Stereo Embers The Podcast 0520: Tim Eriksen and Peter Irvine (Cordelia's Dad)

“Absence And Her Sister”

Tim Eriksen and Peter Irvine first came onto my radar in the late eighties when I was a college radio DJ and I was super into their band Cordelia’s Dad. Formed while the two friends were studying at Amherst, Cordelia’s Dad’s raucous mixture of folk and punk showed up weekly on my radio show in between the Pogues and The Replacements. Because they were such an unategorizable outfit, over the course of their —- album career, Cordelia’s Dad opened for both Doc Watson and Nirvana. After the band broke up, Eriksen dove deeper into the music of the world, plunging into East African Gospel, Bosnian folk, South Indian Classical Music while completing his Ethnomusicology PhD in the process. Hailed by everyone from T. Bone Burnett to novelist Nicholson Baker, the Grammy Award-nominated Eriksen’s wide range of interests find him just as inspired by Bad Brains as he is by Yugoslavian Folk. From albums like Soul of the January Hills and Every Sound Below, his solo output is rich, varied and wonderful and his work has been covered by everyone from Alison Krauss to Joan Baez. As for Peter Irvine, the percussionist worked as a lawyer for years, but in between he joined Eriksen to play on the Oscar-Winning Cold Mountain soundtrack as well on Eriksen’s solo work and for Cordelia’s Dad reunion gigs. The two longtime collaborators’ new album Absence And Her Sister is steeped in folk minimalism and Gothic Americana as it surveys the ancient songs of their native New England. Spare and arresting, raw and immediate, Absence And Her Sister flows with quiet urgency as it sails through the geography of a place that is both real, imagined and eternal. It’s a riveting listen. Eriksen and Irvine are on tour this month, and they were kind to chat with us between gigs.

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