Colin McGrath Information

Like a Model T Ford hand crank, a Seth Thomas clock, and a pair of wingtip shoes all displayed on a Formica table in a dusty, small town pawn shop-the seemingly divergent styles on Colins sophomore album, Yellow Brick Man, convey one meticulous but playfully ramshackle spirit. Appalachian mountain music, Tin Pan Alley, psychedelic, and ambient electronic mingle together on a bed of 1960s folk. The follow-up to his NPR-touted debut is darker and more experimental with a conceptual sin-to-salvation narrative. Colin and his longtime collaborator William Berlind consciously wanted to make an album that furthered the innovative textures on Colins debut Window Seat (2007) while also capturing an eerie dreaminess. We knew we were looking for a certain kind of palette of sounds, Colin explains. We went to the Music Inn on Bleeker Street and bought a Bouzouki which is 8-stringed mandolin-like instrument that has a kind of old world, ancient feeling. We rented a vibraphone for a day and brought it to our studio to record. We recorded an electric wah-wah violin, a tack piano, a cigar box guitar, a cheap old Casiotone keyboard, a banjo and a chromatic harmonica. We were looking for timbres that we couldnt get by playing conventional instruments in conventional ways so we just fiddled around with these sounds and layered them until we got exactly what we were looking for. Songwriter Colin McGrath discovered his voice while busking his way through Europe as a teenager. Though he studied classical music in college, McGrath was taken in by Irish music and bluegrass, and then fell in love with folk at a festival in Texas. His folk songs are steeped in storytelling, with characters and images drawn from old Americana. But his new, self-released album Window Seatbrings him back to his native city of New York. Here, McGrath performs with his band and tells host John Schaefer about the travels which inspire his music including a moment during a recent trip to Ecuador which launched the song Anochece.