FRESH WIND SESSION No. 23
Jack Lorang
Recording Date: 27 December 2023
KNCE 93.5 FM Premiere: 28 December 2023
Substack Premiere: 6 June 2024
When I recorded this radio session with Jack Lorang just after Christmas last year, he was somewhat of a mystery to me. I’d met him a few times at events at Ennui Gallery, and gotten to perform as part of his Lost Sunshine Cinema Collective, but never really spent time with him one on one. The performances of his I’d seen were rare, but striking. Memorably, I saw him nonchalantly perform a perfect, word-for-word, cover of Bob Dylan’s “Lily, Rosemary, and The Jack of Hearts” at the Taos Farmers Market (for the uninitiated the song is an epic ballad with 16 complex verses).
Sometimes referred to as “Mad Cat” Jack Lorang, his guitar playing style is notable for a method he calls “impressionistic strumming”. Of that he says:
“It’s something that’s just happened over the years with my rhythm. I play by myself a lot. I like to collaborate, and I do sometimes, but because I’ve performed solo a lot, I’ve kind of just by default given myself a lot of freedom with timing. The lyrics, and poetry, of the music has always been an important part of what I do. So, I tend to allow the rhythm to change as I see fit with the singing. And, it just kind of reminds me of the way Impressionist painters kind of blur the lines of everything. It’s not as important to me to be rigid about beats and measures. It just kind of blends and blurs, in the way that I see it.”
Jack’s songwriting world reminds me of Mermaid Avenue-era Wilco in a lot of ways - not just in the similarity between the timbre of his voice and Jeff Tweedy’s, but in the way that his songs tend to exist in pre-Industrial landscapes. These aren’t songs filled with cars or cell phones. Instead, one finds oneself reckoning with epic nature landscapes and flowing emotional blooms. You’ll also find touches of the carnivalesque in his lyrics, evoking, for me, the Bringing It All Back Home-era of Bob Dylan most strongly.
In the interview portion of our session, Jack, who at the time of recording was 41 years old, referred to songwriting as a “younger person’s game.” In subsequent conversations around town, he’s brought up regretting that statement. That’s something I’m glad to hear, as all five of the songs he performed for me in December (“Lovely To Miss”, “Apricot Window”, “Man Called Widow”, “House of Dreams”, and “Darkling Sea”) have wormed their way into my musical brain in the five months since this session was originally recorded. I’m excited to be sharing it with you today!
10: Fresh Wind Session No. 23: Jack Lorang