Personal

Your host in the mountains with a blue sky behind him

Newsletter – Spring 2023

Hello Friends!

I call you “friends” though we may not even be properly acquainted because if you follow this we are unlikely to be enemies (Not sure I have any of those) and you deserve to be treated in a friend-ly fashion.

If you’ve opened this expecting album news, then we will both be pleased that I can tell you that the next album is recorded currently being mixed. Determining the method of release beyond the obvious ones and zeroes of the Bandcamp page is on the agenda along with the means to do so. Please reach out and let me know if you have preferences or other related thoughts. Are you craving cassettes? Need a 7” (I’ve got some!)? Do you have a label that is interested in releasing song-based music?

I want to hear it!

The album has a couple old friends and at least one newer friend lending a hand to what is otherwise a fairly solo effort. Some of it is a bit different to what I’ve previously dropped so I hope you’ll stay with me for the ride. There will also be some fun extra things about which I don’t wanna over-share. Next time, perhaps.

Meanwhile, I’m already recording more songs and visualizing a world in which a fourth record will exist. No rush on that.

a 7" record and 2 compact discs that are for sale and, in fact, on sale.

This Friday, there will be nothing new on my Bandcamp page aside from low-low prices on all physical media. Get your physical media on the cheap and enjoy it forever. Seriously. Get it out of my studio and into your life.

It’s Spring. Winter only passingly dropped by my corner of Virginia so we’ve no snow to curse as it sorts itself into the storm drains but we are bidding farewell to the cold and hello to the sniffles and blooms of warmers days and nights. We’ve been trying to get outdoors more frequently (Remember outdoors? It’s where the record collection isn’t) and so far it’s mostly just a ploy to generate undignified sweat in mountain trails but, the views have been nice…

Your host, J.M. Hart with a substantial vista of Blue Ridge mountains behind him. The sky is blue with a few light, white, clouds.

There continues to be talk of live performance and I hope to bring news of such a thing to you soon. Maybe. Is that a thing you want? Do you want to attend or even host a show? Please let me know.

To that end and in aid of the earlier album talk, I’ll remind you that my mailbox is here for your queries, missives, and complaints. Please post your electronic mail to rowjimmy at gmail.

Also, following on the last newsletter, I should inform you that I am not to be found on twitter and, in fact, haven’t looked over the fence into that particular dump since my previous mailing. I am on Mastodon, as I stated, at @rowjimmy@shakedown.social. If you don’t know how that all works, ask your kids.

Please stay tuned here for future updates or follow me on Bandcamp to get the condensed edition in your email…

Newsletter, November 2022

Got to thinking the other day, “maybe I should write a newsletter.”

It’s mid-November and the cold has come on. Twitter is stumbling towards what? Surely its demise. But how soon and in what shape? It’s become hard to rely on that thing and maybe we shouldn’t have anyway. It had the possibility, within its framework, to aid the building of communities. People had to attend to, nurture, and feed these communities just like anywhere else but the connection interface was strong. The discovery of these communities was also a good feature. Moving to new platforms requires a redevelopment of these skills. We scatter to Mastodon, Reddit, Instagram, Discord and who knows where else and try to reassemble the networks that have long informed, entertained, and supported us.

The Brokedown Podcast was able to morph into a platform for experimental musicians because I could find and connect with artists so easily on Twitter. Truth is, I’m lazy enough that simple barriers can be insurmountable on the wrong Tuesday. Sending out blind emails to PR folk, managers, or whatever unmonitored gmail account I may find on a website last updated in 2017 is not nearly as easy, effective, or satisfying. We’ll see how that all goes.

But I haven’t come to bury Twitter. I’ve come to drive a fresh flag of sovereignty into the ramparts and look out on the internets and see what is good.

What is good?

The year is ending and, unlike the past three years, will likely slide away without a holiday single from yours truly. I have a couple songs in mind but they’re just not going to be ready for your ears by last week so I’m happily going to forgo the entire thing and point out to you that I released an original song last year and I’m still pleased with it.

That’s my daughter, Piper, and my wife, Amy, singing backup on that tune and they do a lovely job.

Back in June, I released “Slips, Trips, & Falls”, my second full-length album. I got some nice press from Record Crates United:
“…a fine balance between pleasant country-tinged singer-songwriter fare and cosmic Americana.”

Currently, there are CDs available which would make a fine holiday gift for the lover of whatever sort of music I make. I highly recommend it. I’ve also got a couple (very few!) CD copies of the first album, “Sunken Road”, along with a mess of 7” singles if that’s your thing. All, of course, available in the Bandcamp store.

https://jmhart.bandcamp.com

Proceeds of all of that go to production costs for the next album.

Next album, you ask?

Why yes. I have another album that is, at this time, completely tracked. I hope to have it mixed and mastered in due course and move towards releasing it in some way in the new year. Maybe come Spring? We’ll see how things fly.

Inquiries are welcome, nay, encouraged.

In fact, my mailbox is ajar and ready for your missives. Send along whatever you’ve got. I’ll hit you back in due course. If you don’t know, I’ll just put it out there. I’m rowjimmy AT gmail. Use it wisely.

So, nothing new but the new stuff, I suppose, is the current state of being. I remain on the twitter web site if only to see which way the frame falls when it finally goes up in flames. That’s @rowj. Don’t expect much in the way of posts. For that sort of thing, I’m now on Mastodon at the slightly more complicated @rowjimmy@shakedown.social. If you don’t know how that all works, ask your kids or your neighbor’s kids.
I’m also on instagram still @therealrowjimmy or @brokedownpod if you just want the scoop on the show.

An abridged version of this free newsletter has also been issued via my bandcamp page. If you go up there and follow me, you’ll get all the new news when it’s hot. Full versions will also be posted here on my internet website. I’m thinking that now may be the time to get back into the old blog but, no promises on that front. Big news will come via this newsletter so stay tuned, get your friends tuned, keep your guitars tuned (and humidified) and stay warm this winter.

-J.M. Hart

Slips, Trips, & Falls Album Release

(Archived news, June 2022)

“Slips, Trips, & Falls” my second full album, is out now!

Featuring seven original songs, “Slips Trips, & Falls” was also home recorded with a bit of remote assistance from friends. It is available digitally from most major streaming & purchase platforms as well as on my Bandcamp page (jmhart.bandcamp.com) where you will also find CDs.

I’ve even seen some favorable reviews this time around from Record Crates United:
“striking a fine balance between pleasant country-tinged singer-songwriter fare and cosmic Americana,”

and Here Comes The Flood:
“Hart is never in a hurry with his music, carefully choosing his words, and wrapping his lyrics in cosy layers of various string instruments.“

Slips, Trips, & Falls
Compact Disc | $5.00 Proper digipak-type cd sent direct from me to you. Compact Disc (CD) | Edition of 100
Purchase on Bandcamp

Album Notes

“Slips, Trips, & Falls” is a collection, sifted from the past few years of songs, that seems to hang together in some sort of way. An awful lot of them begin with the letter ’s’. This is not by design. In fact the design is generally tertiary behind vibe and pleasure (although those may be the same thing.)

The name comes from a night some time ago. A full and proper quorum sat vigil near the fire as the chiller did its business ripping heat from the wort in the tank in the back. Conversation rolled about and we told our tales, cataloging various collisions, incisions, and the vast array of decisions both wise and otherwise that had preceded the moment. My mind strayed often to the task of updating the record. The importance of a historical document is widely understood because, without such a thing we’d have nothing to look back upon, leaving one standing atop a pillar in the void. This, of course, is a fine condition for a few idle hours on the weekend but not an ideal fashion in which to be going forward through life. Keeping the document, tracking the steps, has fallen to me because I’m meticulous enough to remember to put pen to paper, besides which, I bought the paper. Though I’m not sure of the provenance of the pen. All I know is that the ink flows at need. So there we were, sitting near the fire and Taylor just drops this phrase and its meaning and I took to it, discarding the meaning and original purpose, seeing in it the various properties purposes and actions of this set of songs. Most any set, really, but, title in hand, this set formed up and made itself a whole.

