Bare Songs 1 by Banning Eyre
It took the Covid lockdowns for gadabout and polymath Banning Eyre to commit his original guitar stylings to an album released under his own name. Though he has authored journalism and books about African music, as well as produced radio content about the same (most notably via involvement with NPR's “Afropop Worldwide”), he is also a performer. The inability to travel during the pandemic left Eyre time to draw on his African guitar influences, as well as his interests in rock, classical, jazz, flamenco and American folk for Bare Songs 1. The result is a 14-track collection that integrates Eyre's many influences into an artistic statement that could, with the right marketing be presented as contemporary instrumental/new age. Bare Songs 1 hints at the porous membranes separating genres. With some of his tonalities resembling clawhammer banjo, it's easy to imagine Eyre insinuating himself into a bluegrass context. Elsewhere, one could hear Eyre's place in especially imaginative fusion jazz. And with Songs' finale featuring finger picking on ukelele, an instrument usually heard strummed, might a collaboration with a maestro of that axe, like Jake Shimabukuro, be in the offing? Eyre's pandemic era musings yielded at least another album's worth of material (Snogs 2?), so it's anyone's guess as to what dots he will connect until his next solo long-player drops.
Stream or download Bare Songs 1 at Amazon here.
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