Good day.
By which I mean hello and also that it was a good day. I realize that is a somewhat wild and even unchained assertion by some (most) standards on this day in this situation in this nation, but holding two things at the same time is a thing I have been practicing. So, for example, I coughed and such and so at 5am rose to swab my nose (not great) but there was only one line on the test strip after 15 minutes (good!) and on the drive to school there is this place where the sky opens up and the sun lights everything purple and gold (also good!) and the kiddos noticed while we listened to the Demon Slayer theme song (also good!). So I’d built up a store of goodness from which to draw as I occasionally opened a newspaper tab before averting my eyes. This is where we are.
Speaking of where we are: in this latitude and longitude combination there is MUSIC, lots of it, in various forms including large-scale choral concerts about wise men and mangers, Dad Rock to which I have contributed shamelessly, mostly, and also some et cetera. It is out of this soupy et cetera that TRACTÖRHEAD have emerged, american traditional bluegrassy punk-folk, a live show that makes you laugh and dance and “hoot” and “holler,” angelic vocals over bestringed instruments in the form of guitar, dobro, and banjo, and also the dobro guy will occasionally make grand pronouncements during and around the songs.
I know this to be true because I recorded this band at the Hot Spot, which I mean in terms of the actual brick-and-mortar establishment called the Hot Spot, but also in terms of the way in which Tractörhead can be in a spot and, look out, that spot becomes hot. PIONEERING RECORDING TECHNIQUES like turning the amps around backwards and doing everything with a single Zoom H6 and mixing a DIGITAL SEVEN INCH RECORD in an afternoon. What is a digital seven inch? For those not steeped in the Future Sevens history and lore, I mean that there are two songs, one for each side, but there are no sides because it is digital and also there are actually no meaningful proportions like seven inches to contend with. Though I suppose it technically does take up physical space. A Digital Seven Micron. Egads.
You could listen here. You could also download it for two dollars. One dollar for 3.5 microns by my calculation, which, when put that way, sounds like a ripoff, so let’s not put it that way, shall we?
Additional information includes: One More Revolution Records seems to have reawakened, like a slumbering flannel-breathing dragon jolted into ecstatic toe-tapping?
And: there is more music in the pipeline. The music of what happens specifically here. By “here” I mean this wild (mid)west town and the spaces into which its tendrils might extend.
In 2016 I read Our Band Could Be Your Life and started this label and marveled at the records we then made and the ways we made them: hand stamped and numbered to start, ink on fingertips and paint under nails as the projects evolved. I hocked them at conventions. I hired someone. I marveled, too, at how something so massive in my heart and mind could feel so small in terms of ripples in the world. How a new release could feel like everything and yet my everything could not necessarily be anyone else’s anything.
Unless/until it is. Eppur si muove. It does mean something when you record a band and show up at their show with cute little download cards that land on a bandcamp page that you made specifically for them, for that show on that day.
Or: when you work with kids in the community on Fridays at The Key and can say I Will Put This Out When It Is Done and really mean it. You should see how they look back, at you but really at themselves, at a/the version of themselves that is permitted to take up space, sonic and otherwise. So making these records, physical or digital or just records in the sense that they document what happens in this particular place, become less about creating a conduit to A Moment of Internet Viral Fame and more about seeing a process through to its logical conclusion. We make things so we can share them and this is something we thought to share, and there will be more because there always is.
If a tree falls in the forest someone will be there to hear it,
Andrea