JEREMY BARNES HAS no greater passion, at least from a musical standpoint, than Eastern European folk. During our conversation, Barnes uses the word “love” more than half a dozen times to describe the intensity of his feeling for the region’s fervent, dizzyingly passionate sounds.
But Barnes (who made his name originally as the drummer for one of indie folk’s most lauded bands, Neutral Milk Hotel, and brings his duo A Hawk and a Hacksaw to town this week) became an ardent fan long before his fellow lovers of socalled gypsy music in Beirut, Gogol Bordello and Devotchka gained a following. Barnes first heard Bulgarian women’s choirs while driving through West Texas in 1996 on a tour when he was 19, and he was hooked. He moved to Hungary two years ago to live among and learn from some of the area’s masters but has always sought to interpret traditional styles through the contemporary lens of his American background.
“We’re really into music from Eastern Europe and from Turkey, and that is a huge influence, but we have to keep in mind that we’re not a cover band and it’s not our intention to recreate music from that region,” Barnes says from Chicago, where he is finishing the mix of the group’s fourth fulllength album, due out in the spring. “We have to bring something of ourselves into it in order for it to be fulfilling.”
And like their gypsy inspiration, Barnes, who sings, plays accordion and handles percussion, and his cohort Heather Trost, whose primary instrument is violin, have lead a largely a nomadic lifestyle, following their hearts.The couple met in Albuquerque where they subsequently encountered Beirut’s Zach Condon, whose musical aesthetic matched their own.They later contributed to the first Beirut record, and Condon, in turn, to A Hawk and Hacksaw’s albums. But they relocated to Budapest in 2006 to plunge themselves into a thriving international folk scene with Hungarian, Romanian, Serbian and Bulgarian elements.
Their chemistry with a particular group of musicians led to the formation of the Hun Hangár Ensemble with whom A Hawk and a Hacksaw recorded a sweeping, sophisticated EP that bears the unmistakable marks of the duo’s cultural immersion. Barnes and Trost sound both incredibly well versed in the musical idioms of their surroundings and confident in their ability to maneuver among the accompanying sonic ambiguities.
“Whenever we do traditional music, we try to put it in a different setting or adapt it somehow so that it’s not just a song that we love,” Barnes says. “It’s kind of like half and half—like a folk song has inspired us to write a melody and then we combine the two.” The duo returned to Albuquerque in October, partly because they wanted to vote (and were thrilled with Obama’s win) and to finish recording their latest album, but also to reconnect with their roots, their families, their American friends and their homeland.
“In our lyrics we’re usually commenting on things that are happening here. That’s part of what I mean about bringing in our own identities into this music,” Barnes says. “In the end it’s not Eastern European music that we’re playing, even though we’re influenced by it.We’re Americans and we have to present that as where we’re from.” And the new album, which was partly recorded in Hungary, partly in Albuquerque, is a distillation of what they’ve learned after completely steeping themselves in music that holds an unending allure, Barnes says. “I feel like it’s an obvious progression from what we were doing previously. I do think it’s a lot stronger than any of our other releases,” Barnes says. “It’s still focusing on what we love. And I think we’ll always be doing that, whether or not it’s trendy or fashionable, we’re still going to be doing it… In a way, we’re just a little bit lost in it, I guess. And I can’t really do anything else.”
> A Hawk and a Hacksaw
Jan. 10, Mercury Lounge, 217 E. Houston St. (at Essex St.), 212-260-4700; 7, $13/$15.
Also Jan. 11 at Union Hall.
