With Local Folklore, Guitarists Cameron Mizell and Charlie Rauh Offer a Feast
for the Ears and Songs for the Heart
Local Folklore—to be released by Destiny Records on October 29, 2021—takes listeners down familiar roads but ends up in fresh destinations, each with its own inhabitants, lessons, and stories to tell
“The guitar playing of Charlie Rauh and Cameron Mizell is both sensitive and virtuosic, weaving together haunting phrases with precision and grace.” – The Museum of Americana
In their book, Metaphors We Live By, linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson propose that human thought is largely metaphorical. Given that our lives are made of feelings, experiences, and practices, metaphors serve as necessary tools for understanding these immaterial prerequisites of the human condition. The authors call this process “imaginative rationality”—a fitting term for the contradictory nature of our existence, which relies equally on that which can be held and that which slips through our fingers. It also happens to aptly describe the music written, produced, and performed by guitarists Cameron Mizell and Charlie Rauh, whose latest recording stands poised to dive into a fresh pool of narrative prowess. If the opening track, “Local Folklore,” from which this album borrows its title, is any indication, listeners can expect to regard a canvas onto which personal mythologies drip from acoustic brushes as organically as ripe fruit falls from a branch. With a poetic edge that evokes Ralph Towner and a homegrown fortitude that tips its hat in the direction of Pat Metheny, these sounds ensure us that we are exactly where we need to be.
Photo by Courtney Sultan
This is no small feat, considering that the musicians recorded these ten meticulously rendered tracks remotely until a greater whole was achieved. Notes Rauh of the repertoire, “These songs take inspiration from the understated stories we keep alive through sharing memories, experiences, and wonder with our communities.” Mizell shares this sentiment: “This album is especially personal to us. The songs are inspired by close relationships and the people who help us get through challenging times, whether that’s our families, friends, neighbors, or each other.” Such a message, though perhaps more prescient than ever in a world indelibly marked by an invisible virus (itself made understandable only by the grace of metaphor), is as timeless as the melodies it inspired.
Hence, the free and easy charm of “Old Sardis Road,” a weathered tune by Mizell co-written with friends Russell Holland and Drew Pitcher that epitomizes the Americana spirit at hand. Other Mizell originals this time around include “Greenwood Waltz,” inspired by two of his students, and “On Sundays I Walk Alone,” born out of the ritualistic walks that kept his mind clear throughout the pandemic. In addition to its beauty, it’s an artful example of the delicate electronic hues woven throughout the album. Rauh, too, offers his fair share of stolen summers in the form of “Arolen,” a melody he used to hum as a child growing up in Alabama, and “A Single Cloth,” which takes its name from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Book of Hours and was written in celebration of a close friend’s wedding.
These influences and more speak to the duo’s organic rapport. Says Rauh of playing with Mizell, “In addition to just having a great time, I always feel pushed to try new approaches to the instrument as well as songwriting because his creativity is so deeply personal.” And Mizell of playing with Rauh, “We’ve played together so much over the years that I sometimes believe I can anticipate what he’ll do, only to be surprised by something new, yet still so uniquely Charlie. Our shared value of authenticity has driven our musical relationship to a very honest place on this album, and I am a better guitarist for it.”
If much of this was already obvious on their last project, What We Have In Common, it is alive in spades throughout this follow-up.
The album’s vital organs are housed in Pardonsburg. The aptly named southern Virginia town plays host to the creations of writer (and Rauh’s sister) Christina Rauh Fishburne, whose novel-in-progress lends inspiration to a handful of cinematic turns. Fishburne is no stranger here, as she contributed the cover art to Rauh’s EP, The Silent Current from Within, for which her brother also wrote tunes inspired by her poetry. On Local Folklore, one encounters a range of emotional portraits, from the war-trodden hearts of “Jed’s Theme” and “A Forgiving Sort Of Place” to the antic touch of “Petey and Kyle” and the escapist “Rita’s Theme.” These vignettes prove just how intimately nostalgia and trauma are connected and how Fishburne’s narrative constituted a vital third presence to the proceedings.
Regardless of where one sets their feet in these streets, the unforced musicianship of our guides leaves plenty of bread crumbs to follow. Their uncanny ability to make real life feel like a dream and fictional places feel like home is the wonder of Local Folklore and its creators. As artists who flow with time instead of against it, they know that the umbilical cords of our lives are only truly severed when our last breath runs its blade across them.
Photo by Courtney Sultan
About Cameron Mizell
Brooklyn-based guitarist and composer Cameron Mizell, has been part of the diverse New York City music scene for over a decade, performing in a wide variety of genres from experimental improvisation to bluegrass musicals, salsa bands to solo jazz guitar. He has become an in-demand sideman and session guitarist due to his chameleonic musicianship, professionalism, and easygoing nature. As a band leader and solo artist, Mizell has released eight albums in the past 17 years, ranging from jazz-funk to Americana to avant-garde experimentalism, and has collaborated with or produced artists on dozens more recordings. His latest solo effort, a meditative album titled The Order of Things, is a cinematic trip through ambient and post-rock textures, melodies, and improvisations. Recorded in March and April of 2020, shortly after New York City’s COVID-19 lockdown procedures were put in place, The Order of Things was created to find balance and calm through slow, purposeful, meditative music. Said New York Music Daily of the result: “Quietly and efficiently, Mizell has put together a remarkably tuneful, eclectic, understatedly cinematic body of work. In a world overpopulated by guys who play a million notes where one would do, Mizell’s economical, purposeful style stands out even more.”
About Charlie Rauh
“Charlie Rauh plays guitar with a quiet intensity, each note and chord ringing with purpose,” writes Acoustic Guitar Magazine. “Rauh gives a gentle reminder that playing soft and slow can be more impactful than loud and fast.” With these words, we find ourselves in the company of a musician whose imprint is as delicate as it is indelible. From his humble beginnings growing up in Huntsville, Alabama, to the daunting New York City music scene of which he has since become a part, Rauh has dedicated his life to extolling the wonders of sonic art. After cutting his teeth as a sideman on everything from pop, rock, folk, and R&B to country, electronic music, and jazz, he made his solo debut with Viriditas, welcoming listeners into his distinctive folk-inspired atmospheres. He draws further from the world of poetry, ranging from Anna Akhmatova to the Brontës. The latter were the theme of his 2020 album, The Bluebell, which brought about a new chapter of his introspective approach. As a support musician, Rauh works with a variety of artists across several genres, both as a touring sideman and a studio musician and arranger. He is currently signed to Austin-based label Destiny Records.
1. Local Folklore
2. Petey & Kyle
3. Old Sardis Road
4. Jed's Theme
5. A Forgiving Sort Of Place
6. Rita's Theme
7. Greenwood Waltz
8. Arolen
9. A Single Cloth
10. On Sundays I Walk Alone
Cameron Mizell: Acoustic and Electric Guitar
Charlie Rauh: Acoustic Guitar
Produced by Cameron Mizell and Charlie Rauh
Recorded by Cameron Mizell and Charlie Rauh in Brooklyn, NY from November 2020 to July 2021
Mixed by Cameron Mizell
Mastered by Charlie Rauh
Album cover painting by Ava Joshi
CD Design by Ben Walker
