In February 2019, musician/songwriter BENJAMIN LAZAR DAVIS AND LAKE
STREET DIVE’s BRIDGET KEARNEY HEADED TO WEST AFRICA TO CONTINUE THE
LIFE-changing musical exploration they’d begun five years before.
Equipped with the most minimal of gear—a guitar, two-channel
recording console, and tiny toy keyboard—the longtime friends soon
struck up a collaboration with Stevo Atambire, a legendary Ghanaian
musician and master of a two-stringed lute called the kologo. Less
than a month later, KEARNEY AND DAVIS RETURNED TO THE U.S. with an
entire album’s worth of material: the 11 wildly imaginative yet
insightfully crafted songs featured on Still Flying, the duo’s
full-length debut. A work of profoundly joyful camaraderie, Still
Flying has its roots in an impromptu session with Atambire, which was
arranged by Colter Harper (an ethnomusicologist KEARNEY AND DAVIS MET
DURING THEIR 2014 TRIP TO GHANA). Upon gathering in an empty café,
the musicians soon found themselves swept up in an undeniable
chemistry. “We were coming up with melodies and counter-melodies and
it was all so electric,” KEARNEY RECALLS. “It was so exciting to
experience this combination of sounds completely different from
anything I’d ever heard.” As they worked with Atambire to shape
the songs that now comprise Still Flying, they also teamed up with
Aaron Bebe Sukura: a master of the gyil (an African wooden xylophone),
and one of the figures most essential to their studies in a Northwest
Ghanaian musical tradition known as Bawa. “I’ve never been a part
of a record where everything came together so quickly and with such
intensity and purpose, and I think that’s a testament to how
inspired we were by working with Aaron and Stevo and Colter,” says
DAVIS. “We never second-guessed anything, and the whole process was
just magic.” In each track on Still Flying, KEARNEY AND DAVIS SHOW
THEIR SINGULAR TALENT AS BOTH INTERPRETERS AND INNOVATORS, reimagining
traditional gyil parts and drum patterns in the context of their own
graceful collision of folk and pop and indie-rock. Mainly recorded at
a makeshift studio in Harper’s home in Accra (Ghana’s capital),
the decidedly DIY album takes its title from a lighthearted track
echoing the kinetic energy of their connection with Atambire.
“‘Still Flying’ was one of the songs where Ben and I already had
a lyrical concept going, and then Stevo came in and had us break down
the theme and added to it from there,” KEARNEY EXPLAINS. With its
breezy back-and-forth between English and Atambire’s native tongue
of Frafra, “Still Flying” unfolds in dreamlike storytelling that
perfectly captures the everlasting high of youthful abandon. “That
one was fun to write with Stevo, because it’s such a universal
thing: those memories of being young and doing crazy things, and how
the feeling of that time sort of stays with you for your whole
life,” says KEARNEY.
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11/06/2020 Last update