BILL STONE - Stone - LP - Vinyl

LABEL: Drag City

CAT NO: DC789

BARCODE: 0781484078913

Tracklisting:

1. Here I Am 3:39

2. Purple 4:10

3. Fog 2:29

4. Friends 3:22

5. Vision on Sherman Street 3:40

6. The Fate of… :45

7. ….Jessica’s Lover :52

8. Part-Time Girl 2:25

9. Crystal Lover 3:36

10. Charlotte’s Town 6:40

11. The Fate of Jessica’s Lover 2:33

BILL STONE – Stone

LP – Vinyl

Just when you thought every loner folk genius had been outed / discovered, hyped and pontificated about, a new / old challenger lurks in the murky depths of time…and Maine. Sure, you have your Skip Spences, Dave Bixbys, Stone Harbours, and Perry Leopolds already, but have you heard the lonesome sound of Bill Stone? Well, don’t feel too uncool, hardly anyone has – unless you lived in rural Maine in the early 70s and grabbed his barely-ever seen LP in the day. Titled simply Stone, Bill’s mysterious album was pressed in the micro-est of quantities, covering wistful, airy psychedelia on par with the UK’s Mark Fry’s classic Dreaming of Alice, while still evoking the earthy, evening-hour melancholy of Leonard Cohen or Tom Rapp. Stone started out playing in a few small folk ensembles while also moonlighting with occasional solo gigs, finally recording this lone platter in 1969 in a pottery studio (!?) on a 2-track Panasonic tape recorder in Boothbay, Maine. With his solo career stalled, Bill and instead published books and articles on subjects as diverse as school counselling and chaos theory – but now retired, he’s returned to music, even recording a new album of originals and traditional numbers, based on his experiences as a cab driver (another wrinkle in the Stone Saga we must hear more of someday – but for now check out billstone.bandcamp.com). So with Bill back in action and the world slowly crawling out of a disillusioning haze, now seems like the perfect time for a first-time-ever reissue of this incredibly rare, happy-sad, gently delicate, Stone(d) classic of a downer song-cycle.