Joseph Decosimo stopped by Live & Local last week, following the release of his new album “Fiery Gizzard.”
An acclaimed multi-instrumentalist and a central figure in the Triangle music scene, Joseph Decosimo is a master of traditional folk and bluegrass – and he pulls out all the stops for “Fiery Gizzard,” whose ten songs date back as much as a hundred years.
“I grew up in southeast Tennessee near Chattanooga, (and) that’s always (been) sort of my musical home,” Decosimo says. “The album itself takes its name from a gorge that’s up on the Cumberland Plateau…it’s such a weird name, and it’s kind of beautiful.”
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Released by Dear Life Records, “Fiery Gizzard” is officially Decosimo’s first solo album in three years, but it wasn’t a solo effort: for the recording session, Decosimo brought in some of his best friends – who also happen to be some of North Carolina’s best musicians.
That lineup includes a blend of traditionalists and experimentalists, from Mipso’s Libby Rodenbough to synth-builder Matthew O’Connell, with engineering duties handled by Wye Oak’s Andy Stack – a fitting mix for Decosimo, whose work has always been defined by his modern, even postmodern take on traditional genres and classic standards.
“Fiery Gizzard is the product of a three-day weekend in a Stadium Heights studio in Durham,” he says. “It was a little bit crazy: we actually had another space booked, and another engineer, and something came up and (they) couldn’t do it, and everybody had blocked off the time on the calendar. So there was this last-minute scramble, and I got a hold of Andy and I was like, ‘what do I need to do?’ He wasn’t even necessarily going to be a producer, but he stepped in, found a studio around the corner from his place and was just like, ‘let’s do this’…
“And we were in the studio and it felt so natural and good. I think sometimes studios can just be weird spaces where things don’t feel natural…(but) we just built a wave of energy. It was special.”
Listen to the album and purchase it on Bandcamp.
Decosimo is not only an acclaimed interpreter of traditional music: he’s also an expert on its history, with a Ph.D. in American studies from UNC. For the ten songs on “Fiery Gizzard,” Decosimo mined his extensive knowledge of American cultural history – and selected music that meshed perfectly with the styles of the artists who were alongside him in Stadium Heights.
“You have the things that you’re into at the moment, (and) I’m usually finding those through archival listening, or things that I’ve learned from somebody – and they’re just things I find beautiful,” he says. “And then in this case, (I said), ‘okay, we have a drummer. We have Jay (Hammond) playing electric guitar, and Steph (Coleman) is a old time fiddler. What’s going to work in that context? It’s been a process: playing live shows with these people and seeing what felt good, what let us go on a little trip together and end up somewhere we didn’t expect.”
Joseph Decosimo stopped by Live & Local to discuss “Fiery Gizzard” and play three songs: “Ida Red,” “Billy Button,” and “Glory in the Meetinghouse.” Listen:
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