Amer­i­can alt.country leg­ends Richard Buck­n­er and Edith Frost are play­ing togeth­er at the San Fran­cis­co Bath­house on Wednes­day night.

There are three kinds of Amer­i­can folk artist: those who sit, con­tent­ed, on a back porch con­tem­plat­ing Amer­i­ca’s land­scape and ways; those for whom its land­scape and ways are some­thing to stand against or move bold­ly through; and those whose Amer­i­ca is a shad­owy, impres­sion­is­tic place that moves inside of them. This [lat­ter] is the area that the som­bre-voiced Richard Buck­n­er has been explor­ing since 1984 –(Sylvie Sim­mons; The Guardian, 2004)

Richard Buck­n­er is the true ‘Amer­i­can Wan­der­er’. The Amer­i­can land­scape is the back­drop he moves against (lit­er­al­ly as well as fig­u­ra­tive­ly; he’s been trav­el­ing the North Amer­i­can con­ti­nent for two decades now) and his rela­tion­ship to it is shift­ing and ambigu­ous, a com­pli­cat­ed state of exist­ing with­in and with­out a coun­try that is impos­si­ble to escape from unscathed. He’s worked along­side and record­ed with Calex­i­co, Giant Sand, Neko Case among many oth­ers, and he’s been described by Howe Gelb as hav­ing “one of the finest voic­es on the plan­et”.

Edith Frost walks a fine line, musi­cal­ly speak­ing, between san­i­ty and utter mad­ness. Since the nineties she’s been tak­ing the con­ven­tions of intro­spect­ed folk and alt-coun­try and cram­ming it with such kitsch odd­i­ties and child­like arrange­ments as occur to her along the way. Her voice is the dusty, low pitched croon you might expect of an old-time coun­try heart­break­er, but this is a woman who also digs on Blondie and has no qualms about forc­ing the glar­ing city lights of New Wave onto the qui­et coun­try and folk roads that under­pin her music. Edith fea­tured on the Drag City super ses­sion, along­side Bill Calla­han, Bren­dan Mur­phy, Rian Mur­phy and Jim O’Rourke.

This is a show not to be missed.

RICHARD BUCKNER, EDITH FROST + GUESTS
WEDNESDAY 18th APRIL
SAN FRANCISCO BATHHOUSE

Tick­ets are $25 plus book­ing fee, avail­able from Slow Boat Records in Cuba Street.

Links:
MySpace pages for Richard Buck­n­er and Edith Frost.