Micah P. Hinson - Micah P. Hinson and the Gospel of Progress (2004)

"I Still Remember" by Micah P. Hinson


Daniel Johnston had trouble staying in school. He attended both Kent State and Abilene Christian for short periods of time before returning home with his inability to stay in school rooted in his psychological health. Micah P. Hinson is another member of the Abilene Christian Dropouts Who Would Go On to Have Relatively Successful Music Careers Contingency though his reasons for dropping out are due in part to drug abuse and the misguidance of "shady women".

Micah learned to play the guitar at the age of 11, taking after his older brother. Playing music became one of his methods for coping with living in a small community along with skateboarding and drug use. In 2000 while Hinson's life was still unfocused, he recorded a demo and handed it off to musician, record label owner, and friend JP Lapham. Convinced of his talent, Lapham took on the management of Micah's career and began shopping him around to record labels. Sketchbook Records in the UK eventually took interest and signed Hinson in 2003.

Micah P. Hinson and the Gospel of Progress saw release in 2004 along with two singles. The Gospel of Progress (a possible reference to Micah's backing band during these sessions) is a break up album. Each song is lyrically minimal, usually only consisting of one verse, one cry of the heart. The thoughts are anguished, depressed and morbid. They are all searching through different emotional lenses for a love that isn't reciprocated. Musically, all the songs start out just as minimally, just Micah, his baritone, and his guitar, but they all grow new and different layers swelling and filling the songs out with orchestration and overlayed vocals (sometimes his own breaking tenor or the soft, dismissive voice of Sarah Lowes). Micah would quickly follow up his debut album by rerecording his demo and releasing it as an EP The Baby & the Satellite in 2005.

Here is the discography surrounding Micah P. Hinson's debut album:

The Cranes (2003 compilation appearance)
The Day Texas Sank to the Bottom of the Sea (2004 single)
Micah P. Hinson and the Gospel of Progress
Beneath the Rose (2004 single)
The Baby & the Satellite (2005 EP)
Yard of Blonde Girls (2006 single/compilation appearance)

"Beneath the Rose" by Micah P. Hinson


"The Day Texas Sank to the Bottom of the Sea" by Micah P. Hinson


If you have any ideas for where the tour should go next, please give a shout. I'm open to whatever as long as the artists are historically related in some way and go in an artist's chronological order.

Pass the Headphones!!

Daniel Johnston - Songs of Pain (1981)

"I Save Cigarette Butts" by Daniel Johnston


Beck's loosest demo Beck and Dava recorded in 1990 is an extremely informal session where Beck and Dava simply enjoy the process of recording together. The demo has no real song ideas that'll grow up to be hit singles and everything they do record is off-the-cuff. Mixed in between the songs and half-songs is the banter that leads from one to another. On one particular recording, Beck goes on at length on one of his influences Daniel Johnston. According to Beck, Johnston is a born-again Christian who at one point played with the Butthole Surfers. That's not necessarily true, but he and members of the Surfers did collaborate (with the band holding Johnston in high regard), and Johnston's songs are awash with Christian influence. Whether the songs reflect a faithful or cynical approach to Christianity is another conversation altogether...

Daniel Johnston learned to play the piano and wanted to be just like The Beatles. A few things stood in his way: he couldn't sing and he suffered from manic depression and schizophrenia, but he continued to play. He took classes at a couple of universities but, for reasons most likely rooted in his mental illnesses, he would always wind back down in his parents basement. It's in the basement where Johnston recorded his work on an old boombox. He'd then take the tapes he had made and go down to local record stores, universities, and clubs in Austin to give them out by hand. He gained a certain local notoriety for both his music and his odd behavior.

His first recording titled Songs of Pain and consisted of songs he recorded in 1980 and '81. The recordings are naturally poor in quality and consist of Daniel banging away frenetically on his piano singing his personal songs in his broken voice. Mixed in between the songs are sound bites of field recordings usually of friends and family. The most notable and saddening is a fight between he and his mother on how he'll never amount to anything. She criticizes him for his laziness while he retorts with sarcastic agreement and self-defeatism. The fight is one they've had many times before. The songs, as such, are very difficult to separate from their source material. Most of the Songs of Pain are in reference to a girl he loved who would eventually marry an undertaker. As such, whenever there is a reference to a funeral, a girl he loves, or a girl on whom he wishes ill, you begin to imagine Daniel's state of mind. His songwriting on its own is raw. His piano riffs are heavily embellished and his lyrics take turns of stream-of-consciousness. Still, the riffs are accomplished and the lyrics are deeply honest and find their way to natural conclusions whose notes and thoughts will resonate in the hearts of listeners.

Here is the discography surrounding Daniel Johnston's debut album:

Songs of Pain

"Urge" by Daniel Johnston


If you have any ideas for where the tour should go next, please give a shout. I'm open to whatever as long as the artists are historically related in some way and go in an artist's chronological order.

Pass the Headphones!!

Beck - Golden Feelings (1993)

As mentioned in the previous entry, Forest for the Trees had a constantly evolving cast of musicians playing alongside Karl Stephenson. One of these members was a harmonica player, Beck, for whom Karl would eventually produce his major label debut and landmark album Mellow Gold. This album, however, was not Beck's first.

Beck is the son of artists. His father is composer David Campbell (previously used as a Tour link between Macy Gray and David Vandervelde) and his mother is ex-David Warhol Factory Worker Bibbe Hansen. He dropped out of high school and began busking around Europe while staying with his grandfather in Germany. After earning his wings, he moved to New York where he became part of the anti-folk movement. He continued his anti-folkie routine in Los Angeles where he also dabbled in a metal band (Loser with Peter Hanft) and started experimenting with recording techniques.

The most common attribute of Anti-Folk is a fervent desire to subvert the ideals of folk music (the voice of the common man, the call for change). Every anti-folkie has a different means of subversion. In Beck's case, he created a ne're-do-well, slacker persona that sang songs about going to moon cars, do drugs, and the possibility of getting out of bed. While folk music portrayed the common man as earnest, hardworking, simple, and wise of the land, Beck sang about the common pariahs of society: uneducated, lazy, and ignorant boys who refuse to grow up and take responsibility for themselves and others. As Beck was originally interested in folk music (he had as healthy an interest in Woody Guthrie as the next guy), his anti-folk music shared the same earnest sounds of the guitar and harmonica. His sound evolved quickly to match his lyrics. His recording process became increasingly lo-fi, his songwriting was more in minor key coupled with purposeful poor playing, and his voice became disturbingly distorted.

All of these elements, after a slew of home demos and experiments, reached a point with his debut album Golden Feelings released in 1993 by the very small label Sonic Enemy. At this point in Beck's musical career, he was still stuck in dead-end jobs and left largely ignored at the clubs and coffee houses he performed at. But with his prolific demo output and "experimentation" as "his only gimmick", it's no wonder such an earnest love of music would produce one of the most respected and critically acclaimed artists of the nineties and aughts.

"Gettin' Home" by Beck


Here is the discography surrounding Beck's debut album:

Banjo Story (1988 demo)
Beck and Dava (1990 demo)
R-Marcel (1992 demo)
Are U Positive (1992 demo)
Beck, Like the Beer (1992 demo)
Don't Get Bent Out of Shape (1992 demo)
1992 Demo (1992 demo)
Metal Demos (1992 demo as Loser)
Fresh Meat and Old Slabs (1993 demo)
Golden Feelings
Golden Leftovers (1993 outtakes album)

"Totally Confused" by Beck


"Desire (Hollow Log)" by Beck


If you have any ideas for where the tour should go next, please give a shout. I'm open to whatever as long as the artists are historically related in some way and go in an artist's chronological order.

Pass the Headphones!!

Forest for the Trees - Forest for the Trees (1997)

"Planet Unknown" by Forest for the Trees


Bob Ludwig is one of the most sought after mastering engineers in the business. He's skilled and prolific and chances are he's mastered or remastered one of your favorite albums. Ludwig was recruited to remaster the entirety of Queen's album catalog for their recent deluxe edition re-releases. Ludwig has mastered everything from classical to classic rock from indie to the most mainstream pop. On the extremities of his mastering work lies a strange album by the collaborative project Forest for the Trees.

The membership of the band Forest for the Trees is difficult to pin down. The band was malleable and made common use of that quality. The only cornerstone the band had was hip hop and alternative rock producer Karl Stephenson. I imagine that the makeup of the band was Stephenson (who wrote, arranged, and played most of the music) alongside any friends who wanted to bang around and record with him.

Stephenson began pulling together the band's debut in the early nineties with an aim at releasing it around 1994 (about the same time he produced Beck's Mellow Gold). However, his obsessing over the intricacies of the compositions led Stephenson to a mental breakdown, leaving Forest for the Trees unreleased until 1997.

The eponymous album is an odd hybridization of styles very similar to his approach in producing Mellow Gold (without the novelty). The album is lightly psychedelic more jarring for its juxtaposition of genres (hip hop next to grunge next to celtic music next field recordings) than the minutia of the production Stephenson labored over. The content of the album explores textbook transcendentalism and carries with it fleeting visions of a global community.

The delayed release of Forest for the Trees's debut from Dreamworks Records failed to find an audience. 1999 held the last release from the band: The Sound of Wet Paint EP, loose tracks left over from previous sessions. Surprisingly, b-side "Primordial Soup", the "Dream" dance remix, and especially "The Sound of Music" would turn out to be some of the Forest's most notable songs. Dreaworks dropped Stephenson form their label and, now defunct, are believed to still hold one unreleased Forest for the Trees album.

Here is Forest for the Trees's complete discography:

Dream (1997 single)
Forest for the Trees
Planet Unknown (1997 single)
The Sound of Wet Paint (1999 EP)

"Dream" by Forest for the Trees


If you have any ideas for where the tour should go next, please give a shout. I'm open to whatever as long as the artists are historically related in some way and go in an artist's chronological order.

Pass the Headphones!!