The seven songs range from personal to political, fictional to factual, and some just settle right in between. Even the fiction has some fact about it and the realest of lines nestle into the most fantastic settings. A friend called me a story teller. I just think of myself as a songwriter; stories are just part of the thing.

“Wednesdays”, the first single (set for release in time for May Day), is a song for and about the working people and its arrangement is akin to the starting point for each of these songs. A little acoustic guitar & vocal. Maybe another guitar. Other songs asked for a bit more. I play a little rudimentary bass now. But when it came time for the real thing, longtime friend and collaborator Ben Taylor (ex- Bloodshot Records’ JC Brooks & Uptown Sound) ably took the call and delivered. Field recordings? Friend & neighbor, Will Thornton (Francis Thornton, Programmed Cell Death) had just the thing in his stash. On the closing track, “Ship of Dreams”, I knew I needed more than I could deliver. The ambient country vibes of pedal steel player Howard Hughes Suite precisely matched the prescription.

Enjoy.

credits

released June 3, 2022

Produced by J.M. Hart at Sunken Road Studios, Fredericksburg, VA

Mixed & Mastered by Rob Dobson
Cover illustration by Shanski
Design by J.M. Hart & Sean Bonney
Layout by Sean Bonney

All vocals, acoustic & electric guitars, bass, mountain dulcimer, banjo, programming, & recording by J.M. Hart except:

The Howard Hughes Suite – pedal steel (7)
Ben Taylor – bass (2, 4)
Will Thornton – Field Recording (1)

Thanks to:
Will Thornton for the loan of a bass guitar & use of his field recording.
Brian Mosley (Electric Catnip) for listening.
My family for their patience and support.

Find The Howard Hughes Suite at thehowardhughessuite.bandcamp.com

Find Will Thornton at francisthorntonmusic.bandcamp.com

All The Years Combine

Twenty years ago, I was a twenty-year-old Deadhead with no worries beyond growing my small record collection and obtaining tickets for the next Grateful Dead shows. I’d been seeing them for nearly four years, listening for maybe eight, and I’d just come home from the Mardi Gras run in Oakland, California. My t-shirts were strictly music-related, my trousers corduroy, and my hair was a disaster. I had a girlfriend and a 1983 Datsun Sentra. Both were good enough. My life plans involved seeing any and every amazing concert possible; primarily, but not exclusively, Grateful Dead and Phish; and writing about them for any audience that might have eyes for such things. What could go wrong?

I only managed one show on the Grateful Dead’s East Coast Spring Tour that year. Money was tight after my California trip and I was disinclined to quit my record store job, so work took a degree of precedence. After all, Summer Tour mail-order would come around soon enough. But, I had the fortune to be inside the Philly Spectrum when they played the first live “Unbroken Chain”. That’s the way things went. You never knew which show would be the show. You went when you could and enjoyed what you found.

Dance. Wash¹. Repeat.

June rolled around and we caught some Phish shows, followed by the annual Dead shows at RFK Stadium and a one-nighter in Pittsburgh. We mail-ordered for Grateful Dead Fall Tour. My 21st birthday coincided with the scheduled Boston run and GDTS set us up with decent seats. Phish mail order soon followed for what was to become a legendary tour. Life was good. Even when it wasn’t. Who could complain about such riches? Continue reading →

A Poem

I stood at the Sad
Infinite American
Night’s edge where I blinked

Though fear made me blink
The Infinite surrounds us
Fish can’t fear water

Sadness like a cloak
Dampened by rain keeps us cold
I feared to regret

Unpaved uphill roads
With falling rocks and washouts
lead to gorgeous peaks

Smooth highways beckon
Invent thyself and ramble!
American void

Stare. It won’t stare back
Step forth and wrestle the void
Best hope is a draw

Conventional means
Keep the void roughly arm’s length
Still I probe the edge

Poised on the safe side
Bound by the word I’ve given
Still pushing uphill

Reaping rewards
With the worst of my regrets
vanquished by a blink

rowjimmy DOT net