Liam Grant

Liam Grant is a New England guitarist with a punk ethos, cut from the American Primitive cloth. The restless guitar explorations, modal epics, and driving uptempo rags recall the likes of Grant's pedagogue, Takoma Records, and the path that was paved by his forebears John Fahey, Robbie Basho, Peter Walker, Max Ochs and later Glenn Jones, Steffen Basho-Junghans, Jack Rose, and others. Bridging that past Grant evokes the pith of the landscape in which he was raised. Personal instrumental memoirs and ruminations on the banks of the Merrimack River. Amoskeag. And the place where the waters flow around it. Salmon tails up the falls and black pearls from the river. The exodus to Stratton-Eustis and the last night on Dead River before the great flood. "Liam Grant’s latest 'Prodigal Son' lands on VHF like a lightning strike, a second album that digs deep into the American primitive guitar vein while cranking the distortion and letting the tape hiss sing. “Palmyra” snarls with lap steel grit, “Salmon Tails Up The River” unfurls a 13-minute 12-string epic of road-worn heft, and “Old Country Rock” kicks up a fiddle-and-banjo dust storm—together, they’re a rough-hewn love letter to the wild, unpolished heart of the instrument." -- New Commute