Tonight on Local/Live: Old Earth POSTED:: April 13, 2010
FILED UNDER::
In-Studio Performances, Local/Live
FILED UNDER:: In-Studio Performances, Local/Live
Todd Umhoefer (Old Earth) has stories to tell. Like many folk songwriters, passion comes largely into play in terms of songwriting. In the case of Old Earth, this passion is fueled by tragedy, yet the tone of this tragedy is moreso one of settled reflectiveness.
The very first Old Earth release debuted last year: on Out the spheres of The Sorrowful Mysteries, Umhoefer wrote out his emotions after the sudden death of his mother. In an interview with the Shepherd Express last fall, the story goes as such, “Todd Umhoefer was house-sitting for his parents while they were in Florida last year when he learned that his mother had died. He spent the next day in that house, trying to make sense of the news. He wasn’t handling it well.
“‘I didn’t have anybody to talk to,’ he recalls. ‘For a day I was just wandering around alone, frantic, in this house where I grew up. And suddenly everything in the house had this massive significance it didn’t have before. Every object had these intense memories associated with them, but now this absence had been created.’ His nerves shattered, his thoughts unhealthy, Umhoefer began writing songs to calm himself. They came faster than usual. ‘The words just started coming,’ he says. ‘The whole situation really leveled me, and left me feeling so hollow, but at least I was able to throw some language at it and begin sorting things out.’ Those songs and others written in the lonely aftermath of his mom’s death form the bulk of Umhoefer’s latest album, Out the spheres of The Sorrowful Mysteries, his first as Old Earth. Under his previous moniker, See the People, Umhoefer had for years been a regular at Milwaukee open mics and house shows, where he’d occasionally cover some of the old American folk songs that inspired his own.”
Catch music from Old Earth tonight on WMSE’s Local/Live program at 8 p.m. Listen at 91.7 FM or stream online at WMSE.org.