GRAVEL SPRINGS
Deep in the hills of San Anselmo, in an octagonal room three stories above the trees (supported by stilts), under the view of Mount Diablo and while birds of prey flew by the windows…over a five-year period of time, two friends who would become known as Gravel Springs recorded Crows Nest Meditations. Every December, for over a decade, Luther Dickinson and David Katznelson would gather to plot musical adventures for the following year. Luther, the legendary guitar player known for his southern slide and picking, David, the road weary music industry vet who released Luther’s first record as producer, Otha Turner’s Everybody Hollerin’ Goat. Ever since Luther’s Dad Jim Dickinson introduced both of them, they have been thick as thieves.
Ambient music had the ear of these two during one of the December plots. The music of William Basinski, Johan Johansson, The Deep Listening band and aspects of The Spacemen 3. What would it be like to take Luther’s guitar playing and surround it with alien sounds…sounds of wombs and spaceways…. drones that link the human to nature? They set up a makeshift primitive studio in the octagonal room a bridge away from David’s house…the Crow’s Nest…plugging in amps and pedals and guitars…using a 4-track digital recorded Luther’s band The North Mississippi All Stars used for live recordings…and began making feedback loops and experimenting with layers of sound. That first recording session was a primitive one, junior sound sculpturists in full-on laboratory mode, channeling 60s Nonesuch electronic sounds, with Luther’s slide guitar providing the compass to humanity; Luther was battling a cold that weekend and picked a melody on his acoustic as the sun set, eyes closed, leaving his congested body behind. Music was, as it always is, the healer,
Five years of random days navigating the air molecules of the crow’s nest with acoustic strumming’s, bowings and pluckings and electronic vibrations waving. A career of experimentation given more life by Phil Lesh and his calling to Luther to be a part of his Terrapin Station band, back in the days that Terrapin Station was a community center for Marin heads and Lesh would often play with carefully curated pick up groups…bringing Luther more often to the Bay, allowing more time for two friends to have a day of exploration. Five years that expanded through the Covid lock-down. Five years with the career of Luther’s engineering prowess beginning primitively and ending with an expert knowledge of the digital tools of the day, editing and even mixing the crazed tracks they as Gravel Springs had measured out and whisked together. What began as two friends fucking around, sending noises through the hills of San Anselmo and Fairfax, led to The Crow’s Nest Mediations, a record of friendship, family (Luther’s father Jim makes a heroic appearance from the netherworld, and David’s kids and dog also appear, with his wife Barbara designing the package), and expanding the idea of possibility through ambient drones, dark wonderings and heroic mistakes.
The Crow’s Nest Meditations is the new evolutionary amoeba of Americana music, the translation the aliens would make when listening to the Voyager’s Golden Record, the surviving mutation of the last century of musical forms, designed as a singular trip through history and the future.
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