Wovenhand - Biography
If it were your job (and what a lot of fun it would be if it were) to come up with new names for music genres, the one you could conceivably choose for Denver, Colorado three-piece Wovenhand might be this: spiritual folk-rock noir. The band started in 2001 as a side project of David Eugene Edwards, the former lead singer of brooding alt country band, 16 Horsepower. When he was a teenager, Edwards played in a punk band, Restless Middle Class, later moving to the Boston area and playing in 80s indie bands Blood Flower and The Denver Gentleman. He moved back to Colorado in 1992 where he started 16 Horsepower with his friend, bassist Pascal Humbert.
The two bands co-existed until 2005, when 16 Horsepower disbanded and Wovenhand became Edwards’ primary focus. Although he inherited the punk rock gene, Edwards also had an appreciation for traditional folk and world music, which has fed generously into his current aesthetic. In addition, he spent his early childhood traveling around Colorado as the grandson of a Nazarene preacher; and if his songwriting is anything to go by, his grandfather’s sermons made quite an impression on him. With deep spiritual undercurrents and a profoundly personal Christianity, Edwards expresses his inner conflict and emotional turmoil through an intensely somber and almost relentlessly bleak musical filter. The result is a powerful hybrid of indie rock and traditional folk that spans time and incorporates influences from across the globe: Appalachian, mediejval, Middle Eastern, Native American, Celtic and Eastern European.
The debut, Wovenhand (2003 Glitterhouse Records), was recorded and released while 16 Horsepower was on a break. It’s a vehicle for Edwards’ obsessions, both musical and lyrical. The mid-paced opener, “The Good Hand,” is an uncharacteristically sparkly pop song with lush mandolin underlying heavy bass rhythms. “Arrow Head,” with its tribal rhythms and clanging banjo, showcase the obsession Edwards has for percussion (he claims to play guitar more like a drummer than a guitarist). An unarguable highlight is a doom-laden cover of the Bill Withers’ classic “Ain’t No Sunshine.” Blush Music (2003 Sounds Familyre) followed, and was a work commissioned by Belgian dance troupe, Ultima Vez for a production called Blush. Comprised largely of extended and re-recorded material from the first record, it’s a more atmospheric work, laden with ominous drones, ambient nature sounds and slide guitars. In places it could be the soundtrack to an obscure Western (without a happy ending, of course).
Consider the Birds (2004 Sounds Familyre) carries on with solemn, spiritual themes set against a background of shamanic drums, tribal bells, eerie whistles and hypnotic banjo loops. Mosaic (2006 Sounds Familyre) is more stripped down in instrumentation, but no less feverish in overall effect, and it marks the first time the group (now a three-piece with 16 Horsepower bassist, Pascal Humbert and drummer Ordy Garrison) recorded as a genuine band collaboration. The next full-length album was Ten Stones, on which Edwards’ vocals have become richer than ever. His trademark croon has been appropriately compared to Nick Cave but actually recalls Scott Walker at times as well.
The title of the next release, The Threshing Floor (2010 Sounds Familyre) suggests something pagan and violent å lå the death of John Barleycorn. It’s a furious record from the fevered Middle Eastern flavor of the title track to the thundering rocker, “Denver City.” There are softer moments, too, like the sublime “His Rest,” with soft cello and acoustic guitar — a gorgeous modern hymn.
Apparently the name Wovenhand was coined to signify the hand woven, or clasped in prayer. Also woven are the disparate threads of pan-cultural traditional music, which lend a context and a thoroughly human element to all the fire, brimstone and angst. “Christ is sorrow,” Edwards once said in an interview. And as a songwriter, Edwards concerns himself with nothing less than the struggle of the individual soul and the fate of all humanity. It’s not just through the lyrics, but also through insistently somber tones, dark sonic textures and pounding rhythms that he distils his manifesto into a distinctive new genre of dark-themed modern, traditional, indie music (spiritual folk-rock noir). Edwards is a man with a serious message, and he conveys it with artfulness and grace. Whether he’s a crooner, preacher, seeker or poet -- if it were my job to come up with title for David Eugene Edwards, perhaps it would something like current day mystic.
