When asked about the stigma
that seems to be attached with the word “Christian”
in today’s world especially to a rock and roll band, he
says, “Yeah, I get that a lot, especially here in
Colorado. People in the music scene are very wary. Even though
they like the music they are still wary of admitting that they
like the music or something and because of that fact that no
one wants to be thought of as a Christian because it’s
not cool. It’s not the cool thing to be in the world's
eyes for the most part, but I can’t do anything about it
because that’s what I am. You know it’s not even
necessarily a choice really. I mean there is a choice involved,
in a sense, but I believe that God took hold of me rather than
me taking hold of him. I mean there is that exchange but it
starts with him rather than me.”
This might explain the
hesitancy of some and the attraction of others, and a possible
root in the break up of the band. Pascal and Jean-Yves clearly
don’t share David’s fervor, and they make that
clear when you talk to them. But that fervor gives the depth to
David’s lyrics. His draws these Samuel Becket–like
landscapes — places we don’t necessarily want to go
— and fills them with dark testimony we’d often
rather not hear. He speaks of warning and promise often
lingering on subtleties that are forgotten or overlooked. I
compared his musical landscapes to Cormac McCarthy’s
descriptions of the Southwest and he said, “I think that
is sort of what I try to do with my music in a way. I take
things that are very simple and kind of blow them up, and I
think that is what he does as well, to try to get everything
out of it that you can and to learn something from it and be
affected by it rather that just passing it by.
I think that sometimes if
you look at the words themselves, they don’t have the
same impact, but when you’re in the song ... I mean, the
words are really simple, they seem to be obvious or whatever,
but inside the music they’re magnified in a way. Music
itself, and language itself, we take them for granted ... but
because they’re so important, and so powerful and ... so
misused and so discarded, I like to try to put the importance
back on both of them.
For me the great thing about
music is that it speaks to me visually in every other way, just
as much as it does to someone who’s listening to it who
doesn’t play it. When I hear it, it’s really
visual. My music has always been, to me, like a little movie.
Each song I sing is like a little film. When I perform one of
the songs, I don’t mean to say I’m an actor or
something like that, because I don’t feel that way, but
it’s just ... each song takes me in ... and
dictates to me how I’m suppose to act ... and tells me
what to do. It’s good in the sense that it’s not a
chore for me to play these songs every night ... because they
say something different to me all the time and it changes as I
change ... I don’t know.
It is very much like putting
together a puzzle — that’s kind of how I look at
it. It’s like just the music and the lyrics themselves I
put it together, like I just have little pieces here and there
that come to me or that I have had for years, or that just came
to me yesterday, or whatever. I put them together and I
don’t try to make a story and I don’t have a
certain end really, and it just sort of develops itself from
all these pieces I have collected. I put them together and a
lot of times the song will make no sense to me at all till
maybe a year later I’ll be playing the song onstage, and
all of a sudden it will make sense to me or will speak to a
situation that I am in right then. Sometimes I feel a little
bit like I should have more of a direction, especially
lyrically, I should have more direction, this is what I should
be saying, but it just doesn’t work that way for me, I
just can’t do it that way.”
When the band heads home,
Jean-Yves and Pascal are off to their horses and ranch work,
things they love to do. This is the life they have earned, and
you have to admire them for it. It is so rare that people live
where and how they always dreamed of. Just as 16
Horsepower’s music draws so richly on the American West,
Pascal and Jean-Yves inhabit literally inhabit that landscape.
So it is understandable when as Jean Yves says, “To be
honest, I think that Pascal and I especially have put a little
bit the foot on the brake.”
Yet for David when he heads
home, it’s to more music. When I ask him about this he
puts it very bluntly: “16 Horsepower took a break for a
year. Everybody else kind of has other means of surviving
financially, I don’t. So, when we took that break, I had
to keep working so I just kept writing songs.” Simple as
that sounds, I suspect there’s a lot more to it.
Let’s face it as mutual collaboration as 16 Horsepower
was, David’s the singer and when they perform all eyes
naturally fall on him. He’s the one hanging on the edge
of the precipice, the one delivering the message. You
can’t inhabit that space without living dangerously;
it’s just easier to move forward than to try and slow
down. It was during the break 16 Horsepower took that Woven
Hand, David’s solo project, started. So David goes home
with 16 Horsepower only to turn around again to tour in Europe
with the Woven Hand project.
Stalker Trish Goff by Richard Kern
team work Sam Bean (Iron & Wine) interviews Joey Burns
(Calexico) on music and their collaborative album
It was the music from the
album also entitled Woven Hand that led to his meeting Belgian
choreographer Wim Vandekeybus. Vandekeybus heard the music and
wanted to use it for his new piece entitled Blush. David
remembers, “I was playing a show with Woven Hand in
Brussels and the choreographer came to the show. He had heard
about it and was looking for music for Blush. He had bought the
CD and he was already rehearsing to a couple of the songs off
the first CD, the Woven Hand CD, so when he came and talked to
me and said he wanted me to do the music for it and if
I’d be willing to do so. I didn’t have any idea who
he was or what he did or anything so he gave me videos of
everything he had done in the past ... I watched all that, and
he met me at the end of the tour. I was just really impressed
with it. It was something I wasn’t really expecting. I
felt ... we worked in similar ways. So, yeah, I decided to do
it, and I just reworked the songs that they were already
working on to the timing they needed to make them longer or
shorter, take some lyrics off, etc. Then he just let me write
music on my own, and he placed it where he thought
fit.”
Vandekeybus had worked with
musicians like David Byrne and Marc Ribot in the past, but he
wanted someone without dance experience for his new project
— for Blush he was seeking a voice.
The piece was performed in
both Europe and North America with David and his musicians
performing the music live. Rather than only playing the music
from the pit, David and the other musicians often interacted
with the dancers onstage, which took some getting used to.
“Everybody in the band has a moment where they do
something with the dancers. At the beginning I start out just
kind of walking through on the stage playing the banjo in and
out of the dancers.” With David’s propensity for
getting lost in his music and without the aid of his
“wranglers” from 16 Horsepower, David had to force
himself to stay present as much as possible. “Yeah, we
definitely have to watch,” he says. “That was
something that was difficult for me cause when I usually play
I’m usually so far away from where I actually am,
physically. I can get lost fairly easily, but we’re used
to that live, as a band, and that’s kind of normal. But
with this I can’t do that. There are certain moments
where I can let go. Most of the time I have to pay attention, I
have to watch the dancers;
I have a sheet that I have to follow at
certain points just for the timing, so it’s very
different. But at the same time it’s making me a better
player, a better musician.”
When I met David in his home
I had to keep reminding myself that this guy is a rock star.
Everything about him seems modest—his home, his manner,
and so on. He’s very polite, well spoken, and hospitable,
although he can seem reserved—even a little suspicious.
He doesn’t seem to like interviews, he doesn’t like
posing for pictures, and yet there is nothing arrogant about
that at all. For a person who puts so much of himself out
onstage it seems only fair that he should reserve some of
himself when not performing.
Still, little clues slowly
leak out the longer you spend time with him. His taut, wiry
body reveals an underlying intensity that is all too apparent
onstage. There’s a sense of defiance, a quality necessary
for anyone who wishes to survive in the world of rock and roll.
It’s obvious David is
not slowing down. His recent Woven Hand show at the Knitting
Factory proved quite the opposite. David seemed emancipated.
His feverish performance backed by only a drummer proved David
more than capable of going it alone. No, David is certainly not
slowing down. One only hopes he never does. It’s just a
question of where he wants to go, and where he’s going to
take us.
