Israel Nash Gripka - Barn Doors & Concrete Floors

A Record, a Hay Barn, and a Trip to the Country Israel Nash Gripka's follow up album to his successful debut release New York Town, is not only a body of real songs that sound, smell, walk, and talk like vintage itself, but it alsocarries a title that is as descriptive as it is pragmatic. Deprived of metaphor and literary devices, Gripka's new release, Barn Doors and Concrete Floors means exactly what it says. The record was recorded in an old, dusty hay barn in upstate New York (with concrete floors), on a farm estate deeply settled in the Catskill Mountains.Produced by Steve Shelley, drummer for Sonic Youth, the album was intended to be an escape from the steel and grit of New York City and a move towards a country refuge where time, and people, move more slowly. Harkening back to a day when this was more common i.e. Neil Young, The Band, Bob Dylan- the vision was to have a studio that wasn't a studio at all. To capture sounds that no other place could create. To throw away clocks and avoid set hours.To eat around a big table for dinner and sit around a warm fire pit at night. In short the idea was to create an environment where nothing else really mattered except the gathering of friends making music in the simplest of settings.The 11 track record plays like a vinyl relic stored in the belly of your father's basement. You put it on, you flip it, flip it again, and then once more the first time you pry it from the onion sleeve. Barn Doors & Concrete Floors serves to kick with classic Rock N Roll grit, yet it pines with Americana and Roots heart. When artists make records that are unencumbered by regimented schedules, turn off contact from the outside world, and isolate themselves in the arms of the country, you hear it and you hear it loud and clear on Barn Doors & Concrete Floors.