THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The work of Lonnie Holley is the result of paying close attention. The delight of finding a sound and pressing it up against another found sound and another until, before a listener knows it, they are awash in a symphony of sound that feels like it stitches together as it is washing over you.
Tonky is an album that takes its name from a childhood nickname that was affixed to Holley when he lived a portion of his childhood life in a honky tonk. Holley’s life of survival and endurance is one that required — and no doubt still requires — a kind of invention. An invention that is also rich and present in Holley’s songs, which are full and immersive on Tonky.
The album begins with its longest song, a nine-minute, exhaustive marathon of a tune called Seeds, which begins with a single sparse sound and then expands. Chants, faint keys, strings, and atop it all, Holley’s voice, not singing, but speaking plainly about working the earth when he was young, the violence he endured in the process of it all, going to bed bloodied and in pain from beatings. The song expands into a metaphor about place, about the failures of home, or anywhere meant to protect you not living up to what it sells itself to be, even if you tirelessly work at it, work on it, work to make something worthwhile of it.
Seeds not only sets the tone for an album that revolves around rebirth, renewal, and the limits of hope and faith, but it highlights Holley’s greatest strength as a musician — a commitment to abundance, and generosity. He is an incredibly gifted storyteller with a commitment to the oral tradition, such that many listeners would be entirely content sitting at the feet of a Holley record and turning an ear to his robust, expansive storytelling. But Tonky is an album as expansive in sound as it is in making a place for a wide range of featured artists to come through the door of the record and feel at home, no matter how they spend the time they get on a song.”
