Dan Leno Rec. 
Ian Kearey : Preaching To The Convertible (UK,2001)***'
Dan Leno Rec. Ian Kearey & Paul Wigens : Golden Section (UK,2005)***°
Dan Leno Rec. Ian Kearey : Wood Louse (UK,2006)***°
I was interested to hear more from Ian Keary after his splendid approach to interpret one of James Joyce poems of “Chamber Music” (if I were James Joyce I would have asked him to complete more of the cycle).
The front cover of this album almost looks too seriously as if this is about travelling preachers music (although it is funny to see someone having a drive-in preaching moment). The subtitle however is “a gallimaufry of Vaseline and spit”.
Only after explanations by Ian Keary I began to understand the picture.
"there is a phrase 'preaching to the converted', which means you're on the same wavelength as the people you're talking to, you don't need to change their minds or anything. Well, I saw the picture, and there was a preacher, and one of the cars was a convertible (soft-top)... and the title seemed to me to be a good joke... it was after that that the songs came about. I still think it's funny."
Ian told me how also the covered song 'Burned-Over District' has a connection. As Ian says “The burned-over district was the name given to rural New York State in the 1830s and 40s, because of the large number of religious revivals that swept across the area like a brush fire: the Millerites, Seventh Day Adventists and, in the 1820s, the Mormons all began then and there. And I find it fascinating - Robert Coover's novel 'The Origin of the Brunists' and Flannery O'Connor's 'Wise Blood' are the two ends of the spectrum of normality and craziness. As a kid in London I used to go to Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park on a Sunday and watch the various religious and non-religious preachers on their soapboxes, and I guess that stayed with me as a powerful image of the capacity of the human mind for redemption and fanaticism - read Norman Cohn 'The Pursuit of the Millenium' and Eric Hoffer's 'The True Believer' if you want to get what I mean!”. Besides the song submissions (the songs come over light in style) much of the guitar explorations are into blues themes, sometimes fast (picking and slide guitar), often arranged with additional plucked instruments.
“The album was put together in four days, mainly songs and tunes that had been looking for a home for a while; some I had performed with The Heaven Factory, a band that made too few recordings, but I hope to put these out some day. The 'Requiem' (for John Fahey) was composed on the spot: the first slow bit is a Cantonese Chinese song, 'Love Song Of The Grassland', and the fast bit isn't.”
Still more interesting for guitar music lovers I think is “Wood Louse” played on 12-and 6-string guitars, mostly multi-layered. I hope to find more time soon to describe it more in detail. But what I think had some real good moments even more was the guitar with drums cooperation and improvisation with Paul Wigens on drums, who clearly has something of a jazz drummer. The first and fifth track have a Bert Jansch/Pentangle feel, and even when someof the bass string recordings are overloaded or distorted, this is a certain highlight.
“'Golden Section' was the brainwave of Blue Aeroplanes frontman Gerard Langley (I've been recording with the band for 25 years now!). Paul and I had never met or played together - we improvised the music in front of an audience watching short experimental films by Harry Smith from the 1950s at a Bristol cinema. My idea was to pay homage to some of Sandy Bull's stuff and ransack my improvising mind - I don't know what Paul thought! We've never played together since, which I think is groovy.” The 'Woodlouse' guitar-based pieces which are more introspective were written mostly after Golden Section.”
