The air up here’s great and the water’s fine, too! We’re truly higher than God up here on top of it all, loving life and getting love in return. To be Drag City is a wonderful thing, especially now that we’ve shipped the new Jews opus to everyone who wanted it (and could afford to want it). This time around, our bliss ain’t ignorance though — enjoying the rare air of success, we’re cognizant of another mountain to climb just ahead. Next stop: November!

As dealers in the narcotic output of a number of sought-after artists, we're aware this brings certain responsibilities. Once you hook a nation of quarter-millions on the music of a Bonnie “Prince” Billy, let’s say — you can’t go too long without giving the people what they not only want but actually desperately need. Fortunately for us, Bonnie’s just the kind of guy to provide an abundance of marketable products — and once we’ve got the goods from him, it’s not long before it’s going from the vein to the brain of the collective unconscious out there.

This may explain the tension we were feeling last month. Even though Superwolf was a monster (yeah!) success earlier this year, could the Bonnie People make it through December without a fresh infusion of his archly irresistible talent? We held meeting after meeting, trying to figure out a new angle, another name perhaps, a remix record or maybe a project teaming him with some faded legends of yesteryear…something, anything to help satiate the mob he and we’d facilitated into existence!

Then the phone rang, and we found a reason to believe again — it was the fellows down at Sea Note. Turns out they and Bonnie had packaged up something new for the holidaze season — and that something new is called Summer in the Southeast, Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s first-ever live album. Before you say, “Oh, just a live album...” allow us to interject that there’s nothing just about it! Nothing just — but plenty righteous! See, Bonnie’s live shows are as unpredictable as the man himself — except even more so. Put a boy who loves and hates the world as much as he does in a room teeming with humanity and you’ll find out just how unpredictable. Balancing his needs with those of his band and the roomful of faithful, the Bonnie “Prince” delivers old and new songs as they seem fit to be delivered — which leads the songs into a world they never made! On Summer in the Southeast, Bonnie and his sextet of hot pickers gas up and torch through eighteen numbers, most for their own pleasure, as well as the pleasure of their paid audience. It’s a bomb-burst of energy that takes and changes the form of such Bonnie classics as “Master and Everyone,” “Ease Down the Road” and of course “I See a Darkness,” as well as many others and some great Palace Music as well. Finally, a live show you can literally take home under your arm, rather that trusting your poor overtaxed head to remember. On November 15th, Bonnie comes alive! May it always be.

November 15th is also an anticipated date due to the return of our long-missing country-folk chanteuse, Edith Frost. She’s popped up playing a show here and there over the course of the last year or so, but her new album It’s a Game is the first Edith Frost music release of any kind since July of 2001, when Wonder Wonder was released. At the time, Wonder Wonder was the biggest, fullest sounding Edith record to date — but It’s a Game rewrites the record book on that account. Not with numbers, either — with less musicians playing, It’s a Game is the most fulfilling Edith Frost record yet! Part of this has to do with Edith’s years making records and singing them. Part of it has to do with the musicians invited to the session. And part has to do with the emotional intensity of the performances — with this much on the line, less was more, and as a result, the music floats in deep spaces throughout the record. Edith’s songs of the heart are dreamy and ethereal as well as jagged and pointed by turn — they trace the ups and downs of relationships that all us boys and girls have been so lucky and unfortunate to have felt over time. It’s a Game is an album full of love.

As we mentioned above, It’s a Game comes out on November 15th, 2005 — but the new Frost age begins in earnest on November 19th with a show at the HotHouse here in Chicago. We hope to see you there but you can’t make it to that one, don’t worry — Edith is going to be taking the love to the people in 2006, with plans to tour the US, Europe and Australia formulating as we speak.

Completing the triumvirate for November 15th is The Howling Hex. Earlier this year, All-Night Fox trumpeted the debut on CD of The Howling Hex — now You Can’t Beat Tomorrow takes this ambitious new band to a whole new format, DVD (included along with a CD of new music). This is how the “New Border Sound” that The Howling Hex specialize in is going to get spread around — one format at a time. The Howling Hex featuring Neil Michael Hagerty recently debuted their live show in Chicago and New York, flooring audiences with three acts of entertainment (spoken-word, music and multi-media/music). The shows were massive, paganistic displays — but You Can’t Beat Tomorrow is, not surprisingly, another matter entirely. Here, The Howling Hex have assembled a new home-cooked brew of sound that features touches of steel guitar and trumpet in the mix along with guitars, basses and drums not to mention the multiple voices that shocked so many on All-Night Fox. You can’t pick up a Howling Hex record without expecting a new sensation or two, people.

Then there’s the aforementioned DVD, which contains a “pilot” for a “variety show” called You Can’t Beat Tomorrow. Variety is right — in addition to rock and roll performances, there’s visual gags, montage sequences, animation, spoken words and other images that are all disembodied from that which we in this world might typically associate with the pilot for a variety show — in this day or any other day and age. In other words, this DVD places itself in a genre of one. It’s one very wigged-out collection of images and entertainment, a picture of America today unlike one you’ll see anywhere else with lots of laughs and good times included in the bargain.

