This week on a far-ranging episode of Transmissions: guitarist, folklorist, and all-around-top-notch thinker Daniel Bachman.

A songwriter and composer from Fredericksburg, Virginia, Bachman first began releasing records under the name Sacred Harp, before adopting his own name for a series of finger-picked classics like 2012's Seven Pines and 2015’s River, which Aquarium Drunkard’s Tyler Wilcox called “a solo acoustic tour de force that can easily stand proud next to John Fahey’s Days America or Jack Rose’s Kensington Blues. It’s that good.”

In the years since, Bachman’s music has grown more and more experimental, and also, it’s become more directly informed by climate change. His latest, for the fine folks at Longform Edition, who’ve appeared on this very podcast, is called Quaker Run Wildfire (10/24/23–11/17/23) for Fiddle and Guitar. A 25-minute piece of drone, guitar, fiddle, and field recordings, it was inspired and directly confronts the devastating wildfire that tore through the Middle Appalachians. “How additional global heating at the cost of extractive industry will impact future climate breakdown in the region remains unknown. One thing however is certain… a new fire regime has arrived,” Bachman writes.

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