Filed under: Good God!, Lonesome Heroes, Methodology | Tags: Ada Richards, Good God! Born Again Funk, Josh Bearman, Lonesome Heroes, Tucker Zimmerman
We sent a few CDs to Ada Richards, who is included on the next Good God! compilation (030, available at the end of January). One of them made it into the hands of (we believe) one of the patients at the hospital where Ada volunteers. She sent this enthusiastic letter.
My favorite thing about the letter is that usually friends and family members of the artists are only excited about the track or tracks they have a personal connection to. Our friend (as best as I can tell, her name is Carrie) is excited about the whole thing, even mentioning particular tracks she’s fond of. Refreshing to say the least.
Another thoughtful missive came from Tucker Zimmerman. It’s been 8 or 9 years since my friend Josh Bearman turned me onto Tucker’s Song-Poet LP and it’s long been one of my favorites. It’s sufficient to say, I’m very excited about working with him on the recent collection, 028 Wayfaring Strangers: Lonesome Heroes.
This is our favorite kind of mail!
Filed under: Good God!, Twinight | Tags: Gene Cash, Harrison & the Majestic Kind, Twinight
Yesterday we had our first sit down with Chicago ghetto-custom label legend Gene Cash. We’ve been working with Gene for the last few years as a songwriter on Harrison & the Majestic Kind’s “Can You Find Me A Love” for Twinight, and we finally got the license done for the Victory Travelers’ “I Know I’ve Been Changed” which appears on Good God! Born Again Funk (releasing 1/26/2010).
Pictured above is Gene with tha’ Group, captured for historical posterity by his friend Larry, whose last name none of us can seem to remember. More information about Gene Cash can be found by clicking Harrison’s link above.
As if loading in a total of 11,000 pounds of books wasn’t enough, these bad boys are now in the office:
Not a resurrection, but a rebirth.
Our 2006 release Good God! A Gospel Funk Hymnal examined what seemed to be a conundrum: gospel singers performing pious gospel songs, and devoutly, but doing so amid hot, sweaty, earthy sounds drunk on the same moonshine downed by any blues singer thumbing his way up north from the Mississippi delta. If the central premise was to grapple with a “funky” trend in gospel, forgive us for staring perhaps a bit too intently at the collision of sacred and profane we thought we saw on those LPs and 45s. This music was always sacred, and decidedly so.
Four years later, we return with not quite a New Testament, rather a re-examination of a weighty tome. Good God! Born Again Funk lends new ears to a joyful strain of American composers and performers unafraid of expressing their devotion with both inspiration and invention. They were faithful to a spirit, not to an ordained sound.
While we’re not releasing until January, subscribers can expect theirs in the next couple weeks (LP subs, fear not! The wax is in production as I type). Not a subscriber? You can pick one up from us at our merch table at the upcoming Eccentric Soul Revue dates.
In this week’s Time Out: Chicago, Brent DiCrescenzo & Monsters of Folk member Yim Yames – or is it Jim James? – deconstruct their new song, “Dear God (Sincerely M.O.F)”, which features a sample of Trevor Dandy’s, “Is There Any Love”, and Yames/James shows his love for our release, Good God! A Gospel Funk Hymnal.
There’s a record store in Nashville, Grimey’s. Grimey turns me on to stuff and told me about Numero Group’s reissues. There’s a couple other ones I got, but the Good God one just blew me away. There’s never been a record I listened to so much.
Filed under: Good God!
Here’s some ephemera Tom has been playing around with for the liner notes to NUM030, Good God! Born Again Funk. The shot above is of a unknown gospel band that we unearthed during the Boddie excavation. Check out the bling that tenor is sporting on the left!
This incredible folk art flyer comes from Ada Richards whose sacred song of spiritual inebriation, I Am Drunk & Real High (In The Spirit Of God), is featured on the comp.
We’ve moved from finishing up Light: On The South Side right into working on Good God! Born Again Funk. For those of you not privy to our in house meetings, Born Again is the sequel to 2006’s A Gospel Funk Hymnal, where we compiled 18 of our favorite funky gospel jams into a righteous legit mixtape (appearing only on CD & LP despite its format proclamation). Three years later, we’ve dug up even more, leaving our initial offering in the dust. Here’s a taste of what’s to come:
Filed under: Good God!
Sending out the LP’s and 45’s for NUM030 to be mastered later this month. We’ve been compiling this Good God! comp for a few years and after sequencing it this afternoon, it’s been well worth the wait. Coming atcha’ ears and minds in September.
I got another great package from Ada Richards today. Although best loved for her eccentric gospel recordings from the ’70s, she’s currently best known around the office for her incredible Xerox collages. I threw a couple on the scanner to give some sense of what I’m talking about, without reproducing any whole work. A little recognized benefit to dealing with lots of artists that made interesting work in the ’60s and ’70s is you get access to their other work. Even when it’s bad, and sometimes especially when it’s bad, it’s great to add to the archives. The stories of these artists don’t end when they’re done making the music that we’re interested in, it just may fall out of our purview. You can’t stop the creative from creating, even when their era has ended, when even their closest friends stop listening. Carl Wolfolk played me some new songs over the phone a couple weeks back, they’re incredible. Played straight off the four-track, he made adjustments in media res. It had more in common with Sonic Youth than “Can I Change My Mind”, I can assure you. I’d like to have the sound imprints just as they came through the receiver, but that music disappeared into the air and now it’s gone. When you spend time with a person, you’re in for the whole ride. In 20 years we might be releasing Eccentric Soul: The Nineties and it won’t take more than a visit to the boxes of promo CDs in our basements, and a few calls to old friends or their kids.
Filed under: Digital Dig, Good God!, Revival | Tags: Add new tag, ecorse, Felton Williams, Gospel Funk, Revival
The magnetic tape residue around our 1/4″ deck’s play head is building up fast this week as we finish listening to the massive Revival Records archive for Numero 026, Local Customs: Downriver Revival. Three years ago we ventured into this unorganized mess of tapes hand wrapped in coffee stained manilla envelopes and a myriad of colorful late 60’s tape boxes that have unearthed some memorable music from the outskirts of Detroit in Ecorse, MI.
We had a vague idea of what we would find in this archive, but 117 tapes later we’re astounded at the recording prowess of Revival Records figurehead, Felton Williams. If Moe Asch & Folkways is the macrocosm of field recordings, than Felton Williams & Revival is the microcosm. It seems like every rehearsal, demo, session, or Sunday sermon in Ecorse was committed to Felton’s tape deck back in the day. He treated tape stock like we treat 0’s and 1’s by making countless copies of the masters, like our backup 500 gig drives of today, always setting his mind at ease that he had these unique sonic moments captured on tape for us to listen to in the future.
If you simply can-not-wait until the new year to hear these raw Ecorse sounds, you can get a taste with the Mighty Walker Brothers hi-hat attack on God Been Good To Me in the Digital Dig section from our 10th release, Good God! A Gospel Funk Hymnal.
“You know he’s been so good, been-so-good-to-me…”
