Name: Laysongs
Brand: Chris Thile

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

654086

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Colour

Colour details

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music US

Limited edition

Release date

2021-06-04

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier US

WEA /­ ADA

Tax rate US

Sales:8.875

UPC / Barcode

075597916188

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Total Cap

1 / CD / Extended format: No / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No

Artist

Chris Thile

Genre US

Country 

Label US

Nonesuch

Chris Thile is an American mandolin player, born on 20 February 1981 in Oceanside, California. Known for his exceptional talent and versatility, he has made a significant impact on the music industry. Thile's maternal grandfather was Robert Shallenberg, an avant-garde composer.

With a unique style that blends bluegrass, folk, and classical influences, Thile has captivated audiences worldwide. He has collaborated with renowned artists such as *Punch Brothers*, *Nickel Creek*, *The Greencards*, and more.

Thile's virtuosity on the mandolin is unmatched. His technical prowess and innovative approach have earned him numerous accolades throughout his career. Fans of *Mike Marshall*, *Alison Brown*, and other notable performers will appreciate Thile's extraordinary musical abilities.

Mandolinist, singer, and songwriter Chris Thile’s Laysongs is his first truly solo album: just Thile, his voice, and his mandolin, on new recordings of six original songs and three covers, all of which contextualize and banter with his ideas about spirituality. Recorded in a converted upstate New York church during the pandemic, Laysongs’ centerpiece is the three-part “Salt (in the Wounds) of the Earth,” which was inspired by C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. The album also features a song Thile wrote about Dionysus; a performance of the fourth movement of Béla Bartók’s Sonata for Solo Violin; “God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot” based on Buffy Sainte-Marie’s adaptation of a Leonard Cohen poem; a cover of bluegrass legend Hazel Dickens’ “Won’t You Come and Sing for Me;” and an original instrumental loosely modeled after the Prelude from J.S. Bach’s Partita for Solo Violin in E Major.

Thile, who was raised in a Christian household, explains the inspiration for Laysongs, from a backstage conversation with Nonesuch’s Chairman Emeritus Bob Hurwitz, who told him, “‘You should do a God-themed record of some kind, it’s all over your work.’ It is a lifelong obsession of mine, even post-Christianity, what the impact of that kind of devotion to any organized religion is.” When the world went into COVID lockdown in the spring of 2020 and the public radio show Thile had hosted, Live from Here, ended its run, he finally had time to seriously contemplate this idea. Again, Hurwitz supplied a nudge, encouraging him to make a “snapshot” of his experience of the pandemic.

Thile’s wife, the accomplished actor Claire Coffee, served as Laysongs’ co-producer: “She has incredible taste and narrative intuition. She was able to help me weave the original and non-original material together.” During the summer of 2020, the family was temporarily living in Hudson, NY, where they found a recording studio, Future-Past, in an old church. “I went in there to look at the space and instantly felt so at home,” Thile recalls. “I loved the amount of sound around the sound. I had two sonic collaborators on this record: the tremendous engineer Jody Elff and that church.”

Thile realized—and illustrates in these songs—that his greatest spiritual sustenance comes from communion with others. “I was more than ever before craving that thing—singing with people, making music with people, but particularly that very selfless kind of music making that happens in church. At best you aren’t thinking about yourself or even about the people you’re making music with. You’re all just doing it together and it’s about something else. It’s really beautiful. And it’s maybe the only thing about organized religion that I miss.”

Laysongs

Music US