LATEST ADDITIONS

Last year, producer Lee Townsend brought guitar-great Bill Frisell’s trio, fresh off the road and shortly after concluding two weeks at The Village Vanguard where almost 60 years ago another famous trio made an indelible record or two, into Tucker Martine’s Portland, Oregon studio for three days of recording.

The result is a first for Frisell—a trio recording with long time accompanists, bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Rudy Royston that is simultaneously densely packed with musical ideas and yet throughout, window wide open to the spaces between the notes.

Optimal Media recently announced a new "ecco-friendly" vinyl pressing package along with other environmentally friendly options for vinyl clientele wishing to minimize or eliminate their contribution to carbon-based pollution.

Arriving October 16th in multiple formats and configurations, Wildflowers & All the Rest features the original 1994 Wildflowers album, newly re-mastered and cut directly from the original ½” analog master tapes by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering and pressed at Record Industry in The Netherlands, plus unreleased tracks, solo demos, live performances, alternate versions and more—many of which were sourced from analog tape but then of necessity digitized..

After two COVID-19-induced delays, Record Store Day 2020 is finally (sort of) happening. Instead of the usual huge event, in an attempt to “socially distance” RSD, the releases will drop on three Saturdays over as many months. These “RSD Drops” occur August 29, September 26, and October 24, and in my opinion might fail the social distancing test. In particular, the August 29 drop has huge releases with diverse audiences; I predict that this first drop will be rather busy, leaving the latter two far emptier. I’ll be lining up early at Music Millennium on August 29 (last year’s event at Everyday Music was unsuccessful) for a large set of releases. Here are this year’s most noteworthy RSD items: