Last year Will Oldham released Beware [Drag City], the 7th full-length under his Bonnie “Prince” Billy moniker, and set out on a tour in support of it.  Although the album featured Jennifer Hutt, fellow violinist/vocalst, Cheyenne Marie Mize filled her position for the live tour.  Mize also appeared on the four song accompanying EP, Chijimi and, beyond being a very capable violinist, her voice harmonizes beautifully with Oldham‘s, as she was featured prominently in the live performances.  She is also a member of  an old-timey pseudo-bluegrass situation known as Arnett Hollow, as well as working with The Picket Line, a band that Bonnie “Prince” Billy recorded/released his lesser publicized collaborative work Funtown Comedown with at the end of 2009.  Cheyenne is really beginning to come into her own as an independent artist and, later this fall, her first solo album is slated to be released.  For the meantime, another joint effort between Mize and Oldham, titled Among the Gold, is being offered to tide you over.  This time, the collaboration comes in the form of the pair covering 19th century parlor music as a duet and it’s being offered ABSOLUTELY FREE.  It’s only a 6 song effort but it’s a beautiful album and, if it’s any indication of what we can expect from her debut release, things look really promising.

Here’s what Cheyenne Marie Mize has to say about the backstory and fruition of Among the Gold: (more…)

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One day when I was reading The Stranger, I noticed that living musical legend, John Prine would be playing the Paramount Theatre in Seattle on April 17.  I instantly wondered if Monster Fresh founder/editor, Dead C could take a swing for me and get me into this show.  So, I called him up and gave him a few lines, reminding him what a huge Johnny fan I was and all that hogwash, and then asked, “Hey dude, do you think you hook this up for me?”   From my understanding, this show had some outside promotion and was a little tricky but, thanks to some extremely gracious assistance from the Seattle Theatre Group, my friend Megan and I were provided with a pair of seats, in the exclusive Paramount Club lounge no less.

To give you a little background on my fascination with Prine, we must travel back in time to Olympia, Washington and Crazy Leland’s Mormon Mansion on Biscay RD, about a mile away from The Evergreen State College.  I was getting pretty wasted in the kitchen and staring into a huge tropical fish tank that was built into the wall.  It was Bond movie type shit, except that it was financed with the trust fund money of a wingnut with an addiction to weed and comic books.  I must admit that the fish never looked so pretty (I believe that I was probably on mushrooms at the time).  Friend and fellow Monster Fresh contributor, MEMES had suggested that we go into his room to jam some records.  I figured that it sounded like a good idea, so I grabbed a couple of beers from the fridge and moved on.  When we reached his room, the first thing that he asked me was if I wanted to smoke some glass.  I declined, both because I was already high and drunk and because, after growing up in the suburb of Kent, I was perfectly aware of what that shit can do to your teeth.   I’m pretty sure that  99 percent of people would have immediately left the room at that point.  In fact, I might have even been one of them, if it wasn’t for MEMES‘ next comment, which went something like this, “Hey bitch, you wanna hear my favorite Country music?”   I had to know what a glass-smoking hippie with a drum n’ bass obsession could possibly know about country, so I stayed.  He put on Prine‘s self-titled debut and the first song that he played was “Paradise“.  I thought to myself, “Wow!  This is a great song.”   Next I heard “Sam Stone“, a track that would both change the way that I view Country music and music in general.   It has honestly established a formula with which I would  judge lyrics by any artist from then on out, whether it be country, rock n roll, soul, blues, singer/songwriter etc.  If you have never heard “Sam Stone“, you should probably stop reading this right now and Youtube that song of a bitch (or simply view it in this pop-up box HERE).  It’s a great piece of work; similar to Oliver Stone‘s  Born on the Fourth of July, except that Prine‘s version involves a wife and kids and more drugs. (more…)

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I used to work the graveyard shift as a night auditor at a pair of shitty hotels, across the street from a crack park in downtown Seattle.  I was eventually, and intentionally, fired but, like most shitty jobs, this one had some Pros mixed in with its Cons. The pros were the comical wingnuts and crackheads, the fact that I met my girlfriend there, my free pizza hook ups every night, and that it was not uncommon for patrons to kick me down free weed.  Among the cons were the not-so comical wingnuts and crackheads, my incompetent and self-important dipshit of a boss (who was over-compensating for his secretive, yet discovered, history for having a taste for man wiener), that I was constantly scheduled as a security guard (not my “job”), and the time that the vato with the dress shirt and neck tattoo tricked me into smoking a sherm blunt with him at 3 in the morning.  The most frustrating situations were the ones where the Cons actually canceled out the Pros all together. One example was when I had learned that the Swedish psych band, DUNGEN, was staying in the hotel and had offered the entire staff free tickets to their local performance.  Sure, it was a “sweet” bonus for having a shitty job, but the problem was that I was actually working at that shitty job during DUNGEN‘s performance.  It would take almost 4 more years before I realized to what magnitude I had missed out. (more…)

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