HARP ALL MADE OF GOLD by Klyd Watkins with family and friends

Klyd Watkins had spent most of the seventies making experimental poetry. Rather than writing, he had worked on audio tape, with his wife Linda and other like minded poets. With Peter and Patricia (Bebe) Harleman, they created the Poetry Out Loud movement and released ten lps. Though Poetry Out Loud set out to address an audience as poets, over the years it would be the experimental music audience and vinyl collectors who would continue to listen to Poetry Out Loud. (volcanic tongue’s website—http://www.volcanictongue.com/, there search for Poetry Out Loud—contains information on Poetry Out Loud.)

Klyd says, “Poetry Out Loud had insisted on improvisation alone—no use of text, and scant use of musical instruments,

other than percussion. But it came to pass the muse said it was time for me to record from text and use more instruments. Loath to ignore her, I took the text of my poem JACK CHAPTER ONE and got in the vocal booth and declaimed to wonderful tracks by Steve and Rick and Bob and Terry in my earphones . The first cut was effective enough that it got Bob interested in the project, and from the moment Bob wanted to produce it and pulled Brodie in too, there was no way it could be anything but a wonderful recording.” Bob Watkins was gutarist with The Screamin’

Cheetan Wheelies. And he is Klyd’s son. Brodie Hutcheson was sound man for the Wheelies (and before that for Gov’t Mule). Together they produced the independent Wheelie releases Lamanamanumi and Ten Miles High.

Tracks for HARP ALL MADE OF GOLD were developed according to the content, with a couple stripped down to Poetry Out Loud austerity. Two of the unused Wheelie tracks are here. Other tracks draw on a wonderful pool of Nashville rock and roll talent. Where does experimental poetry and Southern rock with a streak of blue grass overlap? At HARP ALL MADE OF GOLD. If it’s a previously unprojected overlap, you’d be surprised how many folk want to hear it.

Average Customer Review: