In the closing lines of William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom, the roommate of Quinton the narrator asks, “So, why do you hate the South?” To which Quinton replies, “I don’t,” despite much evidence to the contrary, at least in his roommate’s eyes. For Daniel Machado, whose decidedly Southern ensemble The Restoration issues its sprawling, Faulknerian musical epic Constance this week in front of a specially created set at the Trustus Theatre, his own view of the South is equally contradictory.

“It’s a love-hate relationship,” Machado says of his perspective on his native home. “As far as my little corner with my family, I can unflinchingly love that, but others have not been so lucky. I am pretty tired of being embarrassed by the duality of where we’re from.”

The Restoration has captured that feeling and put it into a historical point of view on the new album, which Machado says was an attempt on his part to be more forthcoming under the guise of writing something fictional.

The Restoration

“I have been trying to write narratives for the last couple of releases, but I was not satisfied with the standard rock songwriter autobiographical thing that resulted,” he says. “It just wasn’t interesting and I couldn’t be as honest as I would have liked.”

That changed when he set out on the path to write music and songs based around the framework of the fictional Vale family of Lexington.

“Spurred on by reading my first Faulkner book a couple of years ago, Light in August, I realized I could explore the social and regional things I wanted to using the same kind of fictional story,” Machado says.

The exploration didn’t stop with the subject matter or literary style, however. Machado’s previous incarnations in Guitar Show and on his solo album Themes in American Friction verged on power-pop in their hooks and riffs, but with The Restoration, he’s delving deep into traditional American string band, old-time and bluegrass music.

“I’ve always loved that kind of music,” Machado says, “And there was not a proper setting in any of the new song lyrics with the music I was doing, so I experimented with the genres I loved growing up.”

The results are nothing short of astonishing, from the authentic-sounding shape-note hymn “Thy Sword, Thy Shield” that opens the album to the haggard, pained anguish that’s palpable in “The Lynching.” The story in between is one of small-town prejudice and mob morality, judgment and its consequences. The whole project took form over a period of many months, Machado says.

“I worked out an outline first, with some issues I wanted to explore: repression; what makes a community or a person ‘depraved’; how does a community have a collective morality but still manage to rise up against something they consider depraved,” he says. “I outlined it as if I were writing a book in the 1930s, and these are some of the same themes as actual books from that period.”

Though all of this sounds a bit pretentious and stodgy in print, in practice it is more electrifying than any of Machado’s previous plugged-in bands, and the old-time sounds adapt well to contemporary musicians playing them.

“The Carolina Chocolate Drops make a point to say that they are living and taking part in the present,” Machado says. “There was a conscious attempt to make the album feel grounded in contemporary pop songwriting, and I wanted to definitively separate us from the type of people who celebrate being Southern and never once talk about how the history of the area is derived from slaves.”

It is this duality that Machado feels runs throughout the new album’s story, much like the stories of his literary heroes.

“Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor, they talk about the beauty of the South, and the troubled history as well,” he says. The only difference: They didn’t set it to music.




Trustus Theatre is at 520 Lady St. in The Vista. Banjoist Riley Bagus and Columbia Alternacirque belly dancer Natalie Brown serve as special guests. Doors open at 7 p.m.; tickets are $6 in advance or $10 at the door. For advance tickets, visit therestorationconstance.eventbrite.com.