There is one thing recording old songs decades, sometimes centuries, after they originally came into existence, and calling them mixing the old and the new. There is another quite literally following in the footsteps of The Carter Family and adapting old songs for your own purpose. Armed with a collection of old folk songs, one of which is over 1000 years old, and several of which hail from the British Isles, Adam Hill set about giving them new chords, new lyrics, and a progressive acoustic sensibility that at times is pushing the boundaries of what listeners are comfortable hearing. Calling his music “new-timey”, ‘Old Paint’ is Adam’s fourth studio album in such a style, featuring a collection of twelve tracks that is quite unlike anything I’ve heard in some time.
The album drifts between vocally-grounded and instrumental tracks, but although all the instrumentals run in a similar vein we are never allowed to become bored. ‘Soldier’s Joy’ is played largely on the mandolin with a very similar supporting line on the fiddle, while additional lines from the banjo and acoustic guitar sometimes sync in with the others before running off on their journey. ‘Fortune’ starts more subdued, with a strong focus on rhythm and an almost classically-enhanced virtuosic dual, while ‘Goodbye Old Paint’ has more of a bluesy tone, harmonica leading us through a dreamy waltz. The vocally-grounded tracks also vary between driving rhythms (‘The Cuckoo’, peppered with a recorder that sounds like birdsong), four-on-the-floor honky tonkin’ jaunts (‘Cindy’), bluesy percussive offerings (‘Bentonville Blues’, a song about slave labor created with actual nickels and dimes), and some downright weird, abstract instrumental work. ‘Three Hundred Miles’ turned his guitar into a dulcimer by tuning into to an open chord, attaching paperclips, and hitting it with chopsticks. If that isn’t a progressive way of making music, then I don’t know what is.
That isn’t of course to say that this album is full of uncomfortable sounds or abuse against string band instruments. ‘All The Pretty Horses’ is haunting, hypnotic and somewhat dissonant (particularly as it goes for the solo), but its folk roots are familiar enough to bring us back into a place of calm. ‘Down By The Riverside’ is also a cute little ditty that includes a mandolin-played reference to ‘When The Saints Go Marching In’, while ‘Rye Whiskey’ is a rough-and-ready, acoustic waltz that reminds us of troubadors gone by. Sometimes the simple, very live production and messy playing of ‘Burleson County Farewell’ sounds stark against some of the other, lusher tracks, but for the most part this is an album that thrives in its “realness”. It is a journey down a path long-trodden but freshly laid, decorated laboriously and accompanied by Adam’s drawn-out, raw, earthy vocals that intertwine so carefully that we’re not sure what is old and what is new. That’s kind of the point.
As we gaze at the front cover of the album, old, rusting paint peeling from a warehouse outside wall, we are struck by how beauty and art can be found in the harshest of places. These rudimentary folk tunes have found themselves new clothes and new fans thanks to Adam’s repurposing of them, and as a result he is writing himself into history in a rather creative way. He doesn’t just cover songs… he makes them his own by the very literal definition of the term. More artists could stand to learn something from him.
