I can’t help it. I’m in love with this:
Beavers, cardinals and cicadas are the session players on this Nashville album recorded in Shelby Bottoms
The most serene place in Nashville just might be a park bench at dusk in Shelby Bottoms. And now, you can be there whenever you want thanks to Camille Faulkner.
The local musician, who has toured with indie supergroup Boygenius, just released a new album: 18 tracks of field recordings from Shelby Bottoms.
The Shelby Project started with Faulkner pulling out her iPhone and recording the sounds of frogs in Shelby while the sun was setting one night. She started recording more sounds of Shelby and then got serious.
Great bird song in Nashville.. This could be one of those machines that help you fall asleep.
“I asked the internet if anyone had a Zoom recorder,” she says. After she had a collection of recordings, such as the sound of a beaver having a snack, a deer crossing a pond and the sound of the park during a thunderstorm, she did what a musician tends to do: she made an album.
“The Shelby Project was made as an act of love” she wrote on the description on Bandcamp.
It can feel like she captured something prehistoric — Nashville’s “land before time.” But by track three, titled “Brood XIX,” the album captures how nature changes just like we do. Those cicadas are gone now. It can feel both timeless and like a very specific snapshot of the natural world in May and June of 2024 here in Nashville.
“Slowing down and paying attention to and learning about nature has been a big thing for me,” Faulkner says.
The album is available on all streaming platforms under Faulkner’s name. And while supplies last, it’s free on CD at the nature center at Shelby — so you can feel like in you’re in the Bottoms wherever you are.
Wait for it. THe beaver chewing comes in towards the end. You have to wait but you will be so relaxed by then you won’t mind a whit.
