Finding magic following Blind Water

Singer-songwriter Adam Faucett releases fourth solo album

Little Rock-based singer-songwriter Adam Faucett is currently on tour promoting his new album, Blind Water Finds Blind Water.
Little Rock-based singer-songwriter Adam Faucett is currently on tour promoting his new album, Blind Water Finds Blind Water.

Adam Faucett, reached in Ames, Iowa, on a Tuesday morning in early April, calls his current tour “the best tour I’ve ever been on.”

“I’ve been touring — on the road — since 2007, and so this record cycle just started last month, and we’ve been on the road,” and then the Benton-raised, Little Rock-based singer-songwriter starts rattling off a list of cities where his current tour has taken him and his touring band of Jonny Dodson on bass and Will Boyd on drums.

“It’s been a really good run, man,” Faucett says. “People have been really liking the new record and coming out and supporting it. It’s actually working out.”

Faucett’s new record is Blind Water Finds Blind Water, released last month via Little Rock’s Last Chance Records, and the album is Faucett’s 10-track follow-up to his 2011 work More Like a Temple. And Blind Water Finds Blind Water is more of Faucett’s masterful electric folk music with his soulful, nearly operatic vocals, with the singer-songwriter’s powerful voice piercing through the sometimes darkly colored tracks.

Album opener “Day Drinker” is astral, methodical folk, with Faucett’s avowal that “it’s so lonesome … when you’re the only one with nothing to do,” but the album’s second track, “Melanie,” storms forward with an ominous, lo-fi rhythm and Faucett’s declaration to the song’s protagonist, “I know that we used to be friends but no more,” before Faucett delivers a line about knowing the way the world works: “You get bored and then you get hurt; well, no more.”

Blind Water Finds Blind Water is a haunting work filled with minimalist instrumentation — most songs are centered around Faucett’s guitar picking and his sometimes booming, sometimes whispered vocals — but one that is artfully forceful. Sinister-sounding? Sure, but also beautiful. The tracks, recorded over a two-year period by Darian Stribling at his Blue Chair Recording Studio in Austin, are emotionally raw, a collection of tunes both drawn from Faucett’s childhood (song titles include “Benton” and “Sparkman”), and songs colored by Faucett’s own gothic storytelling.

Personal. That’s a good word for describing Blind Water Finds Blind Water’s themes. “It just seemed like when I was writing the record a lot more personal matters were coming up,” Faucett says. “When I was writing More Like a Temple, a few personal matters were coming up that found themselves on the record. The time period of 2012 and 2013 were just some weird years. I would have had to try really hard to make a different-sounding record.”

There’s really no mystery with the tunes of Blind Water Finds Blind Water, which features album artwork of a Ouija board designed by Faucett and carved by Russellville artist Neil Harrington. The directness of the album’s 10 tracks are right there, lying out in the open, Faucett says. “I feel as though the songs kind of speak up for themselves. There’s not a whole lot of different meanings for a song saying, ‘I’m not even going to ask how long it’s been since you’ve been with somebody.’ There’s not a whole lot of other meaning in that.”

Blind Water Finds Blind Water is Faucett’s fourth solo album, following the breakup of Taught The Rabbits, a Pink Floyd and Sonic Youth-inspired group formed while Faucett was in school at Arkansas Tech University. After a sojourn in Chicago where he wrote the songs of his debut solo album and started performing as a solo artist, Faucett returned to central Arkansas and recorded The Great Basking Shark with Stribling at Blue Chair. The solo effort was released in 2007, and Show Me Magic, Show Me Out, which included Faucett’s backing band The Tall Grass (the one constant in the group is Dodson on bass), followed in 2008. Juggling a heavy touring load and songwriting, Faucett released More Like a Temple in 2011.

Another three years past before Faucett released Blind Water Finds Blind Water, but Faucett says he doesn’t expect his next break between albums to be so long. “I’m already working on the next record. I’m not sure how these new songs compare [to Blind Water Finds Blind Water]. They are probably similar to Blind Water Finds Blind Water. They are really honest songs, so they sound like me.”

Faucett already has studio time scheduled for this month and next month to work on new music. Once again, he is recording with Stribling. “I know how he works,” Faucett says of their recording relationship. “I know him well. He’s a good dude. At this point, going to somebody else would make me feel as though I’m cheating on him.

“I don’t want to wait another three years for a new album. I’ll be shooting for a year and a half or so. Two years ain’t that bad. I’m already working on it. Blind Water Finds Blind Water just came out, and she has life left in her. Things are going good with Blind Water.”

SEE THE SHOW

Singer-songwriter Adam Faucett visits White Water Tavern on April 23 with the music starting at 9:30 p.m. Also on the bill is Wooden Wand, the music of singer-songwriter James Jackson Toth, who channels experimental folk, country rock and atmospheric psychedelia into his music. His new album, Farmer’s Corner, is out May 5.

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