Still there? We can’t tell for sure until the dust’s cleared, but if you are...wow. What a year it’s been for Drag City — a non-stop parade of great new releases that went past like so: Pearls & Brass, AZITA, The Howling Hex, Make Up, Loose Fur, The Red Krayola, Espers, Faun Fables, Smog, Six Organs of Admittance, Ian Svenonius, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Mark Fosson, Bill Fay Group, PAJO, Neil Hamburger, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Luc Ferrari, The Howling Hex, White Magic, Imitation Electric Piano, Bert Jansch, Joanna Newsom, White Magic, The Red Krayola and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy! The big news beyond the Bonny-Howling Hex release shootout (Bonny won in a walk) was the return of The Red Krayola to the new release racks after a five-year absence. AND the debut of Pearls & Brass and Espers on Drag City. Not to mention the reissue titles from Mark Fosson and Bill Fay Group. AND the new Loose Fur album. PLUS the new Six Organs of Admittance album. And the Neil Hamburger DVD. And of course the Bert Jansch album. And who could forget the new Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy album?

Ah, what the hell — they’ve all been pretty remarkable. And like the header says above, it’s been an earful — of awesome Drag City sounds!

(above) In the window front and center is their terrific Bonnie 'Prince' Billy The Letting Go display they had up in October! The ingredients for their display: posters from Drag City, colored markers...and love. Thanks, Sonic Boom.

When we started this merry-go-round you call Drag City (and we call a way of life), we didn’t know that we were creating an ante-upping machine that would rival the stock market in terms of ever-escalating expectations of value! Fortunately, we’ve thrown in with the right people — artists who never make the same record twice (unless they’ve got a DAMN good reason), people whose growth insures that every new record somehow outstrip the one previous (while at the same time, pairing with it in a manner most timeless). That’s why your today is a day that has the potential to make your yesterday look like a big pile of dogshit! Hit the streets and find out for yourself why — run to the record shop and savor our latest shipment. White Magic! Joanna Newsom! The Red Krayola! And Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy! Each of these releases is an eye (and ear)-opening experience for fans of the artists as well as neophytes. Even the occasional “bad apple” will find something to spew about with such wave-making material at hand. These records are here to stay. And that’s one to grow on.

The phone’s been ringing off the hook! Fans and friends everywhere are checking in to say, “Thanks...thanks for the great holiday gift ideas. Why, with vinyl editions as superb as the LPs of The Letting Go, Dat Rosa Mel Apibus, The Black Swan and Ys (to name but a few), my non-denominational gift bag is veritably stuffed!" These are sentiments we can sink our teeth into — but don’t forget about the wonderful CD packages that Bonny, White Magic and Joanna Newsom (to name but a few) have — these too will look fine under your tree! Plus The Psychic Soviet, Ian Svenonius' soft-cover masterpiece of hard-core political science and sociological prosetry — why it even comes in a merry shade of Christmas pink. And for the young and illiterate of the world, there’s Neil Hamburger’s DVD release, The World’s Funnyman. Or almost everything you might find while digging around on our site, dragcity.com. These are gift ideas that say, I’m thinking about you — in the craziest way possible! And isn’t that what Christmas, Hanukah, Ramadan and Kwanza are all about?

eMusic customers, cock an ear! The Red Krayola have entered into an exclusive arrangement with the subscription-only downloading service to showcase one of their hidden strengths! Over the course of forty years of underground sounds, Mayo Thompson and his ever-growing forces have been known as lysergic popsters, free-form freaks, polemicists and eventually even elder statesmen to the brave new world of indie rock...but nobody ever says what cool instrumentals they have! Rather than wondering any longer if people are stupid or just dicks, we’ve teamed with eMusic to offer a collection of some of their greatest instrumentals from the good old days (1970) to these good latter days in which we live in. Carefully selected from ten Red Krayola releases, the collection also includes three songs currently not available elsewhere in the public domain — completists, awake! Two of these songs are from the long-awaited Soldier Talk reissue CD, scheduled for March of 2007. Get your first taste on eMusic, as part of the wonderful tapestry of instrumental Red Krayola tunes!

Ask any fan of music you know — ask yourself, if you have the guts! They’ll tell you that records have nothing on live performances! Of course, you’re full of shit. Records are where it’s at...but live performances are a close second. That’s why musicians like playing live so much — they dig the underdog, you know. And so they tour — lucky you. That allows the Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy fans of western Canada to flock to Vancouver/Victoria for three days of completely diverse shows with three completely different set-lists (which they just did, three sold-out days in a row). This allows the roiling masses of Tenacious D fans to unload their pent-up rage on opening act (and America’s Funnyman) Neil Hamburger on each and every one of Tenacious D’s concert appearances this fall. The same goes for Alasdair Roberts opening for The Decemberists — except substitute ‘vocabulary’ for ‘rage’! This means that all the new fans of Joanna Newsom, attracted to her new album Ys like moths to the flame, have opportunities to see her every few hundred miles as she and her merry caravan wind their way across America (and then to the UK in January, where she’ll be backed by the London Symphony Orchestra!). This is what makes the first Bert Jansch American concerts in ten years such an awesome event! The Espers European tour featuring Edith Frost! The Six Organs of Admittance tour of Ireland! The Silver Jews end-of-the-year shows in New York and Boston! All of them! Live shows are awesome! Miss them and you’re dead.

