LEWIS & CLARKE
Announces Details of new Album "Blasts of Holy Birth" * Streams Full Record * Comes to Brooklyn on Saturday
"Lewis & Clarke has carved out its own niche thanks to the lush arrangements of its debut, 2005's "Bare Bones and Branches." - Billboard Magazine
"A whisper of an album, lovely without being precious, moody without being beleaguering." - No Depression
"Lou Rogai, who records under the name Lewis & Clarke, artfully mixes his multi-layered vocal tracks with finger-picked acoustic guitar, Hammond organ, Rhodes piano, and lap steel." - Acoustic Guitar World
"A gifted newcomer" - Magnet
"An intelligent revelatory light into the heart of life and love" - Detroit Metro Times
The songs of Lewis & Clarke are medicinal, meditative, and trance-inducing. They wind along lengthy lines of chamber folk, full of bows and bells, aphorisms and dreamy dreams. Both literally and figuratively, Blasts of Holy Birth (out May 10th on La Société Expéditionnaire) is about being born and re-born.
Conducting the folds of nylon-string guitar, harp, keyboard, horns, strings, and drums, is Lou Rogai, the voice and vision, with arms of friends draped in the name Lewis & Clarke.
Rogai is a pastoralist, a rat-race expatriate, an old-soul musician who chose to live more deliberately with his family under the eaves of mountain trees in Pennsylvania’s Delaware Water Gap. It is a community distant to the big city’s pace, but close enough for gigs and recording sessions with his city-folk colleagues. Among them are Russell Higbee (harp, keys) of Man Man and Eve Miller of Rachel’s (cello) who, too, embrace the exploration of sinewy eastern melody and unaffected compassion called Lewis & Clarke.
In Delaware Water Gap, one can tune in to vibrations that only exist in certain areas. It is here that Rogai, with his wife, took to nest in an antiquated dwelling within earshot of an historic jazz landmark: tuned in, turned on, and just far enough away from the rattle of the rest of the world.
Blasts of Holy Birth was written not with the usual pen-in-hand love-lost scribbles that song scribes commonly sing; here are celebrations, hand-in-hand, of life’s travails and joys!
"A pure music experience that whispers half-remembered truths to the soul, as Rogai easily soars above so-called "acid folk"/"freak folk" conventions by exhibiting amazing clarity and a sense of spaciousness in his songs... striking in its authenticity and ability to convey empathy and even inspiration. It is gentle and wild, an abundant feast of simple fare that nourishes the heart." - The Morning Call
Lewis & Clarke songs are long and unhurried life lessons, believed and still unveiling truths, to himself and his son, who was months away from LIFE: Day One while this album was being composed. The only piece here not written by Rogai, “Comfort Inn”, is by his friend, Aaron Ross, the CA mountain dweller and singer of Hella. Ross was awaiting the birth of his daughter during same time that Rogai expected his son, and so it only fit that they share in each other’s song.
Over the last few years, Lewis & Clarke have toured and performed with Isobel Campbell (Belle & Sebastian), Blur, Robyn Hitchcock, Joan of Arc, Okkervil River, Mi & L'au, The Black Swans and other contemporaries.
And as is the case with good artists and smart adults, it is through big change and artistic redemption that we re-learn who we really are. And as the meat of life is inseparable from the weight of song, Lewis & Clarke’s heavy-duty beauty, Blasts of Holy Birth, is born.
See Lewis & Clarke live this Saturday @ Union Pool in Brooklyn!
(484 Union Ave @ Meeker)
Lewis & Clarke will perform as a duo this Saturday at Union Pool in Brooklyn, Lou Rogai on guitar/vocals and Eve Miller on cello. Missing from the fold will be regular contributor Russell Higbee, as he finishes up the new MAN MAN record in Chicago. In Rogai's words, both Higbee and Miller are key contributors to Blasts of Holy Birth, along with Dave Ulrich. "The exciting part about having such illustrious colleagues is that you never know which line-up of Lewis & Clarke you are going to witness". We can only assure you, the different incarnations are equally beautiful and elastic! Can we get a witness?
Stream "Blasts" HERE
"Blasts of Holy Birth" Tracklist:
1. Secret Of The Golden Flower
2. Blasts Of Holy Birth
3. Comfort Inn
4. Before It Breaks You
5. Black Doves
6. Crimson Carpets
7. We Think We Have Eyes
8. Be The Air We Breathe
For more information, visit:
www.lewisandclarkemusic.com
www.la-soc.com
www.myspace.com/lewisclarke
www.myspace.com/lasoc
