I have been busy with lovely friends who are here from minneapolis to celebrate A.M.'s bday, so no time to write about Disc #2, you will have to wait one more week.

I have also been filling my time working for portland label Swim Slowly Records. We are about to release a lovely box set by Ryland Bouchard, previously known as The Robot Ate Me, so check it out.

Laura Veirs Carbon Glaciers

I really like this CD, some people don't, but I do and I missed it tremendously. It was her first Nonesuch Records release back in 2004 and they hadn't even begun to tame her. I love the horns, I love the banjo, I love the strings and all of the other instruments that enter and exit throughout the album. It's simple and intricate, intelligent and optimistic and perhaps it is these contrary forces that collide so beautifully on Carbom Glaciers that I find so charming. The album is distinct, honest and open and thus fragile and I feel lucky to listen.

Three loved ones accompanied me on my journey back to portland. Squeezed into a cramped nissan sedan we drove 35 hours straight. Half of the car was filled with my necessary work stuff, the rest rationed off to the four of us. While deciding what to bring and what to leave it was smartly suggested by a.m. that I only bring two books and a CD sleeve worth of CDs. The rest had to stay, waiting to be shipped or picked up at a later, unknown date. Sulking, I chose the CDs carefully and was happy with what i picked.

About eight months ago I realized that I had no idea where the sleeve was. For almost a year I have been grabbing at CD cases and grumbling at their emptiness. I refused to buy new ones and even though a.m. so lovingly offered to buy me a lost CD each week I stubbornly held onto hope. To my great surprise and excitement I stumbled across the sleeve at my parents house last weekend. I did a ditty, I jumped for joy and I listened to missed albums.

The start of a weekly series revealing each lost album is looming. A pseudo homage to the CDs that for one reason or another I dubbed very important for my travel back west. I also plan on drawing a picture for each one.

So, stay tuned...
photo by a.m.

I originally walked into Jackpot with a clear idea of wanting an Odetta album. After not finding what I had intended I purchased:

New Orleans: The Original Sound of Funk Soul Jazz Records.

Recently, I have found myself very interested in Cajun music from Louisiana and although a separate genre, I am hopeful that this funk album will offer me another lens through which to hear and understand the amazing mix of musical and cultural influences that converged in New Orleans. The Funk tracks compiled from the 60s and early 70s will surely contain a hint of Creole, Latino, Jazz, Caribbean and African sounds.

Mississippi John Hurt: Avalon Blues OKeh Electric Records.

This album is Hurt's complete OKeh recordings from 1928. OKeh recording director Tommy Rockwell discovered Hurst as a result of information received from two local country musicians. Hurt was asked to come to Memphis and record. The two tracks that were released sold well and he was asked to record more in New York. Hurt kept writing but due to the Depression any further recording with OKeh were lost and thus ended Mississippi John Hurt's brief, but memorable, career as a recording artist. He continued on taking work wherever he could and some 30 years later Hurt was re-discovered and luckily for us all recorded 17 more tracks before his death in 1966. I am terribly happy to have this lovely collection of his early recordings.

Otis Redding: Live at the Whisky A Go Go Rhino Records.

There has been much discussion around the Little Red Bike regarding the absence of Otis Redding and specifically live Otis, in our lives. This recording, from 1966, has been hailed as one of his best taped performances. Pete Johnson's LA Times review of the show as well as his own follow up commentary is included with the CD. Johnson writes, "Newsprint is a great quencher of emotions and I was a fledging writer in April of 1966, fearful of any great enthusiasms which might make me seem uncritical. In retrospect, I think that Otis Redding is the most powerful rhythm and blues performer I have ever seen. Crowds never sat still when he was on stage nor could they stay quiet when he asked them for a response, because he gave them too much to leave them strangers. After the death of Otis Redding in a plane crash in December, 1967, I tried to describe the singer in an article in the LA Times: 'The voice on his records conveys the image of a small, thin man on the verge of tears, an impression bolstered by his themes, most of which are built on desperation...But he was big and he smiled often in person, and what sounded fragile on the record player turned out to be as ephemeral as a locomotive, as wispy as a gospel preacher's description of hell...He was one of the few soul singers who had never sold out to a formula, whose records and appearances always guaranteed excitement.'" This is the closest I will ever get to seeing Otis live and I plan on enjoying this album immensely.