Glenn Jones is a unique player in the world of solo guitar music. Steeped in both American Primitive guitar music as well as rock and experimental music, Glenn Jones creates rich sonic tapestries with a distinct and stirring voice. Endlessly curious, Jones has spent the better part of four decades exploring the boundaries of expression and storytelling with the guitar and banjo. On Vade Mecum, Jones draws on his personal history to tell stories with elaborate musical detail and emotional weight. Exploring the complexity of personal experience, emotions and our shared histories, Vade Mecum fnds Jones painting his music in boundaryless colors, captivatingly vivid. J

ones’ recordings are indelible to his surroundings. Vade Mecum was recorded in March of 2021 on Mount Desert Island in Maine with longtime collaborator Matthew Azevado. The crisp, thin Atlantic air seeps its way into Jones’ playing. After delaying the recording for a full year and bringing on Azevado to fll the shoes of Jones’ usual engineer, Laura Baird, the album took altogether different shapes than what Jones had initially intended. New pieces that spoke more to Jones’ moment emerged and shouldered out others. The challenges and triumphs of a world recapitulating but altogether changed is thoroughly interrogated in the liminal spaces highlighted by Jones throughout the album.

“Vade Mecum means, literally, ‘go with me.’,” says Jones. “It’s an invitation.” With that invitation opening the album, Jones acts as a guide across the terrain of interiors and exteriors alike. “I tend to think of my albums as the latest entries into something like an ongoing musical diary,” Jones continues. “I don’t write pieces to order or with anything much in mind; I simply follow wherever the music leads me. Why this tuning? Why this note and not that one? Why this chord and not another? Why this tempo and not a different one? I don’t know, and I love not knowing. The ‘not knowing’ is what keeps me engaged and curious; ‘not knowing’ keeps me coming back.” Jones uses those questions of tempo and chords alongside unique open tunings and capos as a way of posing musical questions to himself which he in turn answers with sublime stories that unveil as much about Jones himself as they uncover memories or impressions of their subjects. Jones makes each passage as personal as the last as he dexterously imbues every note with precise emotion.