Praise for Nat Evans
“Evans is making a difficult genre more accessible.” - LA Weekly
“always forward thinking” - Tiny Mix Tapes
“...mirroring the stretched timelessness of meditation and exploring the unfamiliar nooks in seemingly familiar sounds.” - The Believer

Flyover Country is an EP by experimental composer Nat Evans, drawn from his multimedia performance work of the same title. In performance, Flyover Country is a multi-layered composition that picks apart the nation's colonialist history from 1710 - 1940 and its impact on grasslands ecology, indigenous communities, and extraction industries through the lens of the artist's family archive. Music, video, electronics, and the artist's own storytelling are woven together in a performance that traces the parallel lines between the Evans family's generational mythologies and America's westward expansion.

This new EP features Will Hayes on guitar, who recently recorded with Stephen O’Malley of Sunn O))) on Jóhann Jóhannsson’s score for the horror film Mandy.

Flyover Country debuted in Seattle in May. Seattle Weekly noted this work is, “...in short, all the things Laura Ingalls Wilder neglected to mention." In a review, Second Inversion said it was, “impossible not to think about for hours and days after.”

Flyover Country will be released everywhere digitally September 20th along with a limited edition cassette. Stream Flyover Country HERE. After performances in Seattle and Portland, ME (September 14th), Evans is planning more national dates for this multimedia work for this winter.

For more information, review copies, and interview opportunities please contact Nat Evans - Nathanielfevans@gmail.com - natevansmusic.com - @natevans__

Flyover Country is a multi-layered composition by Seattle artist Nat Evans picking apart stories and mythologies of his family accompanied by music, visuals and electronics.

In the summer of 2017, Evans discovered a huge wealth of family history - family trees extending back to the 1600s, stories that had been written down, and an archive of hundreds of photographs dating back to the 1870s. As he began to assemble a history of his family and their westward expansion, he concurrently took a deep look at indigenous cultures of North America, and traveled to different places that had similar ecological features to places his family settled, such as the oceanic tallgrass prairie in the Flint Hills of Kansas.

The deeper Evans looked at the wider history of things, the more the holes in the mythology of his family manifested themselves. Timelines of movement matched up with historical genocide at the hands of white citizen militias, treaties with the Lakota broken as millions of bison were slaughtered for the market hunt and white settlers flooded the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota to mine for gold, and unsustainable farming practices led to tilled under grasslands from Illinois to New Mexico, precipitating the Dust Bowl.

In Flyover Country, a series of stories about Evans’ family, the United States, and strange dreams had while traveling are woven together in this performance with music, archival family images, drawings, and short films from site visits.

Nat Evans  - Flyover Country - May 19th & 20thThe Grocery - thegrocerystudios.com
8pm - $5-20

Coyoteways is a new album by experimental composer Nat Evans drawn from his experiences with coyotes while walking thousands of miles on the Pacific Crest Trail, camping by the side of the road in rural outposts in Nevada, overlooking a bluff in the heart of his home in Seattle, and searching for petroglyphs in a canyon in western Colorado.

Following the example of Beat Generation writers like Gary Snyder who wrote contemporary coyote tales, Evans studied writings about coyote and other tricksters from mythology to create an updated mythology from his own ecological experiences through music. Evans used field recordings from his travels as well as Seattle to invoke a series of landscapes. Layers of long, sweeping guitar lines create a meditative atmosphere - a reinterpretation of the open spaces of the American west. Occasional percussion or saxophone add to the dream-like sentiment of the guitar and field recordings.
 
Coyoteways will be released March 31st on Mon Amie Records. On March 25th in Seattle the gallery Bridge Productions will host a preview event with the entire album being performed live, to be followed by additional tour dates around the country throughout 2017.

“Evans is making a difficult genre more accessible.” - Rebecca Haithcoat, LA Weekly

“...mirroring the stretched timelessness of meditation and exploring the unfamiliar nooks in seemingly familiar sounds.” - Ross Simonini, The Believer
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“...channels all the desert spirits and wild visionaries of mythic Americana.” - Nathan Thomas, Fluid Radio

3/25 - Coyoteways album pre-release preview at Bridge Productions gallery, Seattle - 7pm

The new album by Nat Evans will be performed from start to finish with the original album performers - Will Hayes of newaxeyes on guitar, Evan Smith of The Dip on saxophone and Evans himself on percussion and electronics. 

