Knotworking

Edward Gorch serves as the creative force behind Knotworking, pairing his understated and articulate reflections on love’s gains and losses with life’s wider turns to the robust yet airy textures produced by his ensemble. He launched the project in Poughkeepsie, New York, during the final years of the 1990s. Although personnel and group size shifted frequently, lead guitarist Michael Hotter remained a constant participant. After issuing the self-titled debut in the first months of 2000, Gorch and Hotter shifted the operation to Albany, New York, seeking broader exposure in a larger locale. The revised configuration soon attracted a devoted local audience, prompting Gorch and Hotter to cut the follow-up album, Notes Left Out, in 2001 with an ever-changing roster of Albany-area players inside the top floor of Gorch’s apartment house. Released before the year closed, the record earned Knotworking the distinction of Metroland’s Best New Band of 2001. A stable five-piece finally coalesced by 2002, consisting of Gorch, Hotter, bassist Dan Winchester, violinist Megan Prokorym, and drummer Scott Sinclair Smith. While completing his degree and sustaining Knotworking’s recording and performance schedule, Edward Gorch works as a sanitation collector, an occupation he credits with an unforeseen advantage for his music: serviceable equipment routinely appears among the discards on his route, among them the four-track machine that captured much of Notes Left Out.