Press Release
Source: DB PR
Witness trees are living beings who have experienced incredible historical events beyond the lifespan of any living person. Over the course of two years, Bachman interviewed/collaborated with 16 of these remarkable trees in Virginia using a biodata sonification device and his guitar.
Self-recorded in the field over the span of nearly two years (11/13/24 – 06/24/26), The Witness Tree is Bachman’s latest effort in multimedia storytelling. The result is a nearly two-hour long album, and documentary film, that takes the participant through intersections of history, power, people, and place. From the eroding beaches of the Chesapeake Bay and its former plantation grounds, through the Civil War battlefields, old growth groves, and river bottoms of the Piedmont, to the peaks of the Appalachian Mountains, the trees speak for themselves.
The Witness Tree
When site visits were in isolated private settings, such as in “Dogwood Mountain Valley Pipeline Blast Zone” or “American Boxwood Barboursville Ruins”, Bachman tuned his guitar and played along to the biodata coming from each tree. When this was not an option, pre-recorded material was played for the tree and later used in assembling the music.
While environmental audio of each location and the witness tree living in that space make up the core of each track, many non-musical samples find their way into this sylvan soundscape, such as text to binary code to MIDI synthesis of history texts, and a visual to auditory translator that transforms digital images of each location or tree. Processed, and at times heavily abstracted YouTube videos, and other miscellaneous A/V material related to each location can also be heard throughout the entire project, as well as Bachman’s stylized guitar playing/digital editing and renditions of obscure site-specific folk tunes.
The Witness Tree has as much to do with public history, folklore, and documentary work as it does with modern American experimental music and fingerstyle guitar, with the liner notes, film, and album, all saying things each individual piece could not on its own.
Truly all trees bear witness. As they live and grow alongside us, they experience the everyday experience of human and non-human life, as well as our most cataclysmic moments in history. The Witness Tree attempts to include not only the lesser-known historic narratives but also acknowledge the effects of climate breakdown currently accelerating on Earth and the trees that are living through these defining experiences of our time.
ABOUT – Daniel Bachman is an artist, musician, and independent scholar primarily interested in the folk histories of Virginia. Bachman has released 14 full length records since 2011, and toured extensively internationally and throughout the U.S., garnering wide acclaim. Daniel’s unique perspectives and his music that fuses with the Virginia ecosystem was recently featured in The Smithsonian Magazine. His latest record, The Witness Tree, is out Oct. 2, 2026.
Daniel Bachman
LINKS
