Bill Frisell "Disfarmer - musical portraits from Herber Springs" live at NDR 2011

Bill Frisell (git)
Greg Leisz (pedal steel git, dobro)
Viktor Krauss (b)
Carrie Rodriguez (viol, git)

recorded live at Rolf-Liebermann- Studio, NDR, Hamburg, March 18, 2011

1. Disfarmer Theme (Frisell)
2. Lonely Man (Frisell)
3. Lost, night (Frisel)
4. Farmer (Frisell)
5. Focus (Frisell)
6. Peter Miller's Discovery (Frisell)
7. That's alright Mama (Arthur Crudup)
8. Exposed (Frisell)
9. The Wizard (Frisell)
10. Think (Frisell)
11. I am not a farmer (Frisell)
12. Arkansas (Part 2) (Frisell)
13. I'm so lonesome I could cry (Hank Williams)

Bill Frisell launched an 11-city European tour featuring the music of his last Nonesuch album, Disfarmer, with this concert in Hamburg, Germany. Joining him on tour are steel-guitar player Greg Leisz, bassist Viktor Krauss, and violinist Carrie Rodriquez. In the multimedia piece, inspired by the life, work, and subjects of eccentric photographer Mike Disfarmer, projected images of Disfarmer's portraits illuminate Frisell's musical perspectives on this fascinating character.

The late Michael Disfarmer was an odd, curmudgeonly character in the rural community of Heber Springs, Arkansas, who, despite his anti-social character, chose to record the stark images of his fellow townspeople, during the 1940s and '50s, in cheap black-and-white photographic portraits. Decades after the photographer’s passing, a cache of work made by this solitary and oft-reviled man was rediscovered, and he has come to be regarded as an important outsider artist. Among the many drawn to his plain yet deeply evocative pictures was Chuck Helm, Director of the Performing Arts at the Wexner Center in Columbus, Ohio, who introduced guitarist and composer Bill Frisell to Disfarmer’s oeuvre on the hunch that Frisell might be inspired by it.