Count Richard Buckner In On This One: Kenneth Patchen

This week, singer/songwriter Richard Buckner releases Our Blood (Merge), his first new music since 2006’s Meadow. The nine-track LP was recorded by Buckner at his upstate New York home studio with pedal-steel guitarist Buddy Cage (New Riders Of The Purple Sage) and drummer Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth). Buckner kicks off a co-headlining tour with labelmate David Kilgour (the Clean) on August 16 in Los Angeles. In the meantime, Buckner will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.

Buckner: Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972) is an artist who is all-encompassing for anyone searching for an experience that touches literature, visual images, music and politics. As a writer, his work influenced the artists that defined the Beat movement. His books, such as his last, Wonderings, combine writings, drawings and paintings that use each other to an infinite effect. 1959’s Kenneth Patchen Reads With Jazz In Canada is a recording different from the other readings-with-jazz from the period in that his performances are more like arrangements with the music as opposed to others that seemed to be readings over music as a backdrop. He was a pacifist with realist political views that were outside of most mainstream appreciation. His inspiration to me is inside, outside and constantly charging.

Video after the jump.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rkb6km6YuXM