Fiery Gizzard [LP]

Joseph Decosimo - Fiery Gizzard [LP]

Old-time and traditional music stay exciting for their contrasts. Exacting instrumentation honed through mentorships and late-night jams at fiddleras conventions tangles with a community-sourced inventiveness that influences variants and new sounds. Joseph Decosimo is a master of this genre for this very reason, blending deep technique with an openness and curiosity that keep his music crackling with life. A marvelous fiddlera (No Depression) and banjo player who braids exultation and venerationa (INDY Week) into his music, on his third solo album Fiery Gizzard Decosimo gathers a close-knit ensemble of friends from his musical career to infuse his interpretations of fiddle and banjo pieces with a contagious communal joy._x000B__x000B_As an artist working with traditional music from the South and Appalachia, Decosimo chooses songs based not only on historical significance and lineage but also his own sensory approach. For Fiery Gizzard, his ear was tuned to otherworldly tones and mystery, sourcing from field recordings such as Virginia fiddler Luther Davishypnotic version of "Shady Grove" while amping up the musicas psychedelic potential. On the middle Tennessee banjo composition Flowery Girls,a a VHS of bluesman Abner Jay inspired Decosimo to rig up a pickup inside a fretless banjo and play it through a tube amp to capture some of Jayas edge and funkiness. But to round out the sound and keep it kinetic meant galvanizing a genre-eschewing crew to jam out and not in a spaced-out droolya kind of way, he laughs, but as a sort of responsive conversation.a_x000B__x000B_Decosimo has always been a community-minded artist. He began playing as a seventh grader in Tennessee, fostering relationships with older players at jams and in homes, a learning mode natural to his inquisitive nature and desire for musical connection. A folklorist by intuition, he later became one by profession, studying with old-time legend Clyde Davenport, teaching in East Tennessee State Universityas renowned bluegrass program, and receiving his PhD at the University of North Carolina with a dissertation titled Catching the a˜Wild Notea: Listening, Learning, and Connoisseurship in Old-Time Music.a In North Carolina, Decosimo kicked about in the verdant environment of Durham and Chapel Hillas folk and indie scenes, collaborating with artists including Alice Gerrard, Hiss Golden Messenger, and Jake Xerxes Fussell. This community has influenced his own music, including his sublime and strangely hearteninga (Bandcamp Daily) 2022 release While You Were Slumbering and Beehive Cathedral, Decosimoas 2024 Appalachian mountain music treasurya (New Commute) trio album with Luke Richardson and Cleek Schrey for Dear Life Records._x000B__x000B_Continuing on this path, Fiery Gizzard is home base for a loose outfit of mostly Tarheel-based musicians from within and beyond traditional music. Inspired by a tour with fiddler Stephanie Coleman (Nora Brown), guitarist Jay Hammond, and synth builder and multi-instrumentalist Matthew OaConnell, Decosimo assembled studiomates based on close friendships and comfort. Coleman, OaConnell, and Hammond contribute to Fiery Gizzard, along with bassist and producer Andy Stack (Helado Negro, Wye Oak), horn player Kelly Pratt (Beirut, David Byrne), Mipso and Fustas Libby Rodenbough, Joseph OaConnell (Elephant Micah), and trad/experimental artist Cleek Schrey. Decosimoas fiddle and banjo work is virtuosic, intricate and simple simultaneously, a testament to his many years of study. On some tracks, his playing or lovely, plain-hearted singing is the centerpiece, such as on his interpretations of Texan street preacher Washington Phillips' 1929 recording "I Had a Good Father and Mother" or the Eastern Kentucky fiddle barn-burner Glory in the Meetinghouse,a famously played by Luther Strong for Alan Lomax. But thereas also a trusting open-door policy, like where Southern Appalachian tune Ida Reda relaxes into Colemanas sweet, confident fiddling and Hammondas loping guitar. _x000B__x000B_As a bandleader, Decosimoas confidence and enthusiasm for the music reveal the heart of traditional music and how it can come to life through community. Fiery Gizzard is Joseph Decosimo as a powerful champion of traditional music a sponge who soaks up as much as he squeezes out, a responsive artist who makes his genre accessible, and a magnet who can bring musicians of all sorts into his orbit with his same passion.