Reed Turchi, the Brooklyn-based musician, producer, and poet announces his new record World On Fire, a collection of vintage blues and spiritual tunes Turchi picked up along the way on his circuitous route through the music industry. Some of the songs are traditional with no documented authors, others performed by so many artists with so many variations over the years that it’s impossible to pin down any definitive version, but on World On Fire, Turchi makes each his own with striking honesty and intimacy. World On Fire is set to be released on May 30.
After four years of upheaval—including illness, divorce, and a cross-country move—Reed Turchi found himself right back where he started, playing the same songs he learned when he first fell in love with the North Mississippi Hill Country blues as a teenager. This time, though, something felt different. “I’ve known how to play these tunes for a long time now,” Turchi explains, “but I didn’t know how to sing them until I lived them. I had to find my voice.”
Recorded live over two nights without any edits or overdubs, Turchi’s captivating new album is the raw and haunting testimony of a man who’s been to the brink and back, as stark and eerie as it is enthralling and hypnotic. Turchi produced the record himself, stripping each track down to its barest essentials with only acoustic guitars, upright bass, and drums to accompany his evocative slide playing and aching vocals.
Today Glide is excited to offer a premiere of the standout track “Lay My Burden Down” as well as a live video of the band performing it in the studio. Turchi exudes a natural soulful sound as he sings this timeless gospel hymn. Backing him is a tight band that infuses the song with a healthy amount of folk, bluegrass, and blues to give it a smooth Americana sound. Anchoring the track is Turchi’s own slide playing on his acoustic guitar, which imparts the emotion of being beaten but not broken and staying resilient. For Turchi, the tune and the album as a whole marks an exciting new chapter in a career already filled with them.
Turchi describes how he drew from his personal experience to capture the mood of the song:
“Lay My Burden Down” asks the question “Watchya gonna do when the world’s on fire?,” which are the lyrics this album was born from. That question is also what’s at the core of why this album came to exist: Faced with life-threatening illness and major relationship upheaval, this song — this music — is what I turned to as my own personal worlds were set aflame. Fire is maybe the most essential thing between humans and the great beyond. It’s what we stare into, it’s what we uniquely learned to utilize, and it’s what, of course, eventually comes for us all. When I sing this song I try to acknowledge all of that — why it matters to embrace humanity, but also to recognize the ultimate smallness of our existence. I’m going home. Lay my burden down. This song is as elemental as could be, and for now I’m just doing my best to carry the torch (in this case, from Fred McDowell’s slide-playing style) to whoever and whatever comes next.
Watch the video and read our conversation with Reed Turchi below…
What makes this project different from your previous work?
Two things stand out. One, I’ve never recorded an album with an all-acoustic ensemble. The instrumentation of this album is two acoustic guitars, vocal, upright bass, and a kick/snare/hi-hat drum kit often played with brushes. This is an entirely new sound for me, and the space that opened up based on this instrumentation became the sonic signature of the album.
Two, speaking of sound and space, another difference with this album is the recording approach: We only used one microphone per musician (that’s right, the album was recorded with only four mics) — and, for example, that means that for me (playing acoustic guitar and singing), I had to be extremely conscious of what sound I was focusing on — is this a moment for a guitar lick, or a vocal? Should I sing the last part of the lyric, or let the slide play it instead?
The stripped-down nature of the recording technique and the instrumentation allowed us to explore spaces and sounds that are entirely new in my recording career.
How much of your own experiences informed this music?
All of it. There’s not a song on here that I don’t think connects to my own life, and that I don’t reflect on while I’m singing it. That’s the beauty of “folk” or “traditional” music, or whatever you want to call it — the underlying song and lyrics may be old, but every compelling performance or recording or reinterpretation makes it new again in some way, or shines a new light on a way to approach it. I remember reading once, at the moment I forget where, about someone who argued that there is only one song, and each thing we think of as “songs” just tap into that one song. I don’t know if I’m 100% a believer in that, but I’m most of the way there.
What drew you to the songs on this album?
These are the first songs I ever learned to play on guitar — in fact, they’re the reason I learned to play guitar. I grew up taking piano lessons (my mom bribed me with cookies n’ cream milkshakes from The Hop every wednesday afternoon en route to Mrs. Ramig’s house), and after I turned to blues and boogie woogie piano, I discovered (or was led to) slide guitar. As you may have noticed, it’s tough playing slide-guitar licks on piano, since the notes are all so neatly divided. So, I made the leap, and leapt into this world of North Mississippi Blues, in particular — Fred McDowell, RL Burnside, and contemporaries like Luther Dickinson.
Obviously, your music is steeped in the blues. Talk about some of the influences that have inspired you on your journey.
I’m not sure what’s “influence” and what’s lived experience at this point. Probably it’s all the same. Fred McDowell is dead, so I learned from him via recordings (Bill Ferris’s, to be exact), but I also spent my time in North Mississippi — at one point trading informal guitar lessons for shoveling out beagle shit behind concrete dog runs. I think in life we learn a lot, and then we forget most of it — so these songs, which have been with me from the beginning, have stayed with me because they resonate. The challenges of my last few years (life-threatening health emergencies, major relationship upheaval, etc), have only reinforced how essential they are to my experience as a human in this world.
How was the production approach inspired by Big Joe Turner?
Big Joe Turner looms large in my physio-spiritual headspace because my parents fell in love listening to him, and he sang at my parents wedding (even as the piano rental company wheeled out the upright…). Musically speaking, it’s his “The Bosses” album with Count Basie that links closest to WORLD ON FIRE. Big Joe Turner, whose voice will forever be larger and louder than my own, knew just how to tell a story, and how to take old, familiar lyrics and link them to something relevant in the moment of recording or performing. Sonically speaking, “The Bosses” album is beautifully recorded — plenty of room for the voice, and the piano, rhythm, and drums all complimentary.
How do you think this music has helped you heal and persevere through your own struggles?
I think in any challenging moments or transitions in life people turn to things they know, and things that are essential in representing how they feel about themselves and about the world. For me, these songs, and this style of playing guitar (acoustic, slide, open tuning) are that — and I’m honored that Seth Barden (bass), Eric Burns (guitar), and Joseph Yount (drums) had the personal compassion and musical sensibilities to come together and record such a transcendent album. I say transcendent because this recording is greater than the sum of its parts — I recognize that you can only get lucky so many times in life, and this is certainly one of those times. We set out to make a record, and we came back with more than we bargained for. That’s the magic of what the recording studio can be, at its best.
Can we expect a tour and if so, what will the touring lineup look like?
You sure can — we’ll be on the West Coast in late April (Phoenix, LA, SF, etc), and then we’ll be back at it touring the East Coast and Southeast in the fall. We’re all based in Brooklyn, and have a big New York release show on May 30th.
The touring lineup is exactly the same as the recording lineup — same instrumentation, same personnel, with a blend of acoustic and electric to make for a fun and varied set. We’ve tried out these new tunes a few times, and I’m excited to hear how they develop in a live setting, and also how we manage to preserve the delicate, acoustic nature of them, even in bigger, rock-oriented rooms.
