louisville, kentucky's nathan salsburg is a folklorist, producer, and presenter of vernacular music for east village radio, the drag city imprint twos and fews, and the alan lomax archive, among other outlets. with his first solo record as a performer - entitled 'affirmed', after the 1978 winner of horse racing's triple crown - he enters a wholly new interaction with the corpus of american (and british) musical folklore. the album, seven original instrumentals and one trad arrangement, is a startlingly diverse synthesis of guitar traditions - from gary davis to sam mcgee; peter lang to nic jones - refracted through a compositional sensibility long on melodic adventurousness and short on repetition and drone, those shibboleths of the american primitives. 'affirmed' is a remarkably confident, emotional debut by one of the most original and gifted young guitarists playing today.
