The Buck Curran Interview
Since 2005, Buck Curran (of the duo Arborea) has recorded and performed around the World as one half of the alt-folk duo Arborea who has released five albums, and produced two various- artist compilations (Leaves of Life: a benefit for the World Food Program and We Are All One, In the Sun: a tribute to Robbie Basho. He is also a guitar builder, writer and painter.
Are you originally from Bergamo, Italy? What was your childhood like growing up? When did you first begin to fall in love with music, more specifically the guitar? Was this something that was relevant around your household growing up?
Actually I was raised in Hazel Park, Michigan (a working class suburb of Detroit). I was briefly living in Bern, Switzerland in 2015, but moved to Italy in December of 2015 after living in Maine since 2000. Before that I lived in a variety of places: Tidewater Virginia (Norfolk and VA Beach), Colorado, Oregon and Ireland. There was music everywhere: radio, movies, tv, my parents had a great vinyl collection - the album covers fascinated me. The older kids in my neighborhood were constantly introducing me and my friends to new music. I walked around singing all the time. My father took a few guitar lessons when I was young so having the guitar in the house really got me curious and wanting to learn how to play. Jimi Hendrix was a key inspiration when I started. I remember watching a music documentary with my mom and Hendrix was playing Chuck Berry's Johnny Be Goode. The way he played guitar was so exciting. It wasn't long after that I started buying his records. After further listening, I fell in love with his way of writing lyrical poetry and combining it with the music. Songs like - I Don't Live Today, 1983 (A Merman I Should Turn to Be) and Wind Cries Mary are beautiful examples. He created poetry and soundscapes that were so expansive and beautiful they still feel vital today! And I feel the live recording of Hendrix with the Band of Gypsies performing Machine Gun is a pinnacle of guitar playing for the emotion it conveys and a sound that is truly otherworldly. My parents also had records by the classical guitarist John Williams. His recording of BWV 1006a: no. lll Gavotte en Rondeau from Bach's Lute Suite No. 4 absolutely stunned my mind as a child. It seemed like I was listening to a voice from another world and I was amazed how all that music was coming from just one person playing guitar. I would play that record over and over… It seemed so very beautiful and perfect. ute Suite No. 4 in E Major, BWV 1006a: III. Gavotte en Rondeau · John Williams · Johann Sebastian.
What would you do for fun growing up? Who were some of your earliest influences in your more formative years? When and where did you see your first concert and when did you realize you wanted to spend your time pursuing music?
I hung out with my friends and played records, watched old b&w movies on tv or went to the movie theater, and spent many summers poolside in Illinois - my folks best friends lived there and they had kids the same age as me and my sister. I remember having fun with my parents swimming in the ocean. BB King, Jimi Hendrix, Sinead O'Connor, Martin Simpson, June Tabor, Nick Drake, Sandy Denny, John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Randy Rhoads (Ozzy Osbourne), sitarist Pandit Nikhil Banerjee, Ry Cooder and Michael Hedges. Just as I was entering junior high my father got a job down in Ohio so eventually we left Detroit. While living in Ohio I saw a documentary about the Police making their album Ghost in the Machine. Watching Andy Summers show his guitars and effects and then listening to Sting describe how he composed songs inspired me to no end. That was definitely a defining moment and one that made me want to pursue a life in music. And then when I got into Highschool there was a lot of live music at parties. Sadly I don't remember my very first concert but it was probably Van Halen (around the time of their tour in support of Diver Down when they played in Fort Wayne, Indiana). By the time I was nearing graduation there was a local hard rock cover band that I would go see play in various bars in Lima Ohio with my best friend Joe who also played guitar (we went to highschool in Shawnee, Ohio).
