Song Premiere: Jeremiah Lockwood’s “Ritual”

Jeremiah Lockwood — “Ritual”

Jeremiah Lockwood’s The Great Miracle: Jeremiah Lockwood’s Guitar Soli Chanukah Record due to be released via Reboot Records on November 22, 2021.  Lockwood recorded the album in the spirit of the 1968 John Fahey album The New Possibility: John Fahey’s Guitar Soli Christmas Record.

Christmas has many secular features that are simply a ubiquitous part of the American culture.  Jeremiah Lockwood captures this in his shiny, sparkly new holiday record.  Give the first track a listen here in our exclusive premiere then earmark the album to play during this season’s festivities.

The track “Ritual” from A Great Miracle, my new solo guitar holiday album, moves in two directions at once. On the one hand, the song talks about intimate sounds of Jewish life and tries to capture the feeling of the Chanukah ritual when I was a child in my grandparents’ house, with the whole extended family harmonizing beautifully as we sang the brachos over the mystical glow of the candles. On the other hand, the arrangement and the vibe of the guitar style, an homage to John Fahey, is a deep dive into the world of American Christmas. Like a lot of Jews in America, I love Christmas, despite my own discomfort with it–the bright and shiny bell-like sounds, the children’s wonder at miracles, and the transubstantiation of materialism into love through the rituals of presents and consumption…it’s intoxicating, pleasurable and authentically joyful. I can’t say if this is a Jewish Christmas song (like White Christmas) or a christologized Chanukah song; that distinction is in the eye of the beholder. Either way, my hope is that this song, and the whole album, honors the feeling and the meaning of both sources: the American Christmas that for better or worse is part of the shared culture of the country, and the Jewish intimacy of home, ritual and eternity.” —Jeremiah Lockwood

Find music and more information here: http://www.jeremiahlockwood.com