If you're looking for "I Spys," dating or LTRs, this is your scene.
View ProfilesPublished February 28, 2024 at 10:00 a.m.
I'm a sucker for a good musical trope. Someone cut a deal with the devil to become a better musician? I'm so there. Oh, damn, two singer-songwriters broke up and are trading breakup albums? Happy Valentine's Day to me. A dis record between two rappers who were once best friends? I lap that shit up.
One of my favorite tropes — and a long-held fantasy of mine — is the old songwriter-goes-into-seclusion scenario. When I was younger, I used to fantasize about pulling a Brian Wilson or Syd Barrett and going full Howard Hughes for a while. I'd write music in some secret cabin off the grid, eating K-rations and playing guitar by candlelight, drinking lots of water and taking mushrooms all day. Then I grew up and learned more about Wilson, Barrett and Hughes and decided all of that was a terrible idea that would end up with me surrounded by jars of piss and shaving my eyebrows or something.
The urge to make music away from society never left me, though. As a certified extrovert, I don't think I'd actually make some kind of killer album so much as lose my mind and invent a fake religion — or, worse yet, start a podcast called "Mountain Mania." Still, I like to fantasize and, when I can, live vicariously through others who are more suited to being bard hermits.
Enter Avi Salloway. Last year, the musician wrapped up a national tour with his indie-rock and world-music outfit, Billy Wylder, and promptly retreated to the Middlebury Gap, a mountain pass in Addison County. He spent six months avoiding society and "getting a little perspective," as he told me when we caught up by phone last week.
"I feel this overriding sensation most of the time," Salloway said, "that for all the technology around us, we couldn't be more apart on a grand scale."
So Salloway stayed up in the mountains, writing music and trying to figure out his next move. A onetime Vermont resident, he started out in the Burlington music scene as half of the folk duo Avi & Celia, along with Celia Woodsmith (Say Darling), before they moved to Boston and dubbed themselves Hey Mama. After that band split in 2018, Salloway joined up with Tuareg singer-songwriter Bombino and toured the world. But the idea of returning to the Green Mountains never left him.
"Vermont has always had this magnetic chemistry for me," Salloway said. "As we were wrapping up the last tour, I had this feeling that grew stronger and stronger — that I wanted to come back."
Salloway spent the past several years living bicoastally between New England and Los Angeles, only to realize that having two homes 3,000 miles apart wasn't feasible. He found a spot in the mountains and withdrew like a J.R.R. Tolkien character, weary from the world and his travels.
After months of writing music, Salloway began to contemplate coming down from the mountain to share his good work. But he'd need a band first.
"So much of my music is informed by my time in Bombino and studying West and North African music," Salloway said, which "isn't maybe the most intuitive sort of stuff to play for a Western musician."
Fortunately, Salloway already knew a drummer who was more than comfortable with African rhythms: Bombino drummer Corey Wilhelm. He reached out to another old friend from his early days in the Vermont scene, bassist Rob Morse (Hadestown).
"Corey is my brother from Bombino, so this is all right up his alley," Salloway said. "And Rob is such an amazing, diverse musician. Being in a trio with them and having that triangular interplay is so damn cool; there's so much space and flexibility to let the songs evolve."
Though the trio hasn't settled on a name yet, they're going with the old reliable jazz band/law firm technique, calling themselves Salloway, Wilhelm & Morse for a run of debut shows. The nascent group played in Barnard, Morrisville and Montpelier in February and swings through Burlington on Wednesday, February 28, for a show at Radio Bean. Morse's partner, singer Miriam Bernardo (High Summer), often joins in.
"Live music feels so sacred to me these days," Salloway said. "And the feeling at these shows has really lifted me up. There's just so much mutual good energy with this project — I just want to ride that wave of something new."
Salloway and company haven't done much planning beyond booking the February shows. They'll play some gigs around the solar eclipse in April and the Moonshine Music Festival in late summer, which Salloway founded and curates every year in Manchester.
"I'd love to record with this new band," Salloway said, revealing that fans are already making bootleg recordings of the performances. "It remains to be seen when we'd do that, but I think it's definitely more a question of 'when' rather than 'if.'"
For now, the band's set is largely made up of new music Salloway penned in his seclusion, mixed with some Billy Wylder songs and the odd Taj Mahal cover or two.
"It feels really good to be back in Vermont," Salloway said. "I often go a week without seeing another human being — what a contrast to LA! And I'm just excited to share new music and rejoin the music community here, man. And to rock out with my brothers Corey and Rob!"
It's good to have you back, Avi. Sometimes a little time in the mountains is all you need.
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