Jayme Stone re-envisions Alan Lomax

Nationally renowned banjo master and composer Jayme Stone is coming to Seattle March 13 and bringing his Lomax Project. Celebrating the work of folklorist and field recording pioneer Alan Lomax, this collaboratory brings together some of the country’s most distinctive and creative roots musicians to revive, recycle and re-imagine traditional music. The repertoire includes Bahamian sea chanties, African-American a cappella singing from the Georgia Sea Islands, Old World weavers’ work songs, ancient Appalachian ballads, fiddle tunes, game songs and ring shouts.

Alan Lomax was one of the great minds of the 20th century. He scoured the globe for traditional sounds, recorded untold many master artists, broke folk artists to the mainstream like Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly, and even conceived of a wildly ambitious “theory of everything” in which you could determine a culture’s social morays purely from the sound of their singing. To call him a visionary is too small a word. No one championed traditional folk music more than Lomax. He was an unstoppable force of nature.

In Seattle, Jayme Stone will be collaborating with Eli West (of popular Seattle duo Cahalen Morrison & Eli West), fiddler Brittany Haas, vocalist Moira Smiley of VOCO, and bassist Joe Phillips. Each time Jayme Stone presents the Lomax Project, he brings in new collaborators from the ranks of the best American roots musicians.

Jayme Stone’s Lomax Project from Blayne Chastain on Vimeo.

Jayme Stone’s Lomax Project, Thursday March 13, 2014, Columbia City Theater, Tickets $14 adv/$18 door, Show at 8pm

Buy tickets here.