BEHOLD THE UNCLE GITKIN 4 TRACK RECORDING! 
Here's the full story...

Gitkin sold guitars. To be precise, he re-branded, sold and traded knock-off Gibsons. A lone, travelling salesman, he toted his counterfeit wares to guitar stores and music emporiums. His trade took him to most corners of the USA, passing through big, smoggy cities and small towns. His nights were spent at not-so-salubrious motels. It was at those nocturnal stop-offs that he’d often cross paths with newcomers to the States. His fellow travellers were mostly immigrants, newly-arrived, from places like Ethiopia, Mexico, Indonesia.

His illicit musical wares were his way of making a connection. He’d strike up tentative, half-understood exchanges; part old stories and legends, part musical dialogue, rough-and-ready riffs, enthusiastically plucked out. Other times, late night jam sessions would quickly escalate, repurposing nightstands for drums and mini bar contents – packets of nuts, or bottles of beer – for makeshift percussion. A self-taught, sometimes-musician, those memorable evenings informed amateur recordings to cassette tape: a patchwork of worldly sounds, a document of new friendships and fresh perspectives.

Or at least, that’s the story as Brian J Gitkin has been able to piece it together. This album, ‘5 Star Motel’, is by a different Gitkin, an ode to the one described above. Or to put it another way, this is the younger Gitkin’s homage to his elder relative: the elusive, guitar salesman uncle he never met. A steady drip of anecdotes have construed an image of his relation’s itinerant, huckster lifestyle. Finding a cassette of his recordings, it spoke of the effect of those encounters: lo-fi and scratchy, the music leaped seamlessly, in difficult to discern ways, between different far-flung styles. 

https://wonderwheelrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/5-star-motel

On ‘5 Star Motel’, that younger Gitkin has sought to expand the philosophy reaped from his uncle. The guitar is common thread, the raft to navigate a sun-dappled stream of ideas. It’s an embrace of cultures where folkloric stringed instruments still rule, or where they’ve led to a more recent embrace of the electric guitar. Gitkin traces the loose, meandering paths which join them together.

It’s about America, the world outside its borders, and the inscrutable, inevitable dialogue that exists between them. Take ‘Cancion Del Rey’, where the sound of Peruvian chicha – steady-moving, alluring, and lyrical – winds its way through Gitkin’s fuzz-filtered licks, and the rhythm underpinning it. Or ‘Yama’, where Middle Eastern influences echo out of grooving, cyclical riffs. Touching on the distinctive tones of Tuareg music and the Sahara, too, ‘Grand Street Feast’ charts a sand-dusted, melodic misadventure.

Full album

Gitkin 1978 Original Rare Recording

This is our little label out of Brooklyn NYC. Homegrown music with lots of diversity for speakers EVERYWHERE! www.wonderwheelrecordings.com Alsarah and the Nubatones, Chancha Via Circuito, Nickodemus, El Búho, Thornato, Novalima, The Spy from Cairo, Gitkin, Populous & more...

Gitkin 1978 Original Rare Recording

WONDERWHEEL Recordings