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Relix Magazine review of Boatmen Waiting on the Wind by the Heartifacts: The Heartifacts (Witch Doctors of the Soul) is an eclectic and esoteric band fronted by Dave Easley, a talented guitarist, pedal steel player and songwriter. Boatmen Waiting on the Wind is the Band's first CD release (it has previously released some cassettes.) The music is hard to categorize (and that's good,) but it's best described as sophisticated rock with poetic lyrics and subtle jazz undertones. Thirteen musicians and vocalists join Easley here. The songs are moody and melodic and the instrumentation lush but not slick. Latin rhythms, flickering guitar leads and sultry vocals pervade "Lover's Pantomime," while there's a more experimental nature to the exotic, "Don't Go Lejos" and the odd "Olduvai". There's an almost classical air to "Your Cruelest Blow" with it's lilting fiddle. The best cut though is the Reggae tinged "Magic Ball" with it's intelligent socio-political lyrics...the cut also features some very Garcia like lead guitar. Easley shows off his incredible pedal steel playing in the eerie instrumental, "A Visit to the Zoo"...- Mick Skidmore Downloads of this album CDs
From the Alternatives Magazine article on the Heartifacts:...Easley belongs to the Orphic line of musical artists who report to society in music from the subterranean and sub-rational lode of the unconscious whose music is intuitive, ecstatic and oracular...Easley writes intuitively, from Surrealist-style cues: dreams, alpha-state visions, automatic drawing. His experiences and readings steep in the unconscious to soak up their language and meaning...Easley's non-linear approach yields consistently potent, telling lyrics:
"The water came up high but didn't knock the lions from the seawall.
Deep into the night angry dogs gave their call
For tender charges behind the gate,
Or ancient times still resplendent in their skulls."
...Shuttling into the unconscious also enables wordplay, free association and Lewis Carroll inversions. From the Native American viewpoint, "the West was lost if the West was won"...
...Reggae, rock, salsa, blues, folk, Middle Eastern, country and more weave their way into the Heartifact's modern jazz/psychedelic core - not for novelty, but for their intrinsic, if sometimes oblique, pertinence to the material. The setting for each poem seems to choose itself in an intuitive process that Easley "can"t explain." Again, this non-conscious process has a multi-leveled effect...poignant in its beauty, truth and mystery...When genres are served straight, folklorically, they're often coupled with decidedly non-traditional, even paradoxical, material...
...What makes the Heartifacts "Witch Doctors of the Soul"? From below consciousness, the Heartifacts bring unarguable visions that bond us; from before history, the pre-patriarchal imprint of social harmony; from around the world, regional and sub-cultural rhythms and sounds. Their medicine music shrieks, whispers, laments, caresses, warns celebrates and reveals. And makes you feel good. - Judy Beck
Another local press review of Time Ebbing: 3 Now 4 have evolved into one of New Orleans' premier modern jazz groups. Led by Astral Project bassist James Singleton, the quartet has made a name for itself by consistently providing us with a fresh look at the avante garde jazz movement, with a New Orleans twist. 3 Now 4's latest offering, Time Ebbing (featuring Singleton on Bass, Dave Easley on pedal steel guitar, Nicholas Simion on sax and bass clarinet, and Jeffrey Boudreaux on drums), flows from periods of mellow, groovy wanderings reminiscient of John McLaughlin fused with a Klezmer band, to periodic outbursts of frenzied bass clarinet improvisations a la Eric Dolphy. One thing that was notably present in Time Ebbing was 3 Now 4's dig deeper and deeper into that groove while also exploring as many different forms of expression as they could apparently muster. This is one of the most exciting New Orleans albums that I have heard in a long time. - Jeff sladkus
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