4/2 - Performative lecture on Coyoteways at Machine Project - 8pm

Coyoteways is an interdisciplinary project by Seattle artist and composer Nat Evans. For the past three years Evans has been merging his own experiences with coyotes with indigenous trickster mythology surrounding coyote in the tradition started on the West Coast by beat poet Gary Snyder. Collecting his experiences from hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, being stranded by the side of the road in rural Nevada, around his home in Seattle and elsewhere, Evans has created a new set of trickster coyote tales, as well as a new album of music. Evans will be presenting this contrasting set of ideas - myth and science, concrete and abstract - through a performative lecture. Field recordings and live music from Evans as well as Chris Kallmyer on guitar will punctuate storytelling and lecture on Coyoteways.

4/14 - Seattle, WA - Coyoteways meditative listening event at Eka Yoga - a collage of field recordings and music from the album

4/21 - Iowa State University - Coyoteways live performance  with JC // jp

4/22 - Kansas City, MO - Coyoteways meditative listening event - a collage of field recordings and music from the album - 1pm at Nella Yoga

4/22 - Kansas City, MO - Coyoteways meditative listening event - a collage of field recordings and music from the album - 7pm at Unity Temple

4/24 - Hotchkiss, CO - Coyoteways meditative listening event - a collage of field recordings and music from the album at Yoga Tree

4/25 - Paonia, CO - Coyoteways meditative listening event - a collage of field recordings and music from the album at Blue Sage Center for the Arts

​4/28 - Portland, OR - Coyoteways meditative listening event - a collage of field recordings and music from the album at Taborspace

5/21 - Bellevue WA - Coyoteways live performance at Xperience Music Festival

Sound Dinner IV is the last event in this series for 2016. This intimate evening of food and sound pairings will take place on November 11th at the Fremont home of Nat Evans. On the menu this time will be a soup featuring a mushroom broth with chrysanthemum leaves followed by a tapas assortment to be eaten over rice. Fried kabocha squash nuggets wrapped in nori, foraged fall mushroom melange, tofu with leek tops, fresh daikon pickles, and fennel kimchi will comprise the tapas style course followed by a vegan ice cream with pears and honey. Spiced hot apple cider and bourbon is the featured drink.

Autumnal field recordings made around the neighborhood and performances of works by Nat Evans will punctuate the food courses. This time around the featured performer is Evan Smith - he'll be playing some woodwind magic of various sorts to this intimate gathering.

There are 8 seats available for Sound Dinner IV, and the price for the evening is $50. Email Nat at nathanielfevans@gmail.com to reserve your spot. Sound Dinner IV starts between 630 and 7pm on 11/11, and will end around 9 or 930.

On August 25th, Nat Evans will present a new site-specific event inside Mark Dion’s Neukom Vivarium at Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture park - Logways, Coyoteways.

Logways, Coyoteways, is part live performance and part participatory event, based in concepts of deep ecology. Evans collected field recordings from the Green River Watershed where the fallen Hemlock inside the vivarium originated to add to the site-specific nature of Dion’s work. Accompanying the field recordings is an original score based on the wildlife and topography of the location. Evans and collaborating musicians will be performing from 6-8pm, and at 7pm the audience will be invited to join in the music with a participatory event featuring kazoos and other simple instruments. The collective experience aims to create a sonic field guide in conversation with this piece of ecology-based art by Dion.

Just as Neukom Vivarium is in dialogue with how humans always have and are continuing to alter the landscape, Logways, Coyoteways adds to the discussion by including animals, including coyotes, a relative newcomer to places like Western Washington due to the removal of wolves by humans. And, just as the fallen Hemlock nurse log is in a process of decay and renewal in the wild and now in Seattle, so is this new trickster, coyote, as it permeates our rapidly evolving urban landscape.

Logways, Coyoteways
August 25th, 6-8pm
Neukom Vivarium at Olympic Sculpture Park
2901 Western Ave, Seattle WA