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Dirt Bike Vacation is a rather special recording. Charles ‘Poppy Bob’ Walker was an ‘amateur’ guitarist who made these analog recordings in the mid-eighties, using just a single-track Marantz field recorder, while working a regular job as a meat packer in Yuma, Arizona. Accomplished guitarist and archivist Cameron Knowler came across some dusty tapes of the recordings in Yuma County Library and, also hailing from Yuma, felt an affinity and a responsibility to unearth and release Charles’ music.
And it really does feel fortunate for the rest of us that he did. With the lo-fi fuzz of the taped sounds, Dirt Bike Vacation feels very much like the time capsule it in many ways is. Across fifteen miniature tracks totalling just twenty-two minutes, the album juxtaposes and blends small, beautifully played guitar instrumentals with field recordings of the mundane events in a person’s life. These snippets of sound seem to add body to the music; Driving to Town is a minute-long piece of truck engine sound that moves via a reverby warble into Continuation to Moon Doctor, a spare guitar piece evoking the dust from the wheels. The picking is super-minimal, but there are hints of jazz in the few notes heard that shift into a more obvious blues-style lick on the following song, Airbase Blues, a front porch-style piece with sounds of aircraft flying overhead.
To some, it may seem strange to be so excited about such a brief, seemingly untrained recording, but there is magic present all the way across this set, and it is a real lesson in modest understatement. Charles may have been considered an amateur player, but his notes have plenty of life, and the progressions are beautiful. Listen to the slow and quite melancholy playing on Goodbye YMCA move into Train Over Main Span, a minute-long recording of a train station. Each works with the other to create a stronger emotion of loss and longing, with just a question of adventure and optimism.
This is reinforced by Signs for Ehrenberg, a brief travelling piece with a bit of drive and a seemingly broader outlook. Granite Bluffs is positive in a more ethereal way, with an ascending arpeggio guitar line bringing in pauses and low notes to counterbalance a light and wistful tune. Sunset in the Gilas is even better; the longest piece here at a mammoth two minutes thirty, it is patient in its delivery of a sombre, pensive tune, with birdsong and dogs barking in the distance. This album feels timeless and timely. It is quietly groundbreaking while containing some of the most modest guitar music you will hear. Dirt Bike Vacation is wonderful; it’s probably my favourite release of the year.
Dirt Bike Vacation (25th October 2024) Worried Songs
Bandcamp: https://worriedsongs.bandcamp.com/album/dirt-bike-vacation
