On his second effort, Land Of Trembling Earth, the follow up to his 2011 debut recording Hallowed Ground, Jacksonville, Florida singer/guitarist Daryl Hance has upgraded his delivery to new and improved stout and shout, let it all hang out sing-alongs laid out to a backdrop of his ever hard-hitting funky bluesy rock and roll music. This go round Hance is worlds more settled into the role of singing out in front and the result is a batch of songs that are as infectious and grooving as they are belted out with a renewed confidence more akin with his sultry guitar skills.
Musically, Land Of Trembling Earth picks up where Hallowed Ground left off, but is more of a quantum leap in personal music evolution. Self-produced again by Hance, who wastes no time getting the ball rolling as "Goddamn Girl" opens things with a warm wash of kick drum/psychedelic blues guitar inundation that sets the tone for the rest of the record. This heavy groovitude seldom abates in this 14 track long player that clocks in at almost 51 minutes with guitars ablaze, bass a-fuzz, soaring slide guitars, distorted Wurlitzer piano, phase-shifting, acoustic guitars, and a rhythmic foundation setting some profoundly steep peaks and valleys. There's a well of atmospheric brilliance to be found on Land Of Trembling Earth, more dynamic and realized than its predecessor, where the songs are deeper, rooted in, and closer to their sources of inspiration. A wider breadth of deliverance is heard here that speaks from an inspired sentimentality connecting the musical and lyrical unabashedly.
"She believes in everything in all your heart and all your dreams, and she don't even ask a thing she just gives you what you need", sings Hance in the epic "Beautiful Things".
Hance on Land Of Trembling Earth...
"Lyrically, the underlying current of the album is about freeing yourself, empowering yourself, and opening yourself to life and expanding the scope of your experience(s). Or more on point, the process of, or the metamorphosis of it all. Like from a caterpillar to a butterfly. Or better yet, from a caterpillar to a cocoon not quite to the butterfly stage just yet, I suppose that'll be album number three. The songs' range of topics include being spiritually marginalized, loss of balance in life, recognizing the insignificance of what you perceive as threats or problems, awakening, gratitude, and a song that is sort of a tribute to all the critters in the woods."
"Land of Trembling Earth is the loose Hitchiti Creek American Indian translation for Okefenokee, The Okefenokee Swamp in southeastern Georgia. This album is conceptually rooted sonically and graphically to the area itself just north of the Florida/Georgia border in southeastern Georgia. Once I got into the recording and the idea of Land of Trembling Earth as an album title, it lent itself conceptually to several additional aspects of what the album turned out to be - A sonic interpretation of what the geographic location sounds like musically, with much of the music itself being of a heavy earth shaking dimension. The title also lends itself to the underlying current of discontent that runs through people's lives in one form or another, as in "standing on shaky ground." That uneasiness or discontent with life or the world or the world around whether real or imagined. I think it was Mark Twain who said... 'I've been through some terrible things in my life, some that have actually happened'."
"I've had the album title for years in the back of my mind, just one of those things that I thought would be a cool title for an album. The instrumental "Land of Trembling Earth" from the album is a piece of music I've had for some time and previously had never found a use for. I'd always referenced the piece in my head as "Land of Trembling Earth". During pre-production in the summer of 2012 I went through loads of old demo cassette tapes I'd made from 10 to 20 years ago and worked from older material I'd long since written off and started fleshing out ideas for a new record and demoing lots of songs. During this time the instrumental "Land of Trembling Earth" popped into my head again and I started fooling around with it and got the whole Land of Trembling Earth concept going from there, and everything started evolving from that. I went out to the Okefenokee Swamp which is just 25 miles or so north of where I live and got tons of shots of the trees, animals, this and that and the whole thing started to take shape thematically."
"In October 2012 I started laying tracks in the studio and did this on and off through the end of 2012 and all through 2013 and into 2014, taking breaks from recording for weeks at a time to do work on my house and yard, playing a few live shows to work out songs here and there, then got back to recording when I regained perspective. On this album I played all the instruments, produced, engineered and recorded everything myself, aside from a few overdubs I had others tag on right before mixing. I did it all myself only because it was easier for me to do it that way over a long period of time without having to involve others. This also allowed me the opportunity to experiment with different songs and sounds and get my learning curve on. Once the recording was done I headed to Matt Grondin's place in Louisiana in May 2014 and we mixed and mastered the record in just a few short days."
