I TUNES, YOU TUNES, WE ALL TUNES…
Sure, we sell vinyl LPs and CDs (and the occasional t-shirt), but we’re not completely put of touch! Drag City continues to seek out state-of-the-art solutions to the age-old problem of disseminating music amongst the masses. What this means this year is that we’re proud to be goose-stepping along with the rest of the increasingly-digitized industry in putting as many of our vast catalog pieces on iTunes as we possibly can — soon to be followed by the same process on other, similar, but differently-named agencies’ sites. We’re not really at the point yet where we’ll be offering exclusives or anything like that; just wading through the basic contract was enough for us. Jeez, remember Napster? They never asked us to sign anything! Ah, the good old days…of being totally ripped off!

DRAG CITY, A to Z!
We’ve got a great line-up of new titles — a line-up any label would be proud to flog. To signal our enthusiasm, we’re going to be issuing a compilation CD with some of the highlights (so far as we know) to retailers all over the world. This compilation will be known as Drag City A to Z and will feature ten different musical pieces as well as a special master of ceremonies guiding all you tender kids from track to track. No, it’s not Neil Hamburger — we decided to reach outside of our little world for this one, in keeping with the “reaching outside of our little world” theme of this compilation CD — to a man many would call one of the funniest around these days, professional comdian Demetri Martin! This CD a giveaway item…but don’t call us up and ask us to give one away to you — it’s up to the retailers to do the giving, courtesy of us.

IN-STORE/OUTTASIGHT!
In support of the super album called Superwolf, co-creators Bonnie “Prince” Billy and his big-ax’ed friend Matt Sweeney have scheduled a super-tour for the super-ages! By which I mean that they’re playing lots of university bookings — those shows pay a super shit-load! However, while they’re out and about, doing their music-makin', dough-rakin' thing, they’re going to give back to the people in a special way — via the tried-and-true super-star in-store appearance. We’re still working out all the details, but if you’re one of the 20 million people living in the greater NYC area — lucky fucking you! Bonny and Matt are playing five in-stores shows in New York city — get this — all in one day! The day: March 5th. The stores: in order, Sound Fix, Kim’s Mediapolis, Built By Wendy, Mondo Kim’s, Other Music. Starting at 1pm, they’ll be kicking it up every two hours at these successive fine retailers. Be sure you make it out — otherwise, how will you pick up the Superwolf NYC instore tour t-shirt?

RELIGHTING DEXTER’S CIGAR
It’s a wide, wide, wide, wide world of music out there — and it’s only getting wider, people. This is a simple fact that’s allowed Drag City to survive — nay, flourish over the years with works that on first glance seemed incomprehensible, only to become favorites — nay, anthems in future days. The same is true in spades for our mini-army of distributed labels. Like, take the label that started it all — dexter’s cigar! This label was started by Jim O’Rourke and David Grubbs during their Gastr del Sol heyday in order to cast the light their own stardom afforded (ha! ha!) onto reissues of lesser-known, but equally classic titles. From 1995-1998, this process brought records from Circle X, Voice Crack, Derek Bailey, Merzbow, Loren Mazzacane-Connors, Henry Kaiser, Folke Rabe, Rafael Toral and Arnold Dreyblatt back from the limbo that an un-ready world had banished them into in their original day. The gay 90s was a much more informed — nay, enlightened time, after all. Or was it? After a thousand or so had sold through, the sales trickled away and making more CDs seemed to be an unwise idea — speaking strictly monetarily, that is. A half-decade later, we feel that we’re dealing with a much more enlightened time all over again! What better to do that fill that extant print and drop it on a somewhat-better-prepared retail market? So we did — and for perhaps a limited time only, the tangled string-work of Derek Bailey’s Aida, the smooth yet piercing guitar drones of Rafael Toral’s Wave Field and the orchestra of excited strings found within Arnold Dreyblatt's Nodal Excitation are yours for the taking! If you're feeling up to a musical challenge, have a cigar! They're still fresh after all these years.

