Steve Gunn + James Elkington

Event information

STEVE GUNN is a New York-based guitarist and songwriter. With a career spanning nearly fifteen years, Steve has produced volumes of critically acclaimed solo, duo, and ensemble recordings on labels such as Matador Records, Three Lobed Recordings, Paradise of Bachelors, and RVNG. His albums represent milestones of contemporary guitar-driven material, and forward thinking songwriting. Steve has steadily processed his inspirations into a singular, virtuosic stream. Close listening reveals the influence of blues, folk, ecstatic free jazz, and psych in his continually unfolding output.

'Music for Writers', the first Gunn album under only his name since 2021, takes those influences to a new level. It is an instrumental album (released this August by Three Lobed Recordings), based around guitar, synths and more, it leads the listener to tightly and deeply focus on minute changes and variations in style. It is a masterpiece in fragile, small-scale world-building that occupies a unique space within Gunn's wider discography.

https://stevegunn.bandcamp.com/music

JAMES ELKINGTON moved to the United States in the late ’90s from his native England with the intention of making himself absolutely essential to the Chicago music scene. Twenty years later he’s contributed to a staggering volume of records and shows and projects both in Chicagoland (see Jeff Tweedy; Tortoise; Eleventh Dream Day; Brokeback) and far from it (see Richard Thompson; Laetitia Sadier; Michael Chapman, Steve Gunn, Nap Eyes). The 2017 release of the wonderful ‘Wintres Woma’, his first so-called solo album, seemed to be a logical, healthy respite from assisting with the creative needs of others that would allow him to serve his own. The record certainly sounded as though James found in it every reason to be satisfied - among much else, it effectively reconciled his personal and musical mongreltude as a child of Britain and a man of America, and thus could return his focus to bettering other folks’ records. James has since released several albums on Paradise of Bachelors and No Quarter, including last year’s triumphant collab with Nathan Salsburg entitled ‘All Gist’.

https://www.jameselkington.com/