Cellar Sessions: Zak Trojano - 99 Ways August 8th, 2018 City Winery New York

Zak Trojano sits down for a One On One Session at City Winery New York on August 8th, 2018. Watch the full session here: https://youtu.be/EpbWgiVuttY For more info visit: http://www.zaktrojano.com Audio & Video by: Ehud Lazin

Setlist:

Wolf Trees

99 Ways

Kid's Got Heart

Zak Trojano is a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, a finger-style guitar player, a fly-fisherman, and a beer drinker. He watches more than he talks, the guy at the end of the bar nursing a drink while the afternoon light angles in, letting the conversation pile up around him like snowfall. He grew up in New Hampshire, outside of town in a cabin built by his parents.

His father was a drummer who held down a regular country gig, and nights after work he would loosen his tie and show his son the finer points of Ginger Baker and Elvin Jones. In New Hampshire they drove around in trucks, and Prine and Dylan cassettes showed up in most of those trucks. Zak made Eagle Scout, got his knots down. Then it was college and out, wandering the country from the desert Southwest to Great Plains until he ran out of money, washing windows to work up the bus fare home. After a while it seemed like he ought to write some songs, and he did: heavy songs with a light touch; an AM radio throwback voice and an intricate finger-style technique framed by a drummer’s rhythm.

Since then, Trojano has found a variety of outlets for his diverse musical interests: co-founding the much acclaimed folk trio Rusty Belle in 2006, appearing on records by Chris Smither (Time Stands Still, Still on the Levee), Jeffrey Foucault (Shoot the Moon Right Between the Eyes), Peter Mulvey (Letters From a Flying Machine) and Chris Pureka (How I Learned to See in the Dark). All while touring and releasing his solo records (Two Lines, Yesterday’s Sun, I Took Molly to See the Butterflies).

In recent years, Trojano’s solo work has found the spotlight with discerning listeners everywhere. Stage by stage, in clubs, music halls, bars, and coffeehouses across the country, he has honed a live show that keeps audiences glued to the stage, like a rare conversation with an old friend who doesn’t usually say much, but plays a mean guitar.

Wolf Trees is a record with live performance at its heart. The songs were written as movements in a larger piece, with textures and themes resurfacing in longer arcs to bind the whole together. A wolf tree is a stoic figure, a passed over remnant of a distant, wilder world, where there was more space between things.

The third album from Zak Trojano, Wolf Trees is a move towards high definition from a songwriter whose pictorial lyrics are lauded by many for their vivid and cinematic imagery. While recently gaining wider recognition from audiences across the country, Trojano has been known for some time by the best in the business as a writer who, “…lights up the darkness and gives it definition.” (Chris Smither). From the very first driving notes of “Kid’s Got Heart” and early scene setting lines (the poets take it on the chin for the bells that ring right through you), Trojano draws the curtain, with able hands, on a production that provides shape and a deeper motion to the screenshot temperament of life in the modern world.

On Wolf Trees, Trojano has woven nine songs into an album that’s very form calls attention to the thin rapidity of modern life. Like admiring the forest view from atop a white pine cell tower, or losing yourself in the colors of a flat-screen sunset, Wolf Trees dares us to hold tight to current beauty while we remember a different time.