SOUL OF THE JANUARY HILLS

Fearless singer-songwriter-multi-instrumentalist Tim Eriksen follows yet another adventurous path on his new Soul of the January Hills CD, stripping the arrangements down to his own solo voice on 14 songs recorded in a single take. For more than 20 years Eriksen has chosen to explore musical roads less traveled, yet they've led him everywhere from CBGB to the Academy Awards, from live performances broadcast in the US, Poland, England and beyond, and into the high esteem of record producers, fellow musicians, critics and an international audience.

Eriksen is an accomplished instrumentalist on guitar, banjo, and fiddle, as he displayed on his two previous solo albums on Appleseed (Tim Eriksen and Every Sound Below), which were both recorded live in the studio with no sidemen, overdubs, or edits, but his new Soul of the January Hills CD takes this solo approach one brave step farther. Inspired by his location - the 2008 Jaroslaw Festival in southeastern Poland, where he taught a week-long Sacred Harp school climaxed by an unamplified solo concert broadcast by Poland's national radio from a candlelit Baroque church - and the magic of his surroundings, Eriksen took a digital recorder into a tower on a wall surrounding Jaroslaw's Benedictine Abbey, sang 14 traditional American songs in one take with no accompaniment at all, and walked out about an hour later with the January Hills recordings.

The CD encompasses a new arrangement of the familiar "Amazing Grace," as well as several other hymns ("Son of God," "Wrestling Jacob"), dark accounts of incest and murder ("Queen Jane," "Two Babes"), the pleasures and pain of love ("Lass of Glenshee," "A Soldier Traveling from the North," and "John Randolph," probably the oldest song here, dating back to the 15th Century), and even optimism in harsh times ("Hope," "Better Days Coming"). Perhaps most timeless and, sadly, most relevant is Tim's a cappella rendition of "I Wish the Wars Were All Over," an original based on an 18th Century ballad.

The stark intensity of Eriksen's passionate, unvarnished baritone voice reflects his conviction that unamplified, unaccompanied ballad singing "can be incredibly beautiful, powerful stuff."