CD Release - Goin' electro-country

Geoff Reacher makes strange and wonderful music. He filters guitar licks through a sampling keyboard and drum machine, and then warbles country-ish songs over the tracks in a twangy Texas accent. If you ask Reacher to describe his songs, he'll probably call them a mixture of country music and rap music.</
"I'm trying to play back music the way I hear it," he says during a gray, overcast afternoon in downtown Athens, where he lives with his wife. It sounds more like indie-electronic music, but that's just how his music comes out. "I don't even listen to electronic music," he says. "These days, it's pretty much a steady diet of Southern hip-hop. And I don't know, I think hip-hop is electronic music." On his website, www.reachers.com, he accurately describes his songs as "electro-country." And in the liner notes for his new album, Avec Reacher C'est Plus Sûr, he thanks rockabilly pioneer Hasil Adkins, rap producer DJ Screw and folk singer Dave van Ronk for inspirations.</
Avec Reacher C'est Plus Sûr, which will be released August 22 on Orange Twin Records, is Reacher's fourth album and first with national distribution. He says the title is inspired by a flyer his wife picked up while she was in the Peace Corps. "This was a piece of a campaign cloth that [Gabon president Omar Bongo] would hand out," he says. "It showed his face, and it said 'Avec Bongo c'est plus sûr.'" Colloquially the title means, "With Reacher, it is more certain."</
Reacher's genially smart-ass attitude lurks beneath Avec Reacher C'est Plus Sûr. It occasionally floats to the surface on tracks like "Necromancer." "I won't get cancer, because I'm a necromancer," he sings in a twangy Texas accent. "Bring on the cigarettes, bring on the booze baby/Bring on the whisky and all that confusion, baby."</
"I want to do a cover of a Nate Dogg song," says Reacher, referring to the troubadour of hip-hop classics like Ludacris' "Area Codes" and Warren G's "Regulate." He wants to perform Nate Dogg's "Back Door." "It's kind of ridiculous in some ways to do a Nate Dogg cover, because he's such an amazing singer. But I'm actually doing a version that I feel is not embarrassing."