Traces record release show

John P Hastings and Benjamin Mayock release Traces, an album length meditation on the American South and our shared histories.

John P Hastings and Benjamin Mayock present Traces. The CD and a photobook will be available for purchase at the performance.

The Natchez Trace is an old footpath running from roughly Nashville, TN to Natchez, MS. Originally used by animals (possibly to find salt licks) it was codified into a path by ancient Native Americans. Using this line through the landscape, John Hastings and Benjamin Mayock have fashioned a project that meditates on our shared stories and histories.

Traces is a radical reframing of the American landscape and how those lands affect its inhabitants. The installation, performance, and audio focus on three separate and connected, time streams: ancient North America circa 2000 BCE; the colonialist-era, as seen through the eyes of a doomed, possibly syphilitic, explorer; and the 20th century, particularly during the 1960s. These eras are collapsed together, a concatenation of peoples and times into a singularity that roils and pulses. The land itself is a character in this drama: the fertile ground known as the Black Belt Prairie is a place for humans to congregate, utilize, and eventually foul.

As a performance, Traces is a 50 minute presentation that utilizes piano, voice, guitar, songs, recorded interviews, storytelling, 3 channel video, and experimental performance to create a layered vision of the American South. The two performers are dressed in accumulated clothing from various locations throughout their journey. A piano is the central location for the performance, a stand in for one found in an old church along the trace. Recordings from the found piano become part of the overall sound design, a sonic placeholder, while the live piano is bowed, strummed, and played. The video features places, movements, and flows of histories. Taken together, we can begin to see and hear the imprints of our shared chronologies.