Twenty-twenty may be over, but its sights and sounds will linger for years to come. Just ask Racine singer-songwriter Andy Warren Jepson, whose new album, Main St., was written and recorded in the midst of the tumultuous year.
“I wrote these songs between January and July of 2020,” Jepson says. “I recorded it all in my apartment on Main Street in Racine, Wisconsin from July to November. I know it goes without saying that this year was filled with fear, pain, confusion, disappointment, and loss. This is worth remembering when listening because I believe everything going on around me at this time informed and influenced the songs I wrote. In the beginning of ‘The Sound Of Sound’ you can hear sirens in the background. This was the actual sound of police sirens racing outside my window during the protests downtown following the Jacob Blake shooting in Kenosha. The microphones just happened to catch them in the way they did—creating a vivid image of what was happening as this album was being recorded.”
The rest of Main St. is like that, too—sparse, ghostly, full of pain and longing (“There’s Someone In,” gorgeous closer “Hermitage”), with the occasional bout of psychedelic introspection (“Blue Foot”) and/or descent into madness (“Go To Hell”). Then there’s leadoff track “Willkommen,” which comes complete with an appropriately haunting video:
The video’s found-footage imagery comes from a 1963 experimental film of Alwin Nikolais’ ballet “Totem.” As for Turner, you can find more of his music—both solo and with the group Sun Silo—at Green Thumb Press.