During the pandemic, some people baked, others indulged in TV binge-watching. Eric Johnson emerged with two albums – The Book of Making and Yesterday Meets Today—featuring nine songs on each LP. The Grammy-winning, multi-genre guitarist took inventory—both emotionally and musically—delving into the many unfinished tracks, outtakes, demos, and sonic ideas in his archive to compile the 18 songs that ultimately ended up on the albums.
The Book Of Knots has had the pleasure of collaborating with some of the worlds most talented musicians, including Tom Waits, Mike Patton, David Thomas, Blixa Bargeld, Jon Langford, and Carla Bozulich. Founding members Matthias Bossi (Skeleton Key, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum), Joel Hamilton (producer/engineer for BlakRoc, Pretty Lights), Carla Kihlstedt (Tin Hat Trio, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum) and Tony Maimone (Pere Ubu, Frank Black, Bob Mould) forge a sound both epic and intimate, empowering and devastating. Cinematic, symphonic landscapes give way to crumbling acoustic chamber ballads. Broken guitars and beautifully warped orchestras describe the ungraceful demise of boats, blast furnaces and bloated industries. Accounts of the failed adventures of tragic would-be heroes are given voice in the band's two previous critically-acclaimed releases. Their newest album serves as the final chapter in the bands "By Sea, By Land, By Air" trilogy.
This NY-based studio collective consists of Matthias Bossi (Skeleton Key, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum), Joel Hamilton (Sparklehorse, Elvis Costello), Tony Maimone (Pere Ubu, Frank Black, They Might Be Giants), and Carla Kihlstedt (Tom Waits, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum). With guests Carla Bozulich, Megan Reilly, Jon Langford, David Thomas, Mike Watt, and Tom Waits, their debut bills itself as "a tribute to the American Rust Belt". They paint a haunting modern-day portrait of cities like Cleveland, Youngstown, Toledo, and Detroit; places that once were the definition of American motivation, progress, and industry, but now are home to ruined monuments of a bygone era. The sonic landscape is painted with scraping, swirling guitars, soaring string arrangements, rupturing bass, and plate-shattering drums.