PLUX REDUX
It’s not just dexter’s cigar that’s back for your re-edification! We’re also pleased to re-introduce the debut release from the world of Moikai, Nuno Canavarro’s Plux Quba. First released as an LP in 1988, Plux Quba offered a palette of sounds both mysterious and haunting — sounds that were to profoundly influence the works of Oval, Mouse On Mars and Jim O’Rourke (to name but a few) over the course of the next decade. Finally, after ripping off the man for several years (‘influenced by’ is just a lay-term for ripping off, you know), O’Rourke did the right thing and reissued Canavarro’s masterpiece on his Moikai label in 1998 on not only LP, but CD as well. Then this once obscure record sold like hotcakes! Well, assuming that hotcakes sell around 3000 copies worldwide, anyway. However, those 3000 copies came and went — and now it’s time for some more. This time around, it’s CD only — you can't have everything, right? Or rather, you can have everything — on CD only. Ah, why split hairs? The news is all good — Plux Quba is back in print!

THE ALL-NIGHT HEX
Let the world have their Jet, their The Darkness, their so-called “rock” music! Neil Michael Hagerty can out-guitar any of them wimps in his sleep — except that his vampiric tendencies allow him to only sleep in the day, while the rock n roll wanna-bes of this world are out there, moving and shaking, doing the dance of the Almighty Dollar. Meanwhile, Hagerty continues to dig deeper into the planet of rock and roll. Of course, instead of boring straight to the core, Neil’s serpentine vision takes him this way and that — sometimes to inner space, sometimes to the outer sanctum. This time, courtesy of his new vehicle, The Howling Hex, he’s in previously unexplored territory with a new CD, All-Night Fox. Life down on the farm seems to be agreeing with NMH — All-Night Fox is a screaming, thudding riff-barrage, topped with a tri-headed vocal beast comprised of Hagerty and a couple of chicks singing from the bottom of a well or two of reverb. As ever, Neil has constructed a record that doesn’t really sound like any of his previous projects — and in the case of All-Night Fox, it doesn’t even sound like any previous record, period! This may have to do with Neil’’s disinclination to order the compositions in the comforting familiar verse-chorus-verse format we all grew up with. It may have to do with him eschewing all guitar solos — in favor of guitar solos all the time! It’s true, every riff is a finger-tangling lead. The songs constantly move forward and in circles, as you the listener move towards the future and around and around in the present. With All-Night Fox, The Howling Hex have constructed something they call the New Border Sound — catch it!

BEING ALASDAIR
Right behind Neil Michael Hagerty in the assembly line is Alasdair Roberts 900-year old record No Earthly Man. 900 years, you ask? Why, that's the combined age of the songs he's picked for No Earthly Man, an album of death ballads from down the ages of Scottish traditional music. Of course, anyone who's familiar with Alasdair's music (and the music of his former outfit, Appendix Out), knows that Ali's special talent is for making everything old new again. The Alasdair Roberts sound has combined bagpipes with electric guitars and harmoniums with drum machines over the course ofr six albums. No Earthly Man benefits from the earthiest production sound yet, courtesy of bonnie Will Oldham, and featuring a cast of characters from all walks of music-dom. No Earthly Man comes to this earth on March 21st. Alasdair will be visiting the US later in the year as well as making many dates around the UK and Europe. Don't miss out on what many are calling the album of the last 900 years!

DRAG CITY CAPTURES GHOST ON FILM
Last year, many of you discovered your new favorite band Ghost, when their new album Hypnotic Underworld was released to multi-dimensional acclaim. Hoping to add another dimension to your neophytic enjoyment of Ghost, Drag City is pleased to announce the release of a very special DVD package: Metamorphosis: Ghost Chronicles 1984-2004. Yeah, twenty years of history on one DVD — and if that isn't special enough, how about this? The package includes a CD of previously unreleased jams from the dawn of Ghost! These embryonic sounds resemble nothing else in the Ghost catalog in their stark, pre-psychedelic straightforwardness — like the sounds of Japanese cavemen doing their ancient tribal bit. The DVD takes Ghost into the modern world, with footage ranging from street-busking to temple raiding to Terrastock 2002 (and beyond). There's almost three hours of footage there — more bhang for your buck. Metamorphosis is coming to us all, on March 21st.

