Hillstomp - Portland Folk Festival
Whoa Hillstomp! How lucky is Portland to have such an incredible, innovative and unique band to call it’s own?!!
There is no one way to describe the style of music of which comes from duo Henry Christian on guitar and John Johnson on buckets-yes, buckets….and other various seemingly ordinary objects turned musical instruments: chains, pots, spoons, a washboard, drums and the aformentioned buckets. Reading through their own descriptions is a barrage of genres: “backwoods American music”, "do-it-yourself hill country blues stomp”, “North Mississippi trance blues”, “Appalachia”, “punkbilly”…yeah, a barrage, and yet it’s exactly what they sound like, a barrage in the best possible way,
While song titles didn’t make it into the notes, I was too busy being mesmerized by the sounds and showmanship in front of me. There was no way to guess what was happening next, but there were moments of a chain being dragged across a metallic sheet making the most beautiful sound, singing into the banjo, which you’d think doesn’t do anything, but it does make some crazy muffled lyrical genuius, and then, then came the megaphone! The megaphone was the tour de force of the set. Having music belted out through a megaphone simply stated, needs to be on your radar of things to do.
Hillstomp needs to be experienced i n person. Guaranteed, you will be captivated.
For me, Hillstomp was a super cool surprise on night one and truly can’t wait to see them again.
photos by Julia Varga
