‘His writings are like ice sheets of diamonds’: the hoaxers who wrote ancient religious hymns Ed Askew | Country music

Meis a grainy video clip from 1986, the flamboyant-haired troubadour strums a lute-like instrument, a harmonica under his chin, gentle waves delivering a voice full of longing. The play, which was uploaded on YouTube in 2010, has only produced a few comments, but try each one (“The Chief Editor!”; “pure gold”) and you begin to understand the passion that Ed Askew – the US poet, artist and singer – has inspired over the years.

“He was living in a world of people who didn’t fit in,” Askew’s partner, Jerry David DeCicca, says of the openness of his friend, whose musical career began with getting a 10-string knot as a teenager in the 1950s and ended with his death a year ago, at age 84, after being released at the end of his album. this month.

Its creator, DeCicca, first fell for what he calls Askew’s “oneness” in the early 00s. But in recent years, he has captured the hearts of many contemporary musicians: from Sharon Van Etten and Bill Callahan, both of whom contributed their music to The Final Painting, to Glasgow psych-folk band Trembling Bells who brought Askew to London’s Cafe Oto in 2017 to singer-songwriter Steve in America Steve. gigs in the early 2010s. “I toured with him in 2011 and felt his Jesus vibes,” says Callahan. “Jesus has a little mixed bag.” For Callahan, there’s a “primitive element” in Askew’s music, which “makes it feel like the world is changing before your eyes as his music plays. There’s a sacred aspect to it — piano chords built like sheets of diamond ice.”

From the smell of marigolds to the death of Kennedy, what characterizes Askew’s songwriting is what he sees as a flâneur, which evokes his voice and triumphs. In 2011, Askew mentioned his early influences as Kurt Weill, John Cage and Erik Satie, while others have tried to compare Askew with the likes of Robert Wyatt, Gaslight-era Bob Dylan or the Incredible String Band. The truth is that his baroque music has more in common with the multi-angle paintings of Cézanne – an artist he greatly admires – or the writings of Joe Brainard mixed with the poetry of Lorca, than it has with any of his music.

Askew’s song Moon in the Mind appeared on the soundtrack of Netflix’s Baby Reindeer in 2024, a welcome and unexpected inclusion in the final year of his life, says DeCicca. But for the most part, Askew wasn’t concerned with fame or business. “He wasn’t wired that way,” says DeCicca; instead, Askew focused on writing his best songs every day.

He showed the beginning of beatnik from the beginning. Born in Connecticut in 1940, Askew studied photography at the Yale School of Art in the early 1960s, before moving to New York for a short time, playing a gig in the “basket house” music scene of the East Village in 1967. It was here that he attracted the attention of the New York record company ESP-Disk – usually Sun. his 1968 debut (retitled Ask the Unicorn), but he soon dropped the follow-up to Little Eyes, which wasn’t released until 2002.

Over the course of his career, Askew released nearly 50 albums between records, classics, live albums and solo releases, “and some unreleased stuff from his closet,” says DeCicca. This was mainly a commercial written at home and self-employed who are paid by painting houses and teaching art, including social assistance for a while – before returning to the studio in 2011. Regarding the song on the new record called Someone, with Callahan on vocals, DeCicca wonders if Askew is waiting in the office of social security when he calls 6 and the number “Call” and “4621” is the number: his regular delivery. “I think a lot of people would write a song like this that would be about their depression but Ed’s perspective is very different,” says DeCicca. But who knows if it’s really about social security, that’s the appeal of Askew’s words.

Jay Pluck, Askew’s best friend and collaborator, describes Askew’s pioneering writing of psych-folk songs in the 1960s. “It was brave for him to write openly gay love songs,” he tells me. And yet: “For many years, I noticed that no one knew that I was gay and I didn’t know why – there. and gay love songs on Ask the Unicorn and Little Eyes. ” Pluck mentions a later song by Lamar, recorded on a cassette tape in the late 90s, in which Askew “says he likes it in a Greek paean”.

Would Askew describe himself as a gay songwriter, I wonder? “I think he will,” Pluck replies – before taking a breather. “Even so he he can to be controversial. If you ask him if he thinks he’s a great gay artist, he’ll say no. But if you leave out ‘gay’ he’d be like, what?” Pluck laughs. For Askew, his sexuality was just who he was, as much a part of his music as anything else.

Yet for Askew, “like many obscure musicians, there was no Sugar Man Hunt explosion,” says DeCicca, referring to the 2012 record that catapulted Mexican-American singer Rodríguez to obscurity and late fame. “What made Ed slowly find an audience around the world wasn’t one incident that looked good; it was that he lived, day in and day out, like a real artist, sharing good crumbs for the public to know.”

It’s a slow-burning legend in the age of the algorithm, and a fitting one for a musician who lived his life: “I sing for you to hear,” he once sang.

“There’s no experimentation in his music,” says Callahan. “It just is.”