“Fingerstyle Guitar” (Used 16 times)

Israeli-born fingerstyle guitarist Yair Yona started out as a bassist, playing stints in several London bands including Human Beings. But when he discovered the music of Bert Jansch, Yair followed that musical path to the "Takoma school" and beyond. Yair Yona toured the US in 2011, including a performance at the Hopscotch Festival, and a WFMU session on Irene Trudel's show alongside fellow steel-stringer Glenn Jones:

World Behind Curtains, Yair Yona's new album, is out today on Strange Attractors Audio House. The label is also home to releases by Glenn Jones and his band Cul de Sac, and a great range of post-rock and acid-psych. Strange Attractors offer a great selection of promotional mp3s here on the FMA, including three selections from Glenn Jones.

Yair's former label, Anova Music, also shares a great selection on the FMA. Check out our Earth Day feature on Turkish-born free jazz saxpohonist Albert Beger, and keep an eye on Yair's new free jazz label, OutNow Recordings.

While his music harkens back to analog times, Yair Yona is very much in the digital realm. He did a great YouTube video series, "A Day in Tel Aviv," soundtracked by his 2010 album Remember and previously featured on this here blog. And speaking of blogs, Yair runs a great site covering his wide-ranging musical interests over at Small Town Romance.

Baby Gramps made his first WFMU appearances on Nicholas Hill's Live Music Faucet in the 1990s. I became an instant fan of his Popeye-growl, shameless wordplay, and deft picking on an ancient National Steel guitar. Gramps specialized in jazz rags and reinvented campfire favorites, threw in the occasional 1930s novelty tune, and added dollops of what was known in the minstrel trade as "pure hokum." In May 1998 Gramps was touring a folk circuit that took him to NYC. For reasons that now escape memory, his schedule precluded an appearance on Nick's show (which perhaps was off the air by then), so I offered airtime. (Gramps returned again the following year.) At the time Gramps had no interest in recording or releasing albums; he just wanted to entertain live audiences. He was a natural, graceful presence, full of fun and surprises. There was something magical (and ageless) about Baby Gramps. He was a living cartoon. I recall his visits with great fondness.

Baby Gramps has a new album, Outertainment, in collaboration with Peter Stampfel (co-founder of the Holy Modal Rounders)

This Valentine’s Day evening, a handful of our world’s most soulful guitarists will gather at ISSUE Project Room to pay loving tribute to the great Jack Rose, who passed away in December at the much too young age of 38. The lineup, comprised of those friends whom he inspired and who inspired him, includes the Black Twig Pickers (the group featured on Jack’s most recent album), Pelt (with whom Jack played on and off again from ’95 until his death), Steve Gunn, Tom Carter, Marcia Bassett, Michael Chapman, and Glenn Jones.

I have compiled a mix from the ever-astounding well of riches that is the FMA, featuring musicians set to take part in Sunday’s celebration of Jack Rose’s incredible music. The mix traverses equal territory in the lands of drone and Takoma-style virtuosity, both worlds in which Jack established a voice of deeply-felt originality and undeniable importance.  The last work in the mix features Mr. Rose himself, performing live with Peter Walker -- a long-established member of a short lineage of finger-picking legends whose ranks Jack has undoubtedly joined.

It's been very difficult for me to even think about my Free Music Archive year-end list. I mean, we haven't even been around for a year yet, and there are already three times as many mp3s as when we launched in April. My lists keep expanding, while at the same time I start realizing how much I haven't had a chance to hear yet, and I start to go a little bit insane!

It is worthwhile though to take a moment and reflect as time speeds on by, and I thought I'd start with this mix and just focus...We'll begin with some meditative instrumental tracks, then move on to sparse folk with psychedelic fingerpicking and spacious, hypnotic sounds that sooth the mind and body.

Of all the new pieces of vinyl to show up in the WFMU "new bin" lately, my favorite may be Harte Records' reissue of Peter Walker's 1966 Vanguard LP Rainy Day Raga. It's a record that is so purely conceived and executed, so total unto itself, that I find it hard to select cuts to play from it. It always feels as if it should be played all at once so that you can become immersed in it, like taking a long, warm audio bath instead of the quick MP3 showers we're always taking these days.

Rainy Day Raga is so perfect that its creator, after releasing one more gem two years later, simply stopped recording. In the past couple of years, though, Peter Walker has become visibly active again, and today's post is a souvenir of that still-ongoing resurgence: an exclusive improvisation from his appearance on Irene Trudel's program in June of last year. Its informal title bears witness to a touching relationship between two folk legends.