The Imaginative Soundscapes of Conrad Praetzel

There are clear musical genre delineations, mostly defined by marketing executives at record companies and radio stations. Musicians are advised to stay in their lane, to fit in and to maintain conventions, to play to their narrowly defined audience. Electronica is a mainstay of modern music, good and bad, and roots music is normally the opposite, devoid of the latest sound engineering techniques. Roots musicians are supposed to stay organic, to play acoustically and not to play around with all the sound altering electronics.

Then, there are always a few insolent renegades who dare not to follow the imposed rules. One of these adventurous souls is Conrad Praetzel, a Santa Rosa, California, based musician, an excellent guitarist who mixes his own instrumental performances and creates audacious creative soundscapes on guitar with electronica, partly with synthesizers and keyboard. He performs and produces new music, transcendental of any genre, in part deep roots. He uses samplings of his own compositions, loops, and other tools to mix his own creative work, not unlike Moby, a comparable electronica artist who sampled Allan Lomax recordings of Vera Hall, for example. Praetzel, who also sampled Lomax recordings, is going to do what he wants, in each case with freewheeling down beat and limitless precocity, unafraid of the artistic stratosphere.

The genial soundpainter has issued 10 albums under his own name and as Clothesline Revival. He does not tour; does not aggressively market his self-produced albums and he essentially works alone in his studio to create colorful sound designs and vivid aural tapestries. Expectedly, wrapping up his style in words is not an easy task. Some would slap the dreaded “new age” descriptive on his work under his own name, to which one could apply adjectives like ambient, meditative, dreamy, transcendental, or whatever. All fit somewhat, but not entirely. The titles of his albums are revealing of the cosmic, mystical, metaphysical essence of his soundscapes – Adventures into Nothingness (2022), Receive (1999), and Myths and Memories (1993). In contrast, his five albums under the Clothesline Revival name, produced between 2005 – 2018, are distinctly different from his ambient work, fusing roots music with his imaginative soundscapes.

Sometimes he throws in interesting and entertaining monologs of speakers that add a dimension of joyful and colorful weirdness. He dwells in multi-dimensionality. Praetzel’s artistic freedom provides plenty of magical treasures. His unencumbered freedom has allowed him a wide girth of fantastic creativity and individuality, poetic and truly brilliant musical masterpieces.

“I am just trying to bring those two worlds together – the electronic and the organic part and the roots and the modern part… ”

He stated, “I’m a huge Hank Williams fan. He’s done a lot of roots music but imagine – when I did the Tom Armstrong song, when he sang “Ramblin’ Man” – it was like Brian Eno producing Hank Williams. Maybe that would make some sense to someone. But the idea coming from two different worlds – roots music combined with something that’s worked out of a studio – I hate the word “modern,” but at least taking it in a new direction. That’s what the Clothesline Revival title would be. You’ve got the roots part and you’ve got the revival– but with new life and a different way. I am just trying to bring those two worlds together – the electronic and the organic part and the roots and the modern part… The sounds come first. I very rarely have an idea of where I’m going with something – I’m not going to think, oh, I’m going to do this type of song. It’s best if I’m open minded about where things are going. I don’t want to think about it too much. I think Neil Young’s manager once said when you think you stink – it’s kind of like it’s the same when I’m recording – if I think about it too much, I’m usually going to lose the direction where I’m going. I don’t like to work on a recording, to put too much time into it in a concentrated period. I will not work on the same song two days in a row. I disciplined myself not to do that. I let it go and I come back and revisit it, because I found that sometimes you’ll have something, and you become obsessed with it, and you work on it for maybe a week. Eventually you’re going to realize what do I got here? This is horrible. You fooled yourself into thinking that you created something special, but it’s just a mess. If it doesn’t come naturally and quickly, it’s probably not working. When I’m working with those archival vocals, I might hear that recording a hundred times before I’m through with it – but it’s got to keep your interest level up. You’ve got to be connected to it always…I’ve done what I wanted to do with my life. Now that I’m retired, I can spend the time that I want with music. I’ve got a quote in my studio that my girlfriend Cheryl printed out for me, and it says: “You achieve success in your field when you don’t know whether what you’re doing is work or play.” I’d say that what would maybe be my greatest success is that I’m doing what I want to do, and I didn’t sell out to something else.”

Conrad Praetzel is a self-admitted under-promoter in a field where those who promote the hardest get the most attention, even if mediocre or worse. He is somewhat obscure and under the radar, but once people hear his work, he is far from under-appreciated. Indeed, each album is a path of aural discovery, a work of art.