Barghest

I had been thinking hard on the devil. The myriad shapes and colors which, over the centuries, have been attributed to this embodied darkness: the horned goat corruption of Pan, on his throne in the Pit, entombed in flame; Washington Irving's tale of Old Scratch, echoing Goethe: the trickster with whom it is best not to deal; the shadow in the dark; the ephemeral shades of the Adversary; the howling of wolves- Dante's selva oscura. Leadbelly and Son House knew his names, forging the syllables into song, a sacrifice to keep him at bay. And all these cassettes scattered about the damn room. Winter sun as white as his pale hands glinted on the dust and smoke. Hours over the recorder - from cassette to digital - let me tell you, this damn digital recorder needed a memory card that was no longer being made, so every three and a half tracks into an eight minute piece ya gotta dump everything back to the cassette - and back to cassette. The summer was spent playing and sweating and remembering the haint who walks at dusk. New songs came and ideas for old traditionals, a reinterpretation of the same, the devil in the blues and that comic book blood sucker Ozzy Osbourne. It seemed that a gathering of strong wills might lure our illusive and clever friend to make his mark on 2" tape. Scott Stapleton, Jeff Bailey, Ben McConnell, Dan Weber and I met for two rehearsals and one recording session. Scott, Ben and Jeff have, for a time, been the rhythm section for Phosphorescent; occasionally Dan and/or myself will join them. Dan has played in Havanarama, The Shorebirds, and Neckbeard Telecaster. In addition to Barghest and from time to time Phosphorescent, I play guitar for Castanets. Scott, Jeff and I also play in Virgin Forest. On the plane to New York City, I just can not stop listening to Highway 61 Revisited; the combination of angular-out-of-tune honky tonk piano and the buzzing drone of the organ take my mind to Texas on a freight train with an acid drenched Willie Nelson on one side and J. Edgar on the other, passing through the roiling kingdom of Orville Eugene Faubus. And Erebos and Nyx joined and begat Kharon. And Kharon bore us west across the River Of Woe. And J Edgar keeps trying to reach his hands down Willie's pants; and, somehow, Willie, not breaking his trip or his polite smile, keeps deflecting the attempts. In the distance the horn of Faubus blows it's mournful wail, the sundown has come. Then the crow speaks thrice the seven names of death and the shade is on the road. One should not linger here. Almost imperceptible over the clamour of the train, there is a fiddler - somewhere in the infinite night. The song is beautiful. A microphonic tube, slicing the scrotum of a new piglet, then I know: it is just the brakes, we have made our destination. Our destination is a man. He waits fiddling his mournful reel. Be it an evil hand or merely the existence of night, we felt it pass through and the name it took in this vision was lilting and cruel .