Please click here for an interview with John & Ben conducted by Indexical’s Andrew Smith.
A Traces compact disc / digital release and a photobook are forthcoming from Pickled Peach Press in Fall 2025.
The Natchez Trace is an old footpath running from roughly Nashville, TN to Natchez, MS. Originally used by animals (possibly to find salt licks) it was codified into a path by ancient Native Americans. Using this line through the landscape, John Hastings and Benjamin Mayock have fashioned a project that meditates on our shared stories and histories.
Traces is a radical reframing of the American landscape and how those lands affect its inhabitants. The installation, performance, and audio focus on three separate and connected, time streams: ancient North America circa 2000 BCE; the colonialist-era, as seen through the eyes of a doomed, possibly syphilitic, explorer; and the 20th century, particularly during the 1960s. These eras are collapsed together, a concatenation of peoples and times into a singularity that roils and pulses. The land itself is a character in this drama: the fertile ground known as the Black Belt Prairie is a place for humans to congregate, utilize, and eventually foul.
The traces of our history, whether marks on the land, written records, or stories that we tell ourselves, also contain what might have been, what was always there, or what will be there in the future. We can only construct, or deconstruct, this movement through time and where it will ultimately lead us.
As a performance, Traces is a 50 minute presentation that utilizes piano, voice, guitar, songs, recorded interviews, storytelling, 3 channel video, and experimental performance to create a layered vision of the American South. The two performers are dressed in accumulated clothing from various locations throughout their journey. A piano is the central location for the performance, a stand in for one found in an old church along the trace. Recordings from the found piano become part of the overall sound design, a sonic placeholder, while the live piano is bowed, strummed, and played. The video features places, movements, and flows of histories. Taken together, we can begin to see and hear the imprints of our shared chronologies.
The CD / digital release captures performances in situ, from old churches, first-thought-best-thought basement demoes, multi-tracked and layered interviews (inspired by Glenn Gould’s seminal Solitude Trilogy of proto-podcast documentaries), conversations with new found friends, and much more. The center piece of the recording is a grouping of field recordings taken from John and Ben forming ‘clouds’ of piano chords (in an homage to LaMonte Young’s Well Tuned Piano) at a 19th century church in Rocky Springs, MS. All the live recordings have been kept as close to their source as possible with very little editing and sonic manipulation.
Traces includes a three channel video projection, a hanging sculpture, a series of photographs, a series of short stories, an audio work, and as well as a performance. The video projections focus on landscape, maps, and ephemera with connective images and motifs running throughout. The audio collage includes interviews, field recordings, and music written specifically for the project. The photographs, taken by Rolleiflex camera, showcase ephemera taken during trips to the area. The hanging sculpture displays collected objects, a microcosm of the entire project.
An early version of Traces was performed at Indexical in Santa Cruz, CA, March 2023.
Recent performances include:
Community of Sound, Burlington, VT, December 2024.
Traces has received grant support from Burlington City Arts.