Wim Vandekeybus
Born in 1963, actor, director,
choreographer and video maker. In 1987 he created his own
working structure, Ultima Vez ('the last time'). It has since
grown into a thriving and internationally recognized company
based in Brussels. Ultima Vez is characterized by its radically
physical, energetic and exuberant dance style, which is fueled
by Wim Vandekeybus's boundless imagination and laced with the
themes of life, death, nature, the subconscious and instinct.
Since his first production, music has been a very important and
inherent factor in all his performances, yielding
collaborations with Peter Vermeersch, Thierry De Mey, David
Byrne, Marc Ribot, Eavesdropper and David Eugene Edwards. In
2005 the 55 minute film version of Blush was released with the
original score by David Eugene Edwards. Vandekeybus is at
present working on the screenplay of his first feature film
with the writer Peter Verhelst.
art of view Portfolio Currated by Michael Clifton with texts
by Alissa Bennett
uncover Overview on Colorado based musician David Eugene
Edwards
tribute A style tribute to the Black Panthers
Coming to theaters in early 2006, Searching
For The Wrong-Eyed Jesus (Andrew Douglas), with soundtrack
including 16 Horsepower and David Eugene Edwards.
16 Horsepower releases:
Live DVD
(Glitterhouse Records, 2005)
Contains great live performances and rare
off-stage footage to give a real sense of what 16 Horsepower
stood for as a live band. Including 2002 concert at ‘Le
Cirque Royal’ — Belgium, the 1996 Rockpalast show
in Germany, a rehearsal in David's hometown Denver, an
impression of the last US-tour in 2004 ... and finally a unique
souvenir of what would turn out to be their last concert ever,
July 17th 2004, Antwerp, Belgium. Nico Leunen, who participated
in this filming explains: “In 2004 I got the chance to
accompany 16HP on a US tour. So I filmed a bit — without
a certain goal in my head. In the summer of that same year I
asked Erwin, a friend & photographer, if he felt like
trying out filming a little when 16HP was in Europe. I had
started to think about making a documentary about them.
“I don’t need a show.” I said “just an
image of them getting on stage”. He replied “As
we’re here right now, we might as well film a couple of
songs”. So that's how we ended up filming what would turn
out to be the last Sixteen Horsepower concert ever ... We do
apologize for the sound-quality of this souvenir, as we never
intended to use this footage, but we really wanted to share
those very last moments with you” Nico Leunen
16HP DVD
(Smooch Records / Glitterhouse Records,
2005)
Olden
(Jetset Records /Glitterhouse Records /
Volkoren, 2003)
Folklore
(Jetset Records / Glitterhouse Records,
2002)
Hoarse
(Checkered Past / Glitterhouse Records,
2001)
Secret South
(Razor & Tie / Glitterhouse
Records 2000)
Low Estate
(A&M Records 1998)
+ Low Estate Nouvelle Version
(Includes collaboration with Noir
Désir)
Sackcloth ‘n’ Ashes
(A&M Records, 1996)
pass the buck Collaborative presentation of Andros Wekua by
Rita Ackermann
Wovenhand releases:
Consider The Birds
(Soundsfamilyre / Glitterhouse Records,
2004)
Blush (original score)
(Glitterhouse Records, 2003)
Blush Music
(Soundsfamilyre / Glitterhouse Records /
Fargo, 2003)
Woven Hand
(Soundsfamilyre / Glitterhouse Records /
Fargo, 2002)
Lilium releases:
Short Stories
(Twist & Shout / Glitterhouse Records)
Transmission Of All The Good-Byes
(Smooch Records / Glitterhouse Records, )
For Early David Eugene Edwards, in
insider art Exclusive interview with Berlin based artist
Jonathan Meese by Felix Ensslin and Sue de Beer
connection A conversation between film makers Gaspar
Noé (Irreversible) and Hubert Sauper (Darwin’s
Nightmare)
perspective Interview with Imitation of Christ’s Tara
Subkoff, followed by fashion images by Richard Kern
Andros Wekua inspired collages by Rita
Ackermann
