Most kids shun the accordion as being hopelessly square. For Jeremy Barnes of A Hawk and a Hacksaw, that was a plus. “The stigma against it makes it more exciting,” he admits. There are other selling points, too. “It is a portable instrument, and you can play chords, bass lines, and melody at the same time. It’s perfect for a one-man band.”
But Barnes no longer operates alone. For the third AHAAH album, the Eastern European–inspired set The Way the Wind Blows, he was joined by a new member, violinist Heather Trost. After a nomadic decade, including drumming with Neutral Milk Hotel and Broadcast, he met a kindred spirit in his native New Mexico. “Never did I expect to find someone in Albuquerque who had any idea what I was trying to do.” But when they met, Trost busted out Bartók’s Six Roumanian Dances, and he was sold.
Fashioning The Wind, which also features trumpet player Zach Condon of Beirut and gypsy brass band Fanfare Ciocarlia, took Barnes further from home than ever: to a makeshift studio in a minuscule Moldovan village in Romania (which might account for why it sounds like the gear was powered by a bellows, not electricity).
“Recording was problematic only in comedic ways,” he insists. “Children playing with my laptop while a trumpet solo was being overdubbed. Cars breaking down on the way to pick up musicians. A critical session being interrupted by an enormous meal of chicken, sausage, vegetables, and beer… at 10 in the morning.”
“I was sad to leave. Now it seems like a strange dream.”
