"Recorded in the waning days of the first wave of acoustic fingerstyle exploration, both of these devotional yet forward-thinking, searching-yet-contemplative albums constitute a single artistic statement, held together tightly by Potter's precision and clarity of playing." --- Ugly Things Magazine
Although most people I meet today usually have no idea, once upon a time, I aimed to become the next great solo guitar composer and performer, in the mold of John Fahey or Leo Kottke. From the age of seventeen, nearly all of my energies were devoted to this cause, and when -- in my freshman year at Goddard College -- I ran into indie record-maker Larry Feign, I learned that it was possible to actually put out your own LP's. I started my own record label, and followed Larry's advice to the Cleveland studio of Tom Boddie, who'd made a living pressing everything under the sun from local Gospel and R&B groups to Bar Mitzvah records -- sometimes even being a jobber for mass-marketers selling things like The Greatest Hits of the Irish Rovers on TV. Working with Tom, I released two LP's, Volume I: A Stone's Throw (1979), and Volume II: Neither Here Nor There (1980). When, to my disappointment, my (almost impossibly high) ambitions fell short, I moved on, eventually going to graduate school for my Ph.D. in English, and becoming a professor.
Fast forward forty or forty-one years: I have lived long enough to be re-issued. Thanks to the good folks at Tompkins Square Records in San Francisco, both my LP's have been re-issued in 2021, once again on vinyl, and also as digital downloads! They've done a great job remastering the tracks, and decided to use the original album covers as well. You can listen, download, or order the LP at these links:
And, if you'd like to see a new video I just recorded of "Blue Wind Boy," you can have a look at it thanks to the folks at the Fretboard Journal!
Also check out Rick Moody's new interview with me at Salmagundi Magazine!
And this new post about the 45 single Bluegrass version of DEVO's "Mongoloid" that I produced in 1979.
