Last year I spent a couple of weeks in Asheville at a residency program run by Lamplight & Drop of Sun Studios. Every morning I walked from the gallery I was staying at to a different point along the French Broad River, which runs through the middle of town and recorded it on microphones attached to the bill of the hat that I wear every day. I had headphones in my ears playing folk and country tunes about rivers and loss; I sang along and mumbled to myself. The angle was that if I somehow closed myself off to the soundscape I was moving through, I could open up some kind of new method of vocalization.

For the second half of this piece, these binaural walks are layered on top of each other, aligned at the moment I opened the door of the gallery directly onto the Haywood Road. The first half is a room resonance study, something claustrophobic. Collaged throughout are sounds I picked up during my time in Asheville: hydrophone recordings of the French Broad, microtonal instrumentals built by Ben Hjertmann, a piano owned by Will Oldham that now lives in a quiet dive in town, a synthesizer loaned to me by Ryan Jobes, snippets of quiet and loud.

I performed a live version of this piece on my 35th birthday at Lamplight. I’ve continued this walking practice and it’s proved fruitful. This is the first step in what I hope will be a long-lasting approach.