Did we mention that we’ve got a lot of really great acts on the road this season? Notably, Neil Hamburger is celebrating his motion picture debut (In The Pick of Destiny, soon to be in theaters EVERYWHERE) by opening for the duo who hand-picked him for exposure in concert halls and arenas around the world. Your Houses of Blues, your Fillmores, your Tweeter Centers... the occasional Madison Square Garden — finally, America’s great unwashed comedy-rock fans will have an opportunity to see America’s Funnyman in action, doing what he does best — dodging a deluge of abuse as he works his way through his timeless comedy routines! If he survives, this might be the big break that Neil Hamburger’s been waiting for, thus allowing him to retire to the game-show circuit with the occasional appearance on Carson — or whatever it is they’re calling it these days ...

(above) Neil Hamburger on The Pick of Destiny red carpet, seemingly unaware of his impending doom on the Tenacious D “Pick of Destiny” world tour.

If you’re not from New York, this news item from the Village Voice will be news to you. Along with the Tisch School’s Vivien Goldman, David Grubbs has received notice as one of two “Teachers for an Indie-Rock Fan to Admire.” David’s John Cage seminar, history-of-experimental-music course and work leading a student improvisational ensemble at Brooklyn College led to this honor, which doubtless will lead to an influx of enrollment at the institution. And if that doesn’t help, maybe this will:

This is David doing what comes naturally — that is, playing guitar with other forward-looking avant-rockers; in this case Sunn O))). Last month it was The Red Krayola — in a few weeks, he’ll take the stage with Drag City’s own Stephen Prina. Rock on, Professor Grubbs!

As regular readers of this space know, we like to keep Drag City freaks alive with the sound of forthcoming titles. That’s why you can now grab an mp3 preview of our January releases from Alasdair Roberts and Ghost this very minute — provided you remove your eyes from this compelling prose.

Alasdair’s record is called The Amber Gatherers and like the title and the images the title evokes, it is a warm, sun-filled afternoon type of album — a welcome respite for those among us who took Alasdair’s death ballad album, No Earthly Man, into our hearts. Don’t worry, Ali’s got more traddy death tunes in store for you, but in the interim, his songs of life and love and living in Scotland will more than fill the void — they’ll light it with a merry glow! The Amber Gatherers is a pop record for grown-ups of all ages.

Ghost’s album is called In Stormy Nights and is somewhat the opposite of Alasdair’s record, as well as the previous Ghost opus, Hypnotic Underworld. Ghost have been watching carefully the path our world has been hurtling down and are not happy. However, they’re not without hope, either — and In Stormy Nights is suffused with a bright and burning spirit of protest! Which as you know is an action not undertaken lightly and/or without hope. A double album with deep impact (and a Cro-Magnon cover to boot), In Stormy Nights is a monumental achievement.

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February of 2007 brings another pair of ear-pleasing new LP/CD releases this time from old favorites The High Llamas and a new arrival to the ranks of Drag City, P.G. Six.

The High Llamas are following up 2003’s Beet, Maize & Corn with their new one, which is entitled Can Cladders. It’s a sweet, string-laden collection of tunes covering a diverse array of topics in the world of The High Llamas backed this time with an acoustic assembly including backup singers and a few drumbeats for that good pop album feeling.

P.G. Six’s Drag City debut is entitled Slightly Sorry — and as we’ve discussed among ourselves here at the bunker, the sounds of P.G. Six aren’t slight or sorry at all. Sure, he’s got a gentle vocal style — and yeah, his arrangements for his songs are sensuous and delicate — but ultimately, Slightly Sorry is quite a full-bodied album. The P.G. Six style combines old-school folk, country and western, classic rock and experimental tendencies in an unlikely but quite pleasing blend to create a contemporary vision that is strictly the domain of P.G. Six. Once you hear Slightly Sorry, you won’t be — what else can we say?

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March 2007 brings a couple of Drag City stalwarts back into the arena — King Kong and RTX! They’re not together again for the first time, but each of these venerable outfits are together again, making new music for today’s listeners. For King Kong, Beans is their first album since 2002’s The Big Bang. RTX follow up their debut, Transmaniacon with Western Xterminator. Also on the bill for March is the aforementioned reissue CD of The Red Krayola’s classic Soldier Talk.

And if everything goes well, April will feature new releases from former Smog frontman Bill Callahan, as well as The Fucking Champs!

Argh, it’s never enough, is it? God bless you — each and every one! We’ll catch you again in the New Year.

Excelsior!

Rian Murphy
Drag City Inc.
November 2006