WINTER MISSION/VINYLE ROUGE TRANSPARENT 140GR

Description

Brad Barr — the singer and songwriter of the band The Barr Brothers — announces today The Winter Mission, a brand new solo guitar instrumental album that will be available starting January 21 via Secret City Records. The guitarist also shares today the first excerpt from the album, titled “?ANCIENT CALENDARS?”.
“?ANCIENT CALENDARS is a solo guitar piece, a long improvisation where I explore a regular motif that I gradually stretch in two different directions. The whole thing is played on a 12-string acoustic guitar, amplified, but without overdubs. This is the approach I adopted for this album: at no point will the listener hear more than one of me. The title of this song is related to another concept of the album — the exploration of the number 216. More specifically, to the concept of an "era" of the Mayan calendar, the long count of the Mesoamerican calendar consists of 2160 years. It is also believed that a complete calendar of five great cycles equals 2160 orbits of Jupiter.? If they could think that far, you would think I would be able to remember my wedding anniversary.” — Brad Barr
Barr has spent decades developing his unique and visceral approach to guitar, first with The Slip, then through three albums with the Barr Brothers. The Winter Mission — the follow-up to Barr's first solo record released in 2008, The Fall Apartment — was initially a commission from Michael Wolk, the artistic director of the All For One Theater in New York. “?It was a real gift?,” recalls Barr, referring to the opportunity to explore a sound while remaining alone, away from the road, as touring was impossible during the strange intermission imposed by COVID-19.
For over 20 years, Brad Barr has been paying attention to 216 — a mysterious number that has appeared everywhere for him: on dials, license plates, Ouija boards, receipts. It is now the essence of his new album, like the 216 stitches on a baseball. Inspired by artists like Caetano Veloso, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Andrés Segovia, D'Gary, and John Frusciante, Barr wanted to create stripped-down and unmodified music, but also sometimes loud — with a feeling of active and conscious intimacy. The number 216 was a recurring theme. The guitarist first noticed this “?magic square?” when he was a teenager, during a memorable acid trip. In the years that followed, it became a talisman — one of the only things that gives Barr the feeling of being mystical, detecting a concrete order in the universe. These songs pay tribute to that order, from the noble mathematical and astrological properties of 216 to its function as a regional indicator (from Cleveland).
Brad Barr is the singer and songwriter of the folk americana band The Barr Brothers, which has been active for over a decade. The band has toured with The War on Drugs, Calexico, Shakey Graves, and Patrick Watson. The musicians have performed on television shows such as The Late Show with David Letterman and CBS This Morning Saturday. They have consistently received sustained media coverage and strong support from radio, including the entire BBC network, key stations like KCRW, KEXP, WFUV, WXPN, World Café, Sirius XM, NPR, as well as Paste Magazine, Time Magazine, Washington Post, Rolling Stone Germany, Q Magazine, Exclaim!, MOJO, Uncut, Brooklyn Vegan, and more.