Dan McLeod may claim a loose grip on music theory, but that hasn’t prevented him from producing some of the most haunting and affecting sounds to come whistling out of the Valley in years.
“Time signatures, scales, keys, chords and finger-style technique—you’d be better off reading the Bible to a squirrel,” he muses.
His forte is folk with an experimental bent, and the multi-instrumentalist—McLeod primarily plays banjo and 12-string guitar, but also harmonica, jaw harp, six-string guitar and singing saw—has joined notes with local acts Bunwinkies, Jow Jow the Death Knell Rung and Proses, and sat in on occasion with Trials and Tribulations. He also played saw on the tune “Wire” from the Winterpills’ record Central Chambers, and jams with Graph’s Matt Robidoux in a noise duo called Lenny Kravitz.
His ongoing focus these days is Tongue Oven, a primarily acoustic outfit centered around his instrumental creations. The project’s lineup is amorphous, but often features Desi Lowit, who McLeod describes as having a way with the fiddle that “can bring chills, whether she plays something menacing or joyful.”
Michael Dunning occasionally joins in on stand-up bass and Jerusha Robinson [South China, Micah Blue Smaldone, Brown Bird] is on board for upcoming recording sessions. Stephen St. Francis Decky, Mark Hanson, Andy Kivela, Matt Robidoux and Candace Hope have all been called on at times to collaborate, as well.
McLeod says his music, inspired by the likes of Micah Blue Smaldone and John Fahey, is “intuition-driven.”
“A lot of songs arrive as I play banjo or 12-string on my front porch,” he says. “I’ll be watching King Street traffic roll by as I pick away and, out of the blue, something I’m doing will feel or sound right and that part will lead to another and another and suddenly there’s an infant song out there with me. After a few days of tinkering, the music is usually done. It’s a quick process, but there’s no telling when it will happen. The way they can happen like that makes me feel like a wind chime or an antenna that catches a passing signal.”
McLeod’s tunes have been described as old-timey cowboy dirges and Civil War-evoking epiphanies serving as “the perfect soundtrack for everything from chopping wood to making love.”
Tongue Oven currently offers up a 5-song CD-R recorded on the fly last summer that it sells for five dollars a pop to help pay for gas when playing out of town. The plan is to finish up a full-band full-length with Justin Pizzoferrato at the controls in the coming months.
McLeod and Lowit play the Dream Away Lodge in Becket on Sept. 3 with Orion Rigel Dommisse and Annikki Dawn. Sept. 21 finds Tongue Oven at Flywheel in Easthampton with Hammer of Hathor, BEEK and Dann Pell.
For songs and more information, visit www.myspace.com/tongueoven.
