Are you ready to hear a song that has every chance of being the best thing you’ve hear all week? Gold Dust (aka Stephen Pierce) have a new album out called ‘The Late Great Gold Dust’ which is available, by the way, via Bandcamp. This single, ‘Proof of Life‘ is a multi-layered marvel of a song – and features Stephen as a Captain Manyhands playing everything on it. There’s a great story as to how it came to sound quite like this as Stephen explains: “I was watching some live footage of Pentangle from 1972, from a live TV broadcast. When they played the trad. Scottish tune “Willy o’Winsbury,” Bert Jansch put down his guitar and picked up a dulcimer. The impact that his chiming drone made when he joined the rest of the band was something that moved me to do a quick search and order a modestly-priced dulcimer of my own. I did some reading about the tuning and the generalities about how they’re played and—while waiting for it to show up in the mail—figured I’d write a song for it. That’s this: ‘Proof of Life.’ While I’ve still not written a song ON dulcimer, I’m happy to have written one FOR dulcimer: It encouraged me to approach the writing process a little differently than I otherwise would’ve. I’m grateful for that.”
It’s truly great with hints of the band Charlemagne, and, maybe a little Cosmic Rough Riders. What it is, all the ways through, is memorable and excellent. Hit Play!
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Sure, I could climb high in a tree, or go to Skye on my holiday. I could be happy. All I really want is the excitement of first hearing The Byrds, the amazement of decades of Dylan’s music, or the thrill of seeing a band like The Long Ryders live. That’s not much to ask, is it?
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