12 Blues Releases

I'm pleased to announce the release of 12 Blues- an album of my simpler, bluesier songs, recorded at home. Due to the financial and time restrictions of studio albums and my huge backlog of material, it's likely that home recorded albums like this will be the main releases in the coming years- which will also mean that there will be much more material being released. 

The album showcases many of my simpler bluesy arrangements. The themes are consistent with my broader body of work. I open up with Malvina Reynold's I Don't Mind Failing, a personal anthem, which I recorded the day after a retaliatory firing for organizing. Blue collar life informed Hard to Make a Living, written in my head on a man-chain on some refinery scaffolding, and Low Water Blues and Fuck it All, both about being a deckhand, the latter written in the galley one shift in late October and later sung during a work stoppage. Union struggles abound in songs like Brookwood Blues, about the coal mine strike, and The Union Sent the Bulldogs In, written in thanks to some hard-fighting Carpenter BAs. Despair, perseverance, and personal struggles come up in Too Late and Tomorrow Me. I talk about my neighborhood changing in Ford Parkway Blues, which talks about the plant at which the truck in My Truck Is My Elder was probably built. I turn my eye to the wider world in Kazakhstan Blues, written as Russian troops poured into Almaty in 2022, and also in Imperialist Racket Blues, about the good cop/bad cop routine world powers play with countries like Ukraine, by seizing some of their resources with a invader's tanks and others as collateral to a patron's banks to help them fight off those invaders. 12 Blues is, of course, dedicated to the Minneapolis Police Department. 

Sic semper, porcis!