Recorded during the Secret South tour in 2001. It features one
complete 90 minute show showing the band in their natural habitat the
stage. They played songs from their acclaimed A&M-debut
Sackcloth`n´Ashes, their follow-up Low Estate and their Glitterhouse
debut Secret South. One of our best, if not our best live show ever
says the band themselves. Comes in a multifold Digipak.
Here’s what the UK press said about Secret South: This is one secret
that begs to be shared.(Q. ****)
Influenced by folk’s more whacked out, gloomy, voodoo-visioned
forebears, 16 Horsepower continue to narrate their haunting
campfire-punk yarns without a modern-day care in the world. Instead,
David Eugene and his melancholia-drenched posse of LA dreamers prefer
the dark grandeur that only comes with mournful swathes of countryfied
guitar, of heavy-hearted violins, pianos and accordions, of lonesome
banjo-picking and Ennio Morricone tautness. Add a dash of Dylan-esque
roots-philosophy and the result is a forlorn dustbowl saloon bar where
Nick Cave woefully sinks bourbons with the Gun Club only moments after
a loved one’s funeral parade. There’s scant evidence of the year 2000
within the desolate pleas of ‘Burning Bush’, the ghostly magnificence
of ‘Praying Arm Lane’ or the superlative rendition of trad classic
‘Wayfaring Stranger’ but 16 Horsepower aren’t about such misleading
concerns. For them, the objective was to make a fucking brilliant
album where the mood is king, the delivery is queen and studied modern
coolness is a jester that’s one misplaced quip away from being the
lion’s breakfast. And, of course, they’ve succeeded. Sometimes, you
just have to accept that there’s, ahem, nothing as pure as folk. (NME.
9/19)
Lead singer andguitarist David Eugene Edwards sings with the passion
of a preacher man pleading for mercy in front of some other worldly
force. Their twisted form of blues has never sounded so awesome.
Absolutely essential hearing. (Western Mail)
these 11 tracks are all darkly mysterious, thrillingly unsettling and
so fiercely intense as to be almost frightening. There are somehow
echoes of Huston´s `Wise Blood´ in the way this viscous, spooked mix
of Southern blues and Appalachian folk and bluegrass is spread so
vividly through lowering rock dynamics and when Edwards holler in
anguish about stones crying out, tongues confessing and the earth
awaiting (`Praying Arm Lane´), well, he makes Nick cave sound like
Shirley Temple.

Tracks

16 Horsepower Live March 2001 (disc one)

1. American Wheeze
2. I Seen What I Saw
3. Wayfaring Stranger
4. Cinder Alley
5. Strawfoot
6. Clogger
7. Harm’s Way
8. Haw
9. Poormouth
10. Praying Arm Lane

16 Horsepower Live March 2001 (disc two)

1. Burning Bush
2. Splinters
3. Silver Saddle
4. Phyllis Ruth
5. 24 Hrs.
6. The Partisan
7. Coal Black Horses
8. Dead Run

leaked

Woven Hand: Tiny Desk Concert


NPR.org, January 7, 2009 - Seven years ago, I was pulled under a large festival tent in the middle of Illinois, with a friend telling me, "You have to see this." The extraordinarily hot farmland sun had gone down, cooling the tent, but as David Eugene Edwards took the stage with his then-new project Woven Hand, a different kind of heat rose — the sort of thing that brimmed out of the Great Awakening.

It's a rare opportunity to come to an artist with a fresh ear, so I sat in the front row that night with mouth agape, taking in Edwards' fiery Americana. I'd later pillage his extensive catalog with both 16 Horsepower and Woven Hand, but for the moment, he stared into the darkness as if something was waiting just outside, stomping it away with his heavy boot keeping the beat.

While on tour with a full band, Edwards stopped by the NPR Music offices to perform a solo set at Bob Boilen's desk with his mandolin-banjo hybrid, a unique instrument made in 1887 by the Pullman Palace Car Company. On the video captured here, Edwards book-ended his performance with songs from his two latest releases: "Whistling Girl" from Mosaic and "Kingdom of Ice" from Ten Stones. But it was his cover of Bob Dylan's "As I Went Out One Morning" that really caught my ear. Edwards turned the rumbling country-rock song about "Tom Paine" into a meditative plea, retaining its call to common sense.