Reed Turchi is a musician, poet, and producer from Swannanoa, North Carolina, now living in Brooklyn. He has won a GRAMMY Award and received an EMMY Nomination, and his poetry has appeared in POETRY Magazine, The American Poetry Review, and Narrative Magazine, among others.
Turchi learned to play slide-guitar while living in North Mississippi, and spent formative years there and in Memphis, where he gradually developed his “kudzu” sound and style while simultaneously making field recordings for his Devil Down Records label. Turchi now, along with his own creative work, produces at his studio Second Take Sound in Manhattan, and co-edits The Swannanoa Review, a literary journal.
Turchi is currently touring behind his new live album Time is a Flat Circle, which was captured at the legendary Chicago blues joint Rosa’s Lounge. Today, Glide is excited to offer an exclusive premiere of the album’s first single and opener “Alabaster,” a sprawling and easygoing work of soulful blues and R&B that slithers along and lingers like the heavy humidity on a summer Southern night. If the title sounds familiar, that’s because it is a longtime favorite of The Wood Brothers, and in this case, it gets a wholly original treatment. Turchi’s gritty vocals dance playfully over the jam as it flows and gradually builds, with bursts of bassy goodness and Turchi’s guitar solo slicing through. While Turchi has covered a whole lot of musical terrain during his long career, this tune captures him fully in his element as he leans into his love of blues music and guitar.
Turchi describes the inspiration and process behind the tune:
“Alabaster” has become a highlight of our set in recent years, and this particular recording showcases the reasons why. The song has a great narrative arc (love gone wrong! a small-town girl moving to the big city and trying to escape the small-town men of her past!), and as we’ve developed as a quartet in the last few years of touring we have continued to build and stretch out the opening (a call-and-response duet from Seth Barden on bass and Eric Burns on guitar), and then the guitar solo section, where Eric and I trade solos and licks. “Alabaster” is, of course, a song written by The Wood Brothers (from their album Kingdom In My Mind), and it’s a full circle moment as their mother, Renate Wood, once taught at the writing program (at Warren Wilson College) where I received my MFA. Like so many things in life, the simplicity of the song leads to so many opportunities for expression and expansion, and this is a song I look forward to on the setlist every night.
LISTEN:
