Welcome to Rumble to Rumbel Strip Vermont. I'm Erica Heilman. Today a conversation with

one of Vermont's most inventive musicians and composers, Michael Chorny.

Michael is a self-taught musician, arranger, and composer, but if you ask me what genre of music he makes, I'd have no idea. All of them, None of them? He spent years mastering different musical

genres in both guitar and baritone sacks. He's played British Isles

inspired folk music, improvisational jazz, soul, rock, and over the years in his own

music the lines between these genres have gotten really blurry and that's how he wants it.

Michael has been the band leader of some of the most lush, uncategorizable music in this state.

Bands like Viper House, Magic City, orchid, the so-called Jazz Sextet, and Holler General.

I talked with him at his house, a renovated goose coop in Lincoln, Vermont, and one of the quietest places on earth, or so he says.

We talk about his music and growing up in Buffalo.

We talk about driving to gigs in Burlington with a blown-out muffler.

He talks about his collaboration with the Naeus Mitchell on the 2010

Folk Opera, Hades Town.

And he sings.

You'll hear a lot of music this hour, some of it from his upcoming album with Holler General.

We started out talking about the upcoming album.

Here's Michael Chorny. The process has been interesting because I started on this much of this music that's on this new album last winter

Using two things as an impetus One was knowing we were in for a really long

hard winter. I just felt it in my bones. So I planned ahead, moved the table over

by the wood stove and knew I was going to spend a couple months writing some new material.

I wasn't exactly sure what it was, but I knew it was going to be four Holler General, my band plus strings, which I love writing for.

And as I was preparing to like start of embark on this work, I got a letter in the mail from the New York State adoption agency that I had forgotten all about.

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