Foundation of the House

 

Have you heard Athens (Georgia) based musician Shane Parish yet? A self-taught musician, Parish is known for his finger-style acoustic guitar work, as well as fronting the electric prog-rock band, Ahleuchatistas. I saw Parish doing his solo acoustic stuff at Big Ears 2023 and saw Ahleuchatistas at Big Ears last March, and enjoyed both sets.

The reason I bring him up is I just discovered his May 2024 LP,  Repertoire. The album is just Parish on acoustic guitar playing songs you'd never guess could be transcribed to a solo six-string. Specifically, I'm talking jazz classics Lonely Woman by Ornette Coleman and Out to Lunch by Eric Dolphy, Serenade to a Cuckoo by Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Journey in Satchidanada by Alice Coltrane, and  Pithecanthropus Erectus, Reincarnation of a Lovebird, and Better Get Hit in Your Soul by Charles Mingus. He even takes on Sun Ra's Lights on a Satellite. All on solo acoustic guitar.

But Repertoire isn't just an album of jazz covers. Parish also performs Avril 14th by Aphex Twin, Cohesion by D Boon and the Minutemen, Captain Beefheart's One Red Rose That I Mean and Europe Endless by Kraftwerk. And if all that's not eclectic enough for you, there's also renditions of It’s You I Like by Mr. Fred Rogers and Totem Ancestor by John Cage. To coin that old commercial, if you can find another album of jazz covers that also includes John Cage and Mr. Rogers, buy it!

But the real charm of the album is that unless you're intimately familiar with the songs, you probably won't recognize them. Parish's finger-picking makes the tracks sound like a collection of Appalachian folk songs. On a purely experiential level, it's a relaxing, pleasant trip, made all the richer upon recognition of the source material and the cleverness of Parish's transcriptions.

You can stream (and buy) Repertoire on Bandcamp. While you're at it, check out his 2022 Liverpool, an inventive collection of compositions based on old sea shanties, although, again, it doesn't sound anything like traditional sea shanties on listening.