Cameron Knowler & Eli Winter

Friends, roadmates, and instrumental guitarists Cameron and Eli are putting an album out tomorrow on American Dreams Records. The record, influenced by a wintry tour in the Trans-Pecos region of Texas, features six transcendent originals, and three interpretations of “folk” songs (using that word loosely – “Cumberland App” is a post-modern arrangement of Cumberland Gap, and Eli’s rendition of Michael Chapman’s “Caddo Lake” with imaginative accompaniments by Cameron is truly stunning).

Recording a record together may seem like a natural and intuitive decision – but it was not. Cameron found the idea insurmountable but Eli convinced him that it could work – and it does, beautifully. Cameron’s bluegrass-informed flat-picking and Eli’s experimentalist finger style guitar work together to create intricate, sophisticated harmonies that are a dream for both passive and active listening – pleasant and extremely pretty, but quite involved and thoughtful.

The nine songs on Anticipation feature more than a few one-take tracks, and there’s a largely improvisational, spontaneous nature not only in the songs themselves but in the fact that they recorded the album in a single session. Some people simply work best on a deadline.

Thanks so much to Cameron and Eli for sharing these deep insights into the making of the record. If you haven’t yet, pre-order Anticipation on Bandcamp out 3/12 on American Dreams Records. Make sure to scoop that limited edition bundle!