“Folk music isn’t something you listen to. Folk music is something you do.”
The Vashon Sessions is a collaborative music project whose goal is to bring together some of the Pacific Northwest’s best folk musicians to create something new. Each summer, a dozen or so musicians gather in the little house on Vashon Island, which has been converted overnight into a recording studio. Some of the musicians have known each other for decades; others have never met before. There is no set list, no prior rehearsal, no production schedule. The musicians’ goal is simple: in the course of a weekend, they will make an album. “The guiding principle of the Vashon Sessions is that if you put a bunch of great musicians together, they’ll make great music,” says Alex Sturbaum, founder and producer of the Vashon Sessions. “A lot of these genres - bluegrass, old-time, maritime, Celtic- have enough in common that even though we come from different musical backgrounds, we’re all speaking the same language.” The Vashon Sessions aims to record and produce the music that is at its best in living rooms and kitchens, to capture the joy that musicians feel in playing together, and to explore the ways that different genres of traditional and folk music can interface with each other to create new and exciting sounds - in short, to capture the best of contemporary folk music. |