And bargain is right! You Can’t Beat Tomorrow is priced to move at our normal CD cost, even though the package includes a CD of all-new music along with the DVD — 60-plus minutes of entertainment in all. You can’t beat that for value, originality or natural-born, flat-out, good timing entertainment! It comes in a CD case, so come November 15, you won’t have to ask your local record-shop counter-monkey where You Can’t Beat Tomorrow is at — just go where you know it’ll be, the letter H in self-respecting shops all around the world.

Strike up the band! In best New Orleans style, the Silver Jews long silence has been laid to rest — and now that Tanglewood Numbers has been unleashed, it's time for the wake. If you’re not a reader of periodicals, then you may have missed the coverage in press outlets of various repute — but readers of the New York Times, Rolling Stone, MOJO, Harp, Uncut, Entertainment Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, Elle Magazine, Time Out New York (and London, and Chicago) and approximately 378 other publications worldwide are getting the word, if they didn’t have it already — Silver Jews Tanglewood Numbers is one of this year’s best and most — and it’s only October!

The interest and intrigue sparked up by these venerable old favorites has been an eye-opener. Shops we didn’t know existed phoned us — and a few seem to have been founded and opened mainly to sell the new Jews! As you’re cruising down the streets of your towns and cities, here’s a sight you’re bound to see in the days to come:

Doggpony Records, 4561 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles CA

Also (very) happening now is the video for “How Can I Love You If You Won’t Lie Down.” We understand if you might have missed it in your rush to get here to read all about the latest — but it’s sitting right on our website right now, available for you to download. Exuding a classic video feel but also a homegrown vibe that is all Silver Jews, this video is destined for spins on indie and cable-access stations nationwide! Oh, and MTV as well — MTV Europe, that is. Everybody knows MTV in America doesn’t care about music, fool.

Today, we bump and grind to the strains of Tanglewood Numbers. Silver Jews, l’chaim!

Drag City wants to extend hearty congratulations to our vigilant street teams! Networked throughout North America, they fearlessly took our sometimes-subversive messages to the random crowd, distributing leaflets wherever the semi-young and semi-hip chose to gather. Like our boy Shakeel here, dealing with the bearded menace of the New Alternative Youth with a smile and a handbill (and a Superwolf shirt for his troubles).

Keep an eye on the front page of this website — more and more, we’re going to be appealing to folks on a grassroots level to take up arms in the name of Drag City! Run to the mirror and look! Are you ready? Could you be the one?

Our selection for this month’s Hardest Working Artist on Drag City is a long-overdue selection — Faun Fables! Dawn the Faun and her faithful partner in crime Nils Frykdahl have been tireless in support of Family Album since it came out almost two years ago. But see, here’s the crux of it for Dawn, it’s not “support of Family Album” — that’s a mercenary stance she doesn’t understand. For Faun Fables, touring is about playing music and entertaining wherever they’re welcome to play. And since 2004 dawned, Faun Fables have been back and forth across America and Europe a few times, as well as down to Australia and New Zealand. Why, Dawn’s live in America right now, opening for Dresden Dolls as a solo (details here) while Nils is touring with his other great love, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. In between dates, Dawn is preparing her next record, a musical work of theatre known as The Transit Rider. She’s also spent time this year studying theatre in Poland with Wlodzimierz Staniewski as well as recording songs for various compilations (more details here). Is it any wonder that Faun Fables is Drag City’s Hardest Working Artist of the Month?

As usual, the month of November finds a small army of Drag City recording artists out crisscrossing the horizon, playing shows everywhere they can find them. As mentioned above, Faun Fables are opening up for Dresden Dolls out east and Edith Frost is playing a record release show in Chicago — but did you know that The Fucking Champs are playing at All Tomorrow’s Parties in December? It’s true, and it’s the inspiration for a handful of shows in the UK and the US around that time. Weird War will also be playing at ATP this time around as well. Meanwhile, David Grubbs will be performing Theifth with his collaborator, poet Susan Howe, in New York and Chicago in early November. Neil Hamburger is rambling around the Pacific Northwest in search of a laugh. Smog and Joanna Newsom are in Australia and Japan (for Smog, a return trip, but for Joanna — another stunning debut!). Also in the Big News department, Gary Higgins and Pearls & Brass will be playing at the Two Million Tongues Festival in Chicago. This is a rare appearance by the man who recorded Red Hash back in 1973 (Gary, people — don’t you read this newsletter?) as well as another bone-shattering explosion of blues and rock from Pearls & Brass. But why are we hyping you on all this? The full details are available to you every day of the week on our Tours page — go see!

What an epic this year has been — so epic that it’s hard to believe there’s going to be another year after this one. Doesn’t the world just come to an end after this? Apparently not — we’re looking at the calendar right now and it’s telling us that we’ve got releases a-plenty lining up for 2006. It all starts in January with the release of Pearls & Brass’ album The Indian Tower, a definitive work of power-trio rock and roll recorded and mixed by The Fucking Champs’ Tim Green. We’ll have more, details-wise, on Pearls & Brass and their awesome album next month — but FYI, others somewhere on the new releases list for 2006 include Six Organs of Admittance, High Llamas, Espers, P.G. Six, Joanna Newsom, Loose Fur and Bonnie “Prince” Billy.

It’s gonna be grand — so keep an eye on us over here, we’ll be around.

With a love that will last through the ages,

Rian Murphy
Drag City Inc.