Wednesday Knudsen & Willie Lane

Back about a year ago, Wednesday Knudsen (The Pigeons, Weeping Bong Band) and Willie Lane (The Golden Road, Elkhorn) released a duo set on Black Dirt Studios in-house label Natch. The set was a highlight from both artists, combining Lane’s slippery guitar blues with Knudesen’s ability to mold atmospherics from electric guitar, alto saxophone, and flute. Their dynamic is symbiotic, each pushing the record further into dark corners of spectral loneliness, fusing folk and psychedelic jazz into something a bit more protean than either. The pieces hang on the air in cold humidity — wounded, weary, but engrossing in a way that’s hard to shake. The pieces feel instantly canonical to something older than the players. Its a record that has hold of the central root of psychedelic sprawl.

The record is the first (of hopefully many) on the new Feeding Tube sub-label Drowned Lands, headed up by Black Dirt’s Jason Meagher. The Natch series alone provides a good amount of fodder, and I’m holding out that the Garcia Peoples and Hans Chew LP is next, but this is as good a place as any to start. The players have deep roots in the Hudson/Pioneer Valley psych scene, and this is too good a set to simply hold sway over the digital realm. With a proper LP entry as mark 001 in the Drowned Lands catalog, this is both a statement of purpose and a deserved pressing of a fantastic document of two top artists at work.




Support the artist. Buy it HERE.