BASKING IN THE GLOWSTREAM Cotton Jones
Feb 07, 2011
Marital bliss and more informs the Maryland duo's dreamy Americana. Their tour starts this week.
BY AARON KAYCE
Have you ever woken from sleep and wondered if you were still dreaming? Momentarily stuck between worlds where time is suspended? This is the music of Cotton Jones. A beautiful place where it could be dusk or it might dawn. Where guitars feel more like fractured rays of sun and vocals waft in a haze of echo and reverb.
"I think a lot of the songs are kind of dream sequence sorts of songs," says bandleader Michael Nau. "I feel like a lot of it's [the new album] written that way where it's not too specific to our everyday encounters."
Tall Hours in the Glowstream (Suicide Squeeze) is the second full-length from Cotton Jones. Originally called the Cotton Jones Basket Ride, the band features guitarist/vocalist Nau along with keyboardist/vocalist Whitney McGraw and is essentially an extension of their previous band Page France. No one, including Nau, is exactly sure why Page France was rechristened Cotton Jones, but in 2009 the change was solidified with the band's woozy lo-fi Americana debut Paranoid Cocoon.
Though Nau references as influences Harry Nilsson, Bob Dylan and the gospel
songs his mom and dad used to sing, he says this album was informed more by his
home in Cumberland, Maryland, than any artist or specific
style.
The glowstream alludes to a rolling body of water on the border of Maryland and West Virginia. "It's a place like nowhere else where everything sort of slows down. It's kind of a sentimental title for me" says Nau. "[It] represents a couple places where friends and family always go to hang out and spend their evenings."
In October of 2009 Nau and McGraw got married. They met long ago in their tiny hometown and have been together for as long as anyone can remember. And though there's a loose collective of regular musicians who help flesh out Cotton Jones, most of them participants in Page France as well, if anything defines the band it's the duo's ethereal harmonies that often call to mind Johnny and June Carter Cash.
Getting hitched not only affected their personal lives, it created a new space for their music to breathe. Sort of like seeing the forest through the trees: by taking a step back, the band's music came into focus.
"Whitney and I have always worked together, but it's changed since we've been spending every day in the same house" reflects Nau. "Having two or more parts to my life, where music is not all consuming, I was able to feel certain things more than I've ever been able."
One thing Nau is feeling appears to be tranquility; marrying your true love will do that for a man. It's not that Paranoid Cocoon was particularly depressing, but even the name hints at something dark and ominous. "I feel that Glowstream is a lot more of an upper, it's a positive record" he says, with a hint of pride. "It's hopeful and I've been trying to really practice patience in my life and not get so down on myself about the way things are going."
Somewhere in the glowstream Michael Nau and Whitney McGraw have found their voice as Cotton Jones. The music they make is an open invitation to float along with them and let the spirit carry you away. All it takes is for you to press play; don't get left behind.
Cotton Jones kicks off a North American tour this week with Nicole Atkins. Check tour dates at their MySpace page.
[Photo Credit: Todd Roeth]
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