Jack Silverman

Recording demos for his newest EP, Now What, Jack Silverman heard a faint and distant voice calling through his amp. This was no hallucination but, rather, a literal preacher transmitting nearby, resulting in radio interference. Silverman hit record and captured that evangelizing in its full mysterious form, which you can still hear throughout the final version of lead single “Mixed Signals.”

Silverman’s body of work has run a wide gamut over the years — learning jazz guitar from Emily Remler, playing weekly in the Afro Cleveland Orchestra and burning the AM hours with Lord Demos and the Gangster Rock Nation. These experiences have honed his guitar playing skills and love of improvisation, the former of which is on full display throughout Now What, the later being embraced through his willingness to let producer Roger Moutenot (Sleater-Kinney, Yo La Tengo) lead the songs down unexpected paths.

Pulling from a lifetime of work across different genres has molded Now What into a succinct trio of songs that feels definitively cohesive but not without its nods to the likes of noir, free jazz, bluegrass and even the Grateful Dead. All these ingredients run through the Silverman lens create a conduit into a supernatural feeling and a reminder of the allure of the unknown. Like a voice emerging through an amplifier, we just have to pay attention.