tune in 6/4!
One Red Rose That I Mean by Don Van Vliet/Capt Beefheart — originally performed (and possibly co-written??) by Bill Harkleroad aka Zoot Horn Rollo - This is the second guitar cover on the album. A herky-jerky dada-ist composition in C major that manages to lock in to some epic moments of deep emotion. I have always felt a bittersweet sadness listening to this tune.
Journey in Satchidanada by Alice Coltrane — I was listening to this album in the bathtub one night, candles lit, incense burning, and it occurred to me that I could play this song on guitar and how cool would it be if I could keep that iconic pentatonic bassline going while capturing some of Pharaoh Sanders magic over top of it and also the resonance of Alice’s harp. I got out of the tub, tuned my B string down to an E, and spent a couple hours getting it together.
Lights on a Satellite by Sun Ra — One day, a few years ago, I got a wild hair and transcribed this song from the 1965 album “Fate in a Pleasant Mood” while sitting at my mother-in-law’s dining room table in Columbus, Georgia. I kicked my arrangement around for a while, and eventually settled on making the bridge the center piece. I foreshadow it with single note sparseness during the intro. The A-sections are played with a sporadic rubato feel. But the bridge I completely transform into a pulsing moody composition all its own. To me, it has a bit of a Nick Drake feel to it. The final A-section sneaks in some nods to Luiz Bonfa, whose album “Solo in Rio 1959” is one of my all time favorite solo guitar albums.
Shane Parish, 1/29/2024, Athens, GA