Joe knew one of the guitar players, so we would go to their rehearsal space and watch them play. Listening to them practice was another huge motivator. The guitar felt so expansive and exciting back then. Playing was all I could think about and I knew I wanted to pursue playing professionally. Eventually my best friends and I formed a band during the last couple of years in highschool. We rehearsed in our drummer's basement. We were pretty ambitious back then, but as graduation neared I began to feel that I had to get out of Ohio to really pursue a career in music, so I joined the Navy to get money to help go to a college to study music. There was a school in Los Angeles called the Guitar Institute of Technology that I seriously considered - that was the initial plan. However, by the time I got out of the service, I felt that I couldn't learn to be a creative musician by going to a school. At that time I was focused on playing blues, so when I got out, I started going to any blues bars I could find in Tidewater Virginia. I figured that was where I was gonna get a real education. Almost immediately after the service, I started working at Ramblin Conrad's Guitar Shop and Folklore Center in Norfolk, VA. Conrads was a guitar and folk instrument shop, but also a folk venue. Working there was a huge educational experience and I got to meet a lot of veteran folk musicians like Martin Simpson, Jessica Ruby Radcliffe, Mike Seeger, Paul Geremia, Roy Book Binder, etc. Bob Zentz, the owner of Conrads, was a Simthsonian Folkways recording artist and multi-instrumentalist. Bob introduced me to the music of British folk artists like June Tabor and Bert Jansch.
When and where did you play your very first gig and what was that experience like for you? 2016 saw the release of your debut album “Immortal Light”. Can you tell me about writing and recording those tunes? What was the overall vision and approach for this release?
I guess my first real gig would have been a choir performance in grade school. I felt I could sing well and I had such a desire to sing, but it was such a frustrating experience because I felt so terribly shy and too self conscious. But I knew I wanted to overcome any fears I had and I kept at it. Immortal Light came out of a huge transition that led up to my duo Arborea going on hiatus and my life radically changing after Shanti and I split as a couple. The songs were slowly manifesting themselves because of the intense life changes going on. The cover image is a NASA photo of Pluto taken by the New Horizons space probe as it was leaving the solar system. Astrologically speaking Pluto represents change and renewal so it seemed like the perfect image for my first solo album. Most of the songs came to me in visions or in periods of deep rumination. The partial inspiration for the instrumental River Unto Sea was a river in the Wicklow Mountains in Ireland where I used to live and then most of the music came to my mind one day when I was sitting by the Androscoggin River in Lewiston, Maine. I remember at a certain point running back to the house and grabbing my guitar before I forgot all the music running through my mind. The song New Moontide was inspired when I was dreaming about being on the road. I had such a passionate desire to get in the car with Shanti and head to the West Coast to travel and play shows. That vision was so strong that the song wrote itself very quickly. Immortal Light was reissued on vinyl by Ramble Records this past January. I'm extremely happy with how the new pressing turned out. I also formed Obsolete Recordings in 2016 and the first release was the compilation Basket Full of Dragons: A Tribute to Robbie Basho Vol 2. That compilation was preceded by We Are All One, In the Sun: A Tribute to Robbie Basho which I curated for Important Records in 2010.
When and where did recording begin and how did the deal with the legendary label ESP-Disk come about?
I came to be on ESP-Disk because the owner Bernard Stollman called one day to discuss releasing Arborea's next album. I felt like we had made a really great record, so I started shopping the record around and emailing specific labels that I dreamed of working with - I couldn't believe it when Bernard called and I'll never forget that great conversation… He really believed in our music. That was in 2012 and Arborea's last album (and debut release for ESP-Disk) Fortress of the Sun was released in April of 2013. My partner Shanti Deschaine and I formed Arborea in 2005 and released our first album Wayfaring Summer in 2006. We started touring professionally in 2007 after being asked to play festivals in Spain and the UK. We had already released 4 albums and toured extensively by the time we started working with ESP-Disk so we were really at the height of our creative powers as a musical group. After that last Arborea album and a wonderful month of touring in Europe in 2015 (and sadly Bernard passed away that April) Shanti took a hiatus from music and I kept working with ESP-Disk as a solo artist and producer. I also produced the album Robbie Basho Live in Forli, Italy 1982 which ESP-Disk released in 2017.
In 2018 you released your anticipated follow up “MH, AR”. Tell me about writing and recording this album. What is your particular approach when beginning to work on a new project? What is your process as far as bringing a song, or piece of music to life?Following that you worked on a project with the great Dan Higgs, Jeff Jefferson and Sir Richard Burton. Can you tell me about that project and working with those legends?
