Beaver Creek by Jeff Curtis

This summer, at Beaver Creek State Park, nestled in the hills between Lisbon, Rogers, and East Liverpool, Ohio, I determined to collaborate with the cicadas and crickets, the geese and coyotes, the rustling trees and crackling campfire, under a blood-red full moon, in recording a bushel batch of environmentally embedded music.

Much of this was improvised, letting the rich shower of stridulations around me take the lead. Some of the tunes I had brought with me, and let the surroundings shape their outcome; one is a medley of sorts, of a traditional song I learned from Buell Kazee and an Ola Belle Reed song that I realized shared a similar melody.

These recordings are rough and noisy, made in the midst of nature and its unpredictable wiles, but fulsome in their representations of time spent close to the Earth and her native musicians.

Recorded in Beaver Creek State Park, Columbiana County, Ohio, August, 2021.

Many many thanks to Stephen Petrus for editing & mastering help.

Jeff Curtis is an experimental clawhammer banjo and bass player, and cat cartoonist, in the Cleveland, Ohio area.

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