THE RED KRAYOLA TAKE TO THE WORLD
It was a long dry spell, but with a couple new entries in their catalog (the soundtrack CD Japan In Paris In L.A. and the career-spanning singles compilation CD Singles), The Red Krayola are following up their incredible shows in Chicago and New York last year with full-blown tours of Japan and Europe in March and April! Watch for the details as they pile up — and then later in this year, hold your breath, as Mayo Thompson and friends take to the studio again for their latest onslaught on the forces of gravity, inevitability and music. Our prediction: another victory for The Red Krayola.

RECLUSIVE MILLIONAIRE WINS GRAMMY
Once and future Drag City recording artist Jim O’Rourke has been a lot of things in his musical career — master improviser, producer-for-hire, laptop composer, supergroup participant, label honcho, major motion picture musical director, Sonic Youth groupie magnet (watch out, girls!)…but never a Grammy winner! It’s been nearly four years since we heard from Jim on his own record, but thanks to his ongoing association with Wilco, he can now claim to be a Grammy winner. Their latest, A Ghost is Born took home Album of the Year honors in some category or another and since Jim produced the record, he qualified for a statue too. We heard he sent an aborigine in a loin-cloth to silently refuse the award (that boy and his Nic Roeg tributes, I swear!), but no word as to whether he made it past security. I suspect we would have heard by now if it had actually gone down…did we watch the Grammys to see for ourselves? Are you insane?

On the O’Rourke beat, there is some news Jim's actually proud of for once, and that's this — Werner Herzog's new movie Grizzly Man features a score that Jim worked on with Richard Thompson. He reports that it was an awesome experience. Check it out for yourself — the movie opens in March (and is also awesome, we're told). Oh, O’Rourke — you've done it again!

JOANNA’S EUROPEAN PARADE
The crowned heads of Europe are queuing up along cobblestone roads spanning the continent — because the Joanna Newsom parade is returning to that charming old world! Yes, Joanna’s on tour in April and she’s bringing as many Drag City artists along as they’ll allow into the country at one time (it has to do with a party we had in Utrecht many years back where we got a little rowdy…)! For the opening fortnight (they still have those over there), Six Organs of Admittance and Alasdair Roberts will be opening. For the second leg, Six Organs of Admittance and White Magic will be doing the honors. Since both Alasdair and Six Organs have new records, this is a great chance for all you new fans to catch them right in the middle of the hype about their fantastic new records! White Magic don’t have anything new put together quite yet (though there's a free EP floating around there in Arthur and some other magazines...), but the spooky sounds of the debut are still drifting out among the uninitiated. If you haven’t heard them yet, this tour is the place to do it. And Joanna — well, there aren’t enough days in the year to book enough Joanna shows to satisfy her ever-growing horde of admirers. Every time she tours again, she’s got another new song that manages to knock over a whole crowd of people all at once, concussion-bomb style. For more of that sweet bomb-burst, sign up for tickets on this tour of the year. You too, crazy Americans — grab a back-pack and let’s go Europe!

FAUN IS ON!
Everyone’s doing that crazy Europe thing these-a-days. Could it have to do with their somewhat more sane estimate of the international crisis our own mother country has instigated (aka World War IV)? Nah! They got stronger beer, hash bars, naked chicks on telly and that a system of measurement that actually makes sense. If that isn’t reason enough, our bands have found another reason - they want ‘em to come over and play in their clubs! For money! Real money, people — Euros, even.

Take Faun Fables, for instance. Dawn the Faun has stated often how much inspiration she’s derived from traveling the European continent, sleeping in barns and rolling down the road in wagons filled with hay, meeting up with friendly locals in the town square after dark and trading old family songs…well now, those gentle folk want her back there. Dawn’s only too happy to oblige — she and her sister Sheila will be taking the Faun Fables name to the denizens of ATP, Low fans in Brussels and all the Faun Fables fans they can attract to venues in London, Copenhagen, Berlin and Aarhus (that's in Denmark, in case you Euro-philes don’t know). And who knows, maybe more! Keep an eye on the Tour Page to see where Faun is onto next.

Dawn’s music is full of life and light. These shows with her sister in support offer a unique view of Faun Fables (Dawn usually plays with Nils Frykdahl or as a solo). Europe, Faun Fables loves you! Now get out there and love Faun Fables.

