Photo by William Phipps
Tim Eriksen is a highly regarded singer of American folksong and shapenote music, a songwriter whose work has been covered by Alison Krauss, Joan Baez, and Bonny "Prince" Billy and a multi-instrumentalist with a background in punk rock and South Indian classical music.
With Absence and her sister, a new project with longtime collaborator Peter Irvine, percussion and voice, the duo return to their roots in folk minimalism and gothic Americana- new and ancient songs of their native New England informed by the wide palette of their other collaborations.
The two are probably best known for their musical contributions to films including the Oscar-winning Cold Mountain and cult horror phenomenon The Outwaters, and as founding members of the anomalous folk-noise outfit Cordelia’s Dad, "the only band to have performed with both Doc Watson and Nirvana." But while echoes of punk-folk and shapenote music abound on Absence and her sister, so does the dissonance and rhythmic complexity of their Bosnian band Žabe I Babe, the deep groove they picked up from collaborators like banjo master Dwight Diller and East African gospel singers the Naamaara sisters, and the love of experimentation and power of repetition celebrated in Terry Riley's In C, the first piece the two ever played together as teenagers. The album also abounds with echoes from Pumpkintown, the duo's New England magic lantern show with painter/projectionist Susan Brearey, named for the birthplace of both Absence Wing and her twin. The place may be imaginary, but the musicians know its sunlit meadows and dark secrets well.
"One of the best singers in music"
– T Bone Burnett
"Tim Eriksen is one of the most original American singers working today. Once you hear his voice, it is impossible to forget; its richness and intensity seem hauntingly appropriate whether he is performing New England murder ballads, Bosnian pop songs, or punk rock"
- Jeffrey Callen, East Bay Express
"[Eriksen's] sound is wild, beautiful, and full of unexpected moments; at once sweepingly epic and as intimate as a lover's whisper."
- Scott Alarik, Boston Globe
"A compelling artist whose intense delivery and clarity of tone set him among the world's finest folk practitioners"
– Toronto Star
"Widely regarded as the best traditional American ballad singer of his generation"
– Kit Bailey, BBC Radio 2
"Eriksen connects the present and the ancient with an immediacy that will make your bones tremble"
– Pulse of the Twin Cities
"I hear hundreds of recordings every week. Hundreds of voices. But some stay with me. Tim Eriksen's is one that comes into my mind's ear unbidden and always gives me great pleasure – as well as goosebumps!"
- Marilyn Rea Beyer, host of The Midnight Special and Folkstage WFMT, 98.7 Chicago
"The only performer to have shared a stage with both Kurt Cobain and Doc Watson"
– Lisa Utman Randall, Mercury
"otherworldly"
- Barbara Kingsolver
"Signs of an aboveground resurgence for Protestant hymnody include Every Sound Below (Appleseed), a recent CD by the musician and musicologist Tim Eriksen, featuring his compelling, nasally Appalachian singing, often of 19th-century Protestant hymns"
– William Hogeland, New York Sunday Times
"Vocally it’s as if Michael Stipe had fallen in with a Baptist preacher and the single guitar or banjo or fiddle that accompanies each song gives his remarkable voice room to do its stuff"
- Q Magazine
"No one has done more to help revive Sacred Harp singing among a younger generation"
– Josh Jackson, Paste Magazine
"A distinctive, unvarnished voice"
- Washington Post
"(Tim Eriksen's) sound reminds me why we started this festival in the first place."
- George Wein, co-founder of the Newport Folk Festival
