Zak Trojano - Wolf Trees (2018)

WOLF TREES, the third album from Zak Trojano, is a move towards high definition from a songwriter who’s pictorial lyrics are lauded by many for their vivid and cinematic imagery. While recently gaining wider recognition from audiences across the country, Trojano has been known for some time by the best in the business as a writer who “…lights up the darkness and gives it definition.” -Chris Smither. From the very first driving notes of “Kid’s Got Heart” and early scene setting lines (‘the poets take it on the chin for the bells that ring right through you’), Trojano draws the curtain, with able hands, on a production that provides shape and a deeper motion to the screenshot temperament of life in the modern world.

It was the exploration of solo performance that lead to the guiding aesthetic of WOLF TREES. Trojano opted to leave behind the lush string and horn arrangements of his last record (Yesterday’s Sun) in favor of a true solo album on which he plays and sings every note. All guitars were tuned to a low C modal tuning, and sent through various amplifiers to combine their acoustic and electric properties into a large, dark, and open sound. With the help of longtime friend and producer David Goodrich (Chris Smither, Jeffrey Foucault), and engineer Justin Pizzoferratto (Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth) they captured a record delicately balanced between the acoustic intimacy of a coffeehouse and the wild volume of a midnight rock club.

Zak Trojano is a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, a finger-style guitar player, a fly-fisherman, and a beer drinker. He watches more than he talks, the guy at the end of the bar nursing a drink while the afternoon light angles in, letting the conversation pile up around him like snowfall. He grew up in New Hampshire, outside of town in a cabin built by his parents. His father was a drummer who held down a regular country gig, and nights after work he would loosen his tie and show his son the finer points of Ginger Baker and Elvin Jones. In New Hampshire they drove around in trucks, and Prine and Dylan cassettes showed up in most of those trucks. Zak made Eagle Scout, got his knots down. Then it was college and out, wandering the country from the desert Southwest to Great Plains until he ran out of money, washing windows to work up the bus fare home. After a while it seemed like he ought to write some songs, and he did: heavy songs with a light touch; an AM radio throwback voice and an intricate finger-style technique framed by a drummer’s rhythm.

WOLF TREES is a record with live performance at it’s heart. The songs were written as movements in a larger piece, with textures and themes resurfacing in longer arcs to bind the whole together. A wolf tree is a stoic figure – a passed over remanent of a distant, wilder world, where there was more space between things. Trojano has woven nine songs into an album that’s very form calls attention to the thin rapidity of modern life. Like admiring the forrest view from atop a white pine cell tower, or losing yourself in the colors of a flatscreen sunset, WOLF TREES dares us to hold tight to current beauty while we remember a different time.