BONNIE PRINCE BILLY Purple Bird

Popis:

I was nervous as hell, weirded-out and frazzled, fresh off the plane from Kentucky. It was Los Angeles, over twenty years ago, and I’d flown out west to witness a Johnny Cash recording session at the home studio of producer Rick Rubin. When I got there, Rubin was just getting out of bed (it was early afternoon); he immediately introduced me to Cash, whom I called “Mr. Cash” out of knee-jerk deference. The response from Cash was quick and firm: “Don’t call me Mr. Cash. Call me Johnny or J.R.” Rubin told him that I had written one of the songs they were working on and Cash said “Let’s work on that song now, then.” And we walked downstairs to the studio. And that’s where I met Ferg. Ferg was at the board, in charge of the recording aspect of the session. There was something about David Ferguson that put me at ease. Cash was sweet as hell, and Ferg was gentle as well but also contained and charismatic. There was absolutely no detectable bullshit. Everybody did what he was there to do, fully and fantastically. I couldn’t know that this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, though I know a big part of me hoped that this would be the case. I next saw Ferg a while later, maybe a couple of years. I gave him a call when I was passing through Nashville and he told me to meet him in a parking lot near Music Row. He ordered me into his car and drove me over to the house and recording studio of his friend and mentor “Cowboy” Jack Clement. We sat in Cowboy’s office and the two of them sang songs. It was heavenly. At the time, Ferg co-owned a recording studio, with John Prine, called the Butcher Shoppe. On a subsequent trip during a Superwolf tour, we stopped in to witness some of a session Prine was doing with Mac Wiseman. It was a rough-and-tumble, exceedingly comfortable space for making music. Eventually I recorded songs there with Matt Sweeney for various Superwolfy projects, and with Dawn McCarthy and Emmett Kelly for our Everly tribute What the Brothers Sang. But Nashville was changing, growing, expanding, and eventually the building that housed the Butcher Shoppe was razed, the whole neighborhood rendered unrecognizable. Cowboy passed away, and for a while the fate of his studio was up in the air. Like all years, these were years defined as much by change as anything else.

Detailný popis:

Bonnie Prince Billy
The Purple Bird

1. Turned To Dust (Rolling On)
2. London May
3. Tonight With the Dogs I'm Sleeping
4. Boise, Idaho
5. The Water S Fine
6. Sometimes It S Hard To Breathe
7. New Water
8. Guns Are For Cowards
9. Downstream
10. One of These Days (I'm Gonna Spend the Whole Night With You)
11. Is My Living In Vain?
12. Our Home