America: The Rough Cut

by Allen Lowe

supported by

	/

Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Purchasable with gift card

$9 USD or more
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Enjoy the art!

Includes unlimited streaming of America: The Rough Cut via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

ships out within 4 days

Purchasable with gift card

$12.99 USD or more

1.	Damnation 04:11	buy track
2.	Cheatin' My Heart 04:47	buy track
3.	Poor Mourner's Serenade 05:49	buy track
4.	Cold Was the Night, Dark Was the Ground 05:09	buy track
5.	Hymn for Her 04:29	buy track
6.	It's the End 04:05	buy track
7.	Full Moon Moan 04:54	buy track
8.	Blues in Shreds 06:02	buy track
9.	Declension 04:44	buy track
10.	Blues for Unprepared Guitarist 04:10	buy track
11.	Old Country Rag 04:06	buy track
12.	Metallic Taste 04:46	buy track
13.	At a Baptist Meeting 08:35	buy track

about

Allen Lowe writes: America: The Rough Cut is my statement not only on American music and American song, but also my commentary on the way American musicians of all styles handle that old-time music and those old song forms. Nearly everything I listen to that is supposed to reflect an alliance with older musical styles sounds denatured, bland, overly worshipful and musically conformist. Everybody loves the blues (just ask Nicholas Payton) but few people, in my opinion, truly feel it at gut level. The old things – not just the blues, but gospel music and pre-blues shouts and language, plus hillbilly/minstrel song and medicine show irony – reflect a disinterest in the polite trappings of (primarily but not only white) society, an implicit rejection of basic tonal, sonic, and harmonic rules. “Noise” has, over a long time, come to be an accepted creative strategy for many musicians, with diminishing results. What is missing is….funk? Maybe, but not in that slick, drum machine, ‘80s way (the 1950s and 1960s, not to mention the 1920s, are another matter). What is missing is the funk from Funky Butt Hall of New Orleans, the sweat of the churchgoing gyrations of white and black Holy Rollers and the eccentric movements and sounds of attendants of the Pentecostal Church; not to mention the religious screams of white and black folk in the throes of post-rational bursts of tongues and trembling worship; or the ecstatic eternal protest of the Church of God in Christ. Many people pay great lip service to the “tradition” but don’t know the half of it. I live in a musical world (mostly in my head) in which the sacred and the profane are two sides of the same coin, and in which the blues is more effect than cause. As for most revivalists and folkies, well, they tend to sound (like most but not only jazz musicians) overqualified; there are some very satisfying exceptions to these rules, and I have tried to reflect that in America: The Rough Cut.

So here we have gospel formulations (“Damned Nation”), pre-blues ruminations (“Full Moon Moan,” something sounding like blues, but which stays, with old-time insistence, on the one chord), a little bit of Hank Williams-directed honky tonk (“Cheatin’ My Heart”), Heavy Metal (“Metallic Taste” and “Blues in Shreds,” the latter our anti-tribute to Earl Hines), “Poor Mourner’s Serenade” (hail, hail Jelly Roll Morton, “if you don’t rock….”), “Hymn for Her” (to my savior, and wife, Helen); a little bit of my own statement on the fallibility of free jazz, dedicated to a certain guitar player who shall remain nameless (“Blues for Unprepared Guitarist”) in which, overdubbed on guitar, I make a personal appeal for a MacArthur, while daily sitting by the door, waiting for that envelope. There’s also “Old Country Rag,” an evocation of the old-time hillbilly rag; “Eh Death,” a variation on an old fear; “It’s the End,” a bit of autobiography; “Cold was the Night, Dark Was the Ground” (and I was the first, back in the 1990s, to reference Blind Willie Johnson in a jazz way; here is my update); and “At a Baptist Meeting,” recorded in concert some years ago with the late, great, grievously missed Roswell Rudd.

credits

released April 28, 2023

Allen Lowe and the Constant Sorrow Orchestra:
Allen Lowe, tenor and alto sax, guitar (4,10)
Ray Suhy, guitar and banjo
Alex Tremblay, bass
Kresten Osgood, drums
Roswell Rudd, trombone (13)
Ray Anderson, trombone (13)
Randy Sandke, trumpet (13)
Lewis Porter, piano (13)
Jake Millett, electronic drums (13)
Jessie Hautala, bass (13)
Darius Jones, alto (13)

All compositions by Allen Lowe BMI

license

about

Allen Lowe New Haven, Connecticut

Saxophonist/guitarist/composer/music historian Allen Lowe spans the history of jazz in his music in a way that few have, intertwining the blues, early jazz, bebop, and the avant-garde. A prolific composer who was incorporating American roots music into his jazz decades before it was hip, he has led project bands featuring a broad array of jazz greats. ... more

contact / help

Contact Allen Lowe

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like Allen Lowe, you may also like:

...and then there's this
by Artifacts

supported by 10 fans who also own “America: The Rough Cut”

3 great musicians! Rightly praised in Downbeat magazine January 2022 pschmid1
go to album
Cool With That
by East Axis

supported by 9 fans who also own “America: The Rough Cut”
go to album
The Off-Off Broadway Guide to Synergism
by Tyshawn Sorey

supported by 8 fans who also own “America: The Rough Cut”

i was at 2 of these shows and they were a highlight of the year for me, so glad to see this music released -- the interplay is incredible and the interpretations are so fresh. the recording quality is excellent as well. e123
go to album
Mind Blossom
by Fr1th

featured on Bandcamp Radio Apr 19, 2024
go to album
Ronnie April's Positive Energy - Volume 1
by Ronnie April's Positive Energy Volume 1

featured on Bandcamp Radio Apr 16, 2024
go to album
Dawn Is A Melody
by Finn Rees

featured on Bandcamp Radio Apr 16, 2024
go to album
Amaryllis
by Mary Halvorson

supported by 7 fans who also own “America: The Rough Cut”

adventurous music with a distinct concept and expert rendition and interplay with the band members.Edgy and warm in equipoise . sagov
go to album