Luck in the Valley

After attending Jack Rose's memorial show at Brooklyn’s Issue Project Room, it dawned on me just how widespread his influence was. While many of his peers are evolving the tradition of the Takoma-esque guitar style, Rose was really beginning to spearhead the movement and take it to the next level by incorporating early bluegrass, droning psychedelia, pre-war blues, and virtuosic ragas. His track-record is a rather logical progression from the minimalist droning of Pelt to his intensely complex, fluid finger-picking style of recent years, but the one thing tha t tied all these threads together was his respect for the wood that lay beneath his arm. He kept things simple, and people related to that. Bec ause his recordings spoke so simply to his audience, Rose could open for Sonic Youth or Peter Walker and it would be the same experience. His final opus, Luck in the Valley, expands on his previous palette and culminates the sounds that have been gracefully flowing from his fingers for the past decade as a solo artist.

One of the small but wonderful ironies that has grown out of the increasingly digital age of sound—as the internet has both widened our awareness of music and watered it down—is that it has made way for a number of virtuoso acoustic performers to gain a wider audience. It doesn’t hurt either that indie superstars like M. Ward and Thurston Moore have helped revitalize the legacy of John Fahey, and consequently the careers of his followers, merely by mentioning his name.