BIOGRAPHY
Wovenhand’s TEN STONES to be released on Sounds Familyre, September 2008 –
In the words of Robert Browning, Wovenhand heralds "another greater, wilder
country" on TEN STONES, the new album by musician David Eugene Edwards (also
frontman of acclaimed band 16 Horsepower).
Wovenhand grazes in yet stranger
pastures on its fifth release with Sounds Familyre. Co-produced by Daniel Smith of
Danielson, TEN STONES was recorded at the label’s New Jerusalem Recreation
Room in Clarksboro, NJ, as well as at Dust Bowl Studios in Glade Park, CO. Songs
were further finessed by guest artist Emil Nikolaisen’s (Serena Maneesh) driving
guitar and co-engineering, the rumbling vibrations of 16 Horsepower bandmate Pascal
Humbert on electric and double bass, the incisive drumming of Ordy Garrison, and
the soulful guitar of Peter Van Laerhoven. On “His Loyal Love,” Elin Smith, also of
Danielson, adds guest vocals to Humbert’s melody. These sophisticated musicians —
many of whom share co-writing credit with Edwards—freshly illumine his
considerable vocal range and masterful song craft.
Like a welcome draught from a bottomless well, Edwards sings ten untamed and
mercy-drenched songs for thirsty listeners on TEN STONES. From the jarring folk of“White Knuckle Grip”, to the eerie bossa nova of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Quiet
Nights of Quiet Stars”, to the fiery foot-stomper “Not One Stone”, the album forms a
song-cycle that is singular in its breadth and eclecticism. Flanked by the haunting
strains of the bandoneón and the drones of the double bass, Edwards’ lyrical
inversions stitch symbols into a tapestry of peaceable and hellish imagery—horsetails,
honeybees, and bird wings meet flaming battles and barbed wire to proclaim sin’s
devastation and the sweetness of redemption. The music of Wovenhand is utterly
unique, dizzying those who encounter it, with turnings and lashings of shadow and
light.
The grandson of a Nazarene preacher, Edwards dropped out of a Colorado high
school to play music. He is known for an immense personal humility—a contrast to
his stark lyrics about the wretched state of humanity, although he is the first to tell
you that he is singing to himself. This paradoxical nature inspires such formidable
listeners as Flemish choreographer and filmmaker Wim Vandekeybus, who based the
score of the dance production “Blush” on the 2003 Wovenhand album Blush Music
(Sounds Familyre). Blush Music was preceded by 2002's self-titled album and marked
the first of two collaborations with Wim Vandekeybus. The second work with
Vandekeybus, Puur, (Glitterhouse Records) was released in 2006 and followed the
2004 Consider the Birds (Sounds Familyre) and the 2006 Mosaic (Sounds Familyre).
TEN STONES renders a beautiful encounter with healing, suffering, and sorrow. “Not
one stone/ atop another will stand,” sings Edwards as creation lies motionless,
paralyzed in the canyon of time. Then, as all great artists await a time when the
pinnacle of their craft will be caught up in greater glory, he sings: “This weary
melody ends/ The host of heaven descends/ Down beneath this bleeding ground/
Behold the lamb.”
QUOTES
“Lunging wheat-n-chaff first into a buckling confessional, David Eugene Edwards is a straw-haired Pentecostal prophet with a knack for spinning elegant, atmospheric Southern damnation. As Woven Hand, Edwards has yet to miss a beat…as though concocted with quicksand, new sounds escape from each composition over subsequent listens-- little last gasps from a toy piano show up here, a last-minute snare hit there. The works are pocked with these shadowed corners: the dark, oaken sounds of barn-raising banjo, upright bass, and guitar as well as cymbal crashes, cattail taps, possessed howls, and the faint flapping of lark wings…[it] rings ominously with bells of paradise." ~
Pitchfork 2004
“Although the songs are as airy as a tithe barn in most of their arrangements…there’s a suggestion of willowy smoke wafting up and beyond the rafters here, in this controlled, considered, out-of-time place that inhabits DEE's ongoing fantasy dreamscape.” ~ Drowned in Sound 2006
“…he travels deep into the thicket of human depravity and rails with an intensity more indebted to the Great Awakening than any modern musical touchstone. Spicing paraphrased passages from the King James Bible with sawdust frontier parlance, Edwards fashions archaic constructions similar to Will Oldham's. But where Oldham sings about death and redemption (on I See A Darkness and elsewhere), Edwards exhumes the corpse. The best of his songs are so ripe that you can smell their sulfur and creosote." ~
Dusted 2005
“One critic described the music of Wovenhand as ‘Bauhaus meets Billy Graham.’ While that description does ring true, I have another one. Wovenhand, the `solo' music of 16 Horsepower frontman David Eugene Edwards, is like Nick Cave and Johnny Cash in a shootout in Deadwood…” ~ Treble, 2006
“Edwards has settled into the empty spaces he has created in his arrangements, haunting them with unsettlingly quiet intensity. Unlike the galloping Pentecostal groans of 16 Horsepower—a band that has stretched its creative canvas across nearly all strains of American folk music, even making recent inroads into Eastern European traditions—Woven Hand is all Edwards, a pure distillation of his ethos as an artist. And though he has never hesitated to dip his tongue in the dark streams of his soul, he seems to illustrate his personal failings with even more devastating precision when working alone." ~
Paste, 2004