WEIRD WAR ILLUMINATED BY THE LIGHT
April marks the return of Weird War, with their greatest album to date! Illuminated by the Light takes the low disco thump of If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Bite ‘Em and weds it to the pop hooks of Scene Creamers’ I Suck on that Emotion while upping the production ante with slick tricks to help you slide and groove through the jungle of their subversive tunes. Illuminated by the Light features four or five hit singles, by our estimate — so look out for 12” remixes, videos and, knowing those kids, a full slate of touring. The world needs them now more than ever, so keep your ear to the ground for the latest from Weird War.

WELL DONE, HAMBURGER!
Neil Hamburger is a survivor of more years than he cares to count — and more shows than anyone cares to remember. He’s played venues from here to Kuala Lumpur and back again. But some of his fondest memories are of the nights spent at DiPresa’s Pizza House. Now you can be part of the memories too, with his new CD due out in April, Great Moments at DiPresa’s Pizza House — on sale where ever great comedy records are also on sale.

After playing at the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival, Neil will be “gearing up” for a national tour in support of this new record. Some dates are already confirmed — see our Tours Page for more.

FORECAST: MORE SMOG
Yep, that’s right. We checked the Drag City almanac and found that late May is going to be filled with Smog! This is because of a new Smog album, natch. It’s been two years since the last Smog record, so mark your damn calendar! The date is May 23rd. The album is A River Ain’t Too Much to Love. The man is Bill Callahan, aka Smog. He's back!

THE SUMMER BEYOND
Geez, after putting out new records from Bonny Billy, Six Organs of Admittance, Alasdair Roberts, Weird War and Smog (not to mention the Ghost DVD), you’d think we’d want to chill for the summer and maybe get some fluids, huh? Oh, we’ll be chilling this summer — with some stone-cold new releases and a mind-blowing reissue. Briefly then —

David “Papa M” Pajo reemerges in June, this time moonlighting under his god-given name. What makes a PAJO album different from a Papa M album? No sitar-driven instrumental taking up all of side three, for starters — and no side three at all, for that matter (this is a CD-only release). In fact, the whole PAJO album is songs with singing. In July, we reintroduce the world to the glory of Gary Higgins Red Hash, on CD for the first time (authorized) ever. For August, we’ve penciled August Born into the schedule — this is a Six Organs of Admittance collaboration. And beyond that, the sky is wide open. We’ll keep you informed as plans grow, contract and change.

BEFORE THE HAWK FLIES
Our vision kicks ass - would you believe we can see Edith Frost, Silver Jews and Loose Fur off in the distance? It’s true. All three of them are working on records, each one at a different point in the process. However, these many and sundry processes must come to a conclusion eventually — and with our rose-colored glasses on, we see the finish lines for these productions with total clarity!

Hard-core fan alert: we’re talking about releases that will occur no sooner than September, October and November if we’re lucky — and maybe even after the hawk flies, if something or other doesn’t go according to plan. Which it almost always doesn't! So don't freak out before it's time to, OK? Don’t believe what you read on amateur websites and blogs — those e-hacks aren't releasing these great new records, we are!

Meddlesome wannabes aside, it’s gonna be great, isn’t it? Silver Jews, Edith Frost and Loose Fur, coming this fall on Drag City Records!

THE NUKE FOLK MOVEMENT
Have you heard about this “Nuke Folk” movement? It’s very exciting, we’re totally into it. From what we've heard, it’s based on a pretty simple belief: that this bit of our musical past must go. Like Jesus, folk music will be replaced. But like Jesus, it’s destined to rise again and never really be gone for good and be a font of false values, elitism and character assassination for millennia to come. What can you do in the hear and now? Keep rocks in your pockets — you never know when you might encounter one of these ‘folkies’ in the road. Every one must get stoned! Once they start warbling about that pure line of virtue that they represent, the so-called “folk tradition,” bring the hammer. And please — this time, hurt ‘em. The Nuke Folk Movement — marching on your town soon.

AND DON’T FORGET
Joanna Newsom makes her national television debut on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Thursday February 24th! Check your local listings for the ABC-TV affiliate near you.

Talk to you soon,

Rian Murphy
Drag City Inc.
February 2005