Morning Haikus, Afternoon Ragas (2017) was largely inspired by my new life in Bergamo, Italy and the birth of my son Francesco. It was also inspired by my two children in America - Liam and Shylah. The album is pretty typical of my creative process which manifests in either two ways. Most of the music forms in my mind away from instruments and then later I grab a guitar (or piano, harmonium, etc) and physically manifest the music I've composed. The other way is through recording my improvisations. MH, AR was recorded with my large diaphragm mic in a live room (our apartment kitchen/living room) closer to a field recording and you can hear a lot of the sounds from the city in the background: birds, church bells, airplanes. Actually that's how most of my solo albums and all the Arborea albums were made - using that mic in the living room or on the side of our house in Lewiston, or at Shanti's family camp in Maine. In September of 2018 I did some shows on the West Coast and ended up staying in Oakland for an extra week after having to cancel a string of shows in North Carolina due to a Hurricane. I was staying with friends of my wife Adele (Joshua and musician Jeff Jefferson) and fortunate to have my own space - a cozy little one room shack in their backyard. Jeff told me Daniel Higgs had also stayed in that space. Anyway, we ended up having a lot of spare time to jam and with Jeff being a recording engineer we recorded some improvisations together. Later on he had Daniel Higgs record his voice over top. Arborea played a show with Daniel in Hudson New York some years back… So I've met him and think he's a wonderful guy and great musician. But yeah, for the session, sadly we didn't all record together in the same room.
I’d like to jump ahead to your most recent project, a collection of songs going back to 2017 entitled “Delights & Dangers of Ambiguity”. Tell me about writing and recording this record that tails astrology and other elements of the universe!
Gemini Sun, Gemini Rising from that album is strictly a one take improvisation with cellist Helena Espvall when she was staying with us in Bergamo in 2017. My son Francesco was born on June 17, 2017… So Gemini Sun, Gemini Rising are the major aspects of his astrological sign. I find astrological birth charts fascinating so it felt right naming the track after this lengthy improvisation with Helena… Who is not only a dear friend but one of my very favorite musicians. The entire album is made of improvisations…the title track being one of two performances made on the piano that were among my first real attempts at playing the instrument. Prelude in D Minor was the only fixed melody on that album… Something that I composed in the 90's, but never got a chance to fully develop. So I decided to record it on the piano and then I improvised many layers of drones with Electric Guitar and Ebow around that main theme. The last addition to the album Mugen No Umi No Iro was when I was home in Maine last Summer and found myself improvising with Hiroya Miura. Hiroya (originally from Japan) is a brilliant pianist, improviser and also the professor of composition at Bates University in Lewiston, Maine.
What else does summer have in store for you this year? Any shows, or tours in the works? Is there anything else you would like to further share with the readers?
Aside from releasing Delights and Dangers of Ambiguity at the beginning of the year I also curated Solstice: a tribute to Steffen Basho-Junghans. Steffen was a dear friend of mine and an amazing musician and artist. Sadly he passed away in December of 2022. The tribute features a beautiful collection of guitar instrumentals from a lineup of international guitarists: Henry Kaiser, Nick Jonah Davis, Kendraplex, Joseph Allred, Paolo Laboule Novellino, Son of Buzzi, Isasa, Simone Romei, Joost Dijkema, Paul Perrim, Rob Noyes, D.C Cross, Shane Parish, Jesse Sheppard, Bhajan Bhoy, E. Jason Gibbs, and great young players like Liam Grant, Blake Hornsby, Jakub Simansky, Pino Nuovola and Jeremy Nicholas. I actually recorded my two slide tracks (Solstice 1 and 2) with Robbie Basho's mythical 12 string. The guitar is featured in a video (as well as the stunning landscapes of the historic upper town of Bergamo) on Instagram and Youtube. I am busy with fundraising efforts to help restore the guitar to a playable condition - at the moment it's only possible to play slide, open strings, or notes on the first few frets, because the neck & body has shifted causing extremely high action. If all goes well, with those efforts the restoration will start in September. I am hoping to organize a recording project when the work is finished. Plans for the rest of Summer… At the end of July, I'm performing at the Odysseus Festival in Helsinki. It will be my first show ever in Finland so I am looking forward to that. I'm also playing a festival in Thun, Switzerland in August. My wife's new album Impermanence is coming out in mid September on Ramble Records/Obsolete Recordings. We are organizing some album release shows for her later this Summer. At the end of the Summer my first album for analog synth 'The Long Distance' will come out via Eiderdown Records & Obsolete Recordings. I also have two more albums coming out early next year… So lots of things to look forward to.
