Daniel Bachman

Daniel Bachman is an American fingerstyle guitarist from Fredericksburg, Virginia who is based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He has been touring and recording since he was 17. He calls his own style "psychedelic Appalachia." Bachman began playing the guitar before he was 10, and fell under the sway of banjo music, drone, and the American Primitive techniques pioneered by John Fahey, Robbie Basho, Peter Lang, and others recorded by Takoma Records, as well as Glenn Jones and Jack Rose -- the latter also hailed from Fredericksburg. Bachman was a prodigy and began touring -- often with Rose -- while still in high school. HIs earliest records, Apparitions at the Kenmore Plantation and Feast of the Green Corn, were released as homemade cassettes in 2010 under the moniker Sacred Harp. Both used the American Primitive approach and experimentally combined it with drones and psychedelic sounds. In 2011, he issued a split cassette with guitarist Ryley Walker titled Of Deathly Premonitions on Plus Tapes, and his own Grey-Black-Green on Debacle. In 2012, he released a collaborative album with vanguard composer and multi-instrumentalist Ian G. McColm -- another fellow Virginian -- titled Taman Shud. Bachman signed to Tompkins Square Records that same year. His debut for the label, Seven Pines, was a much more traditional offering and won global acclaim. He followed it in 2013 with Jesus I'm a Sinner. Equally well-received, it made him a mainstay on the club circuit and garnered him prime placement on folk and experimental music festival stages. It was followed in 2014 by Orange Co. Serenade on Bathetic and a self-titled set on Lancashire & Somerset. His next offering, River, was a double album recorded by Brian Haran at Pinebox in North Carolina and mastered by Patrick Klem. It was selected as an NPR First Listen title, and appeared in the spring of 2015 from Three Lobed Recordings. He it followed it a year later with Daniel Bachman, a self-titled seven-track set on the same label. Recorded by Brian Haran, the guitarist (who also played a shruti box), was only selectively accompanied by Forrest Marquisee on "octotone." The album was issued in early November. ~ Thom Jurek