Twenty years ago (no seriously), I recorded my first solo album at Sound of Music Studios in Richmond VA. I wanted to create something darker and stranger and more open than what I'd done previously. Something uncluttered and direct that really leaned on the song and the lyric. I dreamed of a heartbroken heartbreaker along the lines of "Sister Lovers" or Skip Spence's "Oar" or Leonard Cohen's first.
With the help of the boy wizard Alan Weatherhead and the similarly besotted gentlemen in Maki (John Daniels, Tim Buckley and Miguel Urbiztondo), we laid the tracks quickly, rarely more than a take or three, and Oh! Turpentine was released shortly thereafter by the good people at Pitch-a-Tent Records in Athens, GA.
One astute reviewer called it "... a wee-hours, insomniac's tour of past romantic conquests and libidinous lost opportunities." A fair summary.
The album received some really good attention, stormed (ish) up the college radio charts and allowed us to do a fair amount of touring, playing some highly memorable shows with some of the best of that moment -- The Wrens, Cracker, The Hold Steady, LP, Crooked Finger, Champale, Camper Van, Sparklehorse, and probably your brother-in-law's band in the Florida Panhandle.
For various reasons, the music has not been readily available on digital platforms until now. So, yeah, twenty years later we're getting it out there again. Please take a seat, mix yourself a whatever, and enjoy...