Tim Eriksen- Every Sound Below- By John Cutliffe

It was only a few weeks back that I reviewed the Great High Mountain Tour and mentioned the superb Tim Eriksen as being a huge part of that cast. So I was very pleased when my mailbox presented me with his latest solo album Every Sound Below a few days ago.

Tim is one of these people who works within so many styles of music and rarely sits still that he is hard to define. His early years had him in various band with his influences ranging from hard core punk to metal to Gilbert and Sullivan. In the 80s music had taken hold of his life and he studied music composition with David Reck as well as traveled extensively and again experimented with musical styles including Sharp Note which he loves to this day.

Jumping forward to today and in the process missing out on one of the most interesting musical journeys of our time, (you can find the whole timeline on Tim's site HERE) we find Tim suddenly in the limelight having appeared on the Cold Mountain soundtrack as well as in the movie itself. So his latest solo album is getting some well deserved recognition.

Running a site like JigTime which loves to find more and more connections between the roots music of America and our own dear Celtic sounds, I was blown away by the opening track The Stars Their Match which had that magical quality where if you closed your eyes you could either be in the back room of a smoky pub in Donegal or in the parlor of a mountain cabin in North Carolina. Tim has a guttural earthy voice that is authentic to the bone and drags you into his musical world with this acapella intro.

It isn't all without musical instrumentation though. It is however a true solo album with Tim playing guitar, fiddle and banjo.

There are 14 tracks in all on this CD and all are, as Tim puts it “partly old” Old or new they resonate with all human life in the stories that he tells. John Colby's Hymn tells of a preacher from Vermont for example and The Southern Girl's Reply gives us a revealing view of the Civil War.

This is a fine and important CD and one that will be a regular in my stereo. The CD is released on the wonderful Appleseed label which releases some of the most important albums in folk music today. You will see many more previews and reviews of music from them in the coming years. I predict both Tim and Appleseed will be around for a lot more years to come.

More on Appleseed can be found HERE