Bruce Langhorne Soundtrack to The Hired Hand (Dir ) 1971 Blast First [petite] (catalogue number PTYT 02)

including the same sessions for ’s Langhorne has gone on to work on various first Columbia lp in 1961 where a young, then- soundtracks, most notably with Jonathan Demme unsigned played harmonica. This on several occasions, and his music is to be found contact with Dylan led him to play on the sessions, on the soundtracks for Melvin And Howard, Stay albeit mostly for Dylan’s 1963 career-breaking lp, Hungry and Outlaw Blues. The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, which marked Dylan’s These days, Bruce Langhorne lives in Venice first attempts at mixing folk and rock. Langhorne California where he also makes a fine hot sauce to also played on the hastily withdrawn non-lp rock his own recipe (“Brother Bru Bru”), which is single, Mixed Up Confusion, a less successful distributed throughout America by the experiment for Dylan with the Sun Records sound. appropriately named “Cosmic Chile” company. Langhorne’s finest hour with Dylan is Now in his sixties, Langhorne is still involved with throughout the Bringing It All Back Home lp, and music, spending much of time teaching in drum most tellingly on and Love circle workshops around the USA. Minus Zero/No Limit. The other defining track is Mr This album will be his first “solo” release. Tambourine Man, which Dylan notes in the booklet The Hired Hand, featuring Peter Fonda, Warren BRUCE LANGHORNE was one of the most to the Biograph Box Set: “Mr Tambourine Man, I Oates and Verna Bloom, was Fonda’s directorial significant session guitarists to emerge in the think, was inspired by Bruce Langhorne. Bruce debut and was made directly after he had shot to early years of folk rock at the start of the sixties. was playing with me on a bunch of the early fame in Easy Rider. The film was not well received, He is best known for playing on some of Bob records. And he had this gigantic tambourine. It having been marketed as an action movie. Fonda Dylan’s most ground breaking records, notably was like, really big. It was as big as a wagon comments: “Those marketing guys just didn’t 1965’s Bringing It All Back Home, Dylan’s wheel. He was playing, and this vision of him want to see me on a horse, moving slow!” The transitional excursion from folk into folk rock. playing this tambourine just stuck in my mind. He studio buried it after a week or so. Langhorne did, however, play with countless other was one of those characters…” The maverick UK-based film distributor musicians during the sixties, including Richie He worked with Dylan again for the Hamish McAlpine of Tartan Films had always been Havens, , on Richard and Mimi soundtrack to Pat Garret & Billy The Kid. Bruce a fan of the film and, along with Martin Scorsese Farina’s two Vanguard lps, Eric Anderson, Buffy Langhorne’s session work was overtaken by (who utilised his own film foundation), The Hired Sainte-Marie, on ’s Farewell Angelina regular work on soundtracks by the early Hand finally was restored for theatrical release to and, most memorably in conveying Langhorne’s seventies and with co-running an L.A. recording Fonda’s original cut and was released this year on own exquisite style, on Tom Rush’s The Circle studio. The score to The Hired Hand was his first DVD by Sundance Film (in the USA) and Tartan Game. soundtrack commission (previously, he had Films. He produced fellow traveller Ramblin’ Jack written music to accompany adverts), a full score Martin Scorsese says of the film: “…it is an Elliot’s Young Brigham in 1968 and has since done with all the music composed AND performed by Anti-Western, a reinvention…an extraordinarily considerable soundtrack work. In all that time, Langhorne. His mood music beautifully enhances a delicate and beautiful picture”. Langhorne had never released an lp under his own film that is by turn trippy, surreal, downbeat and Empire, Uncut and Hotdog, popular film name but, finally, his mesmerizing score for Peter sad, the images underpinned by Langhorne’s magazines, each gave the re-released movie four Fonda’s revisionist Western and directorial debut melancholy score using , tonal effects, stars. The Hired Hand is to be released in late October on fiddle, and sitar. Blast First [petite]. His score predates by nearly 30 years the MEDIA CONTACT: Langhorne’s distinctive style evolved through work of David “Papa M” Pajo and Will “Bonnie MICK HOUGHTON @ BRASSNECK his use of an acoustic guitar with a pick up, fed Prince Billy” Oldham and even manages to match [email protected] through a Fender Twin Reverb amp that he Ry Cooder’s sublime Paris, Texas score for its TEL: (44) 207 226 3399 originally borrowed from another renowned winsome evocation of high plains drifting, FAX : (44) 207 226 7557 guitarist, Sandy Bull. Langhorne’s sound is a blend lonesome cowpoke, soul music. Indeed Pajo, on of the acoustic and electric, using a tremolo effect seeing the film recently, has become an DISTRIBUTION: CARGO UK (EXCLUDING AMERICA) in time with the song, a technique influenced by enthusiastic fan of Langhorne’s work. Roebuck Staples of The Staple Singers. The Hired Hand soundtrack was recorded on WWW.BLASTFIRSTPETITE.COM His unique minimalist picking style is also only two tracks, with Langhorne “bouncing down” shaped by him having a foreshortened finger on the overdubs and therefore mixing as he went one hand (strangely a theme that is obliquely along, a method that allows for no mistakes. It’s all echoed in the script of The Hired Hand). the more impressive in that it utilises 40 different A regular in the burgeoning instruments to orchestrate this virtuoso scene of the early sixties, Langhorne worked first tumbleweed symphony, each instrument carrying as an accompanist in clubs like Gerdes and The its own character and subtlety, evoking the “real Bitter End and, subsequently, in the studio, west” of the late 1800s.