Dwayne Betts - vocal, Reed Turchi - electric guitar, Pete Wilhoit - drums

HOUSE OF UNENDING is a collaboration between Reginald Dwayne Betts and Reed Turchi, a combination of spoken word poetry and slide-guitar improvisation that showcases their shared sensibilities and underlying rhythms. 

But the album begins, fittingly, with an interruption—a collect call from prison. The mechanical voice comes through clear in the booth and Betts answers Fats, explaining to him that not only is he about to begin a recording session, but that the first track, "Essay on Reentry," is a poem centered on Fats, and on what it means to leave, and yet forever be shaped by, prison…

This swirl and vortex of layered meaning gives HOUSE OF UNENDING its power: carefully crafted poems and melodies blended with improvisations that allow voice and music to reach new, unprecedented layers and levels of meaning. 

In some ways HOUSE OF UNENDING began over a decade ago, when Betts and Turchi first met in perhaps an even more unlikely scenario: as two-on-two teammates on a basketball court, facing off against poets Alan Shapiro and Rob Cohen at the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. Betts was only recently home, pursuing the MFA in poetry that would prove to be a lineage of degrees, and Turchi was a bare-footed teenager developing unbelievable blisters on the hardwood. 

An unlikely pair, but simpatico: Betts and Turchi traded mix CDs and poems, and for years discussed a potential project, aiming to bring together the blues-guitar influence Turchi picked up in North Mississippi and Betts' poetic subject material. 

In HOUSE OF UNENDING what emerges is a shared inner ear, shaped by poetic and musical influences. As Betts begins each poem—part recitation, part improvisation—Turchi finds moods, notes, and rhythms that pair with the underlying cadence and subject. Betts delivers his words line by line, breath by breath, and Turchi, through guitar, finds ways to match this breathing. What results is not Turchi following Betts, or Betts flattened into a monotone due to direction of the guitar, but a symbiotic relationship that allows both music and word to develop, explore, and intertwine. 

HOUSE OF UNENDING reflects the particular personalities of Betts and Turchi while enacting ancient art forms—call it a true-blues for the year 2023, or go back further, to poetic forms as old as the Ghazal, which Betts makes his own, and for which Turchi fashions new ideas of musical accompaniment.

Photo by Gioncarlo Valentine