Imaginary Compilation Album Plug

I'm very grateful to our mutual friend and blogfather of this parish, JC, for publishing another of my very occasional Imaginary Compilation Albums over at his place. This one concerns the music of Micah Blue Smaldone, a fairly obscure artist it's true, but one who means an awful lot to me. Check out the ICA here.

By necessity Micah's early retro country-blues recordings were raw, stripped back affairs, though his later albums are darker in tone and fuller in sound. As I mentioned in the ICA post, I saw Micah just once in concert, on a brief 2014 European tour in support of  his fourth and still most recent LP 'The Ring of the Rise'. The album boasts the backing of a full band, but that evening it was just Micah and his 12 string guitar, together completely captivating the pin-drop silent audience. This super-intense performance of 'A Derelict', segueing into the instrumental 'New Orleans Bump', was filmed during the very same European jaunt. 

Micah Blue Smaldone

It's been 10 years since curiosity led me to pick up a copy of Micah Blue Smaldone's solo debut, 'Some Sweet Day', while on holiday in New York - without previously having heard a note. A year later I stumbled upon his next album, 'Hither and Thither' (still one of the all-time great LP titles), in similar circumstances. And that's the way it's continued really. Self publicity isn't high on Micah's agenda, so it's been a case of bumping into his new releases, side projects and one-off tracks more by luck than judgement, while remaining frustratingly unaware of his occasional European visits until long after the event.

In April, however, I dropped by Micah's infrequently updated website to discover, to my great delight, that a UK tour was imminent and a couple of weeks ago, in the unique and intimate surroundings of The Foundling Museum in London, I finally, finally, saw the great man live in concert.

In recent years, his studio recordings are sometimes embellished by other musicians, live though, it's just Micah and his 12 string guitar, intense and direct, delivering a series of dark, lyrically dense, folk-noir songs interspersed with Piedmont fingerstyle instrumentals. It was a performance I waited ten long years to witness and I barely breathed for it's duration. It was quite magnificent.

From Micah's latest LP, 'The Ring of the Rise', one of my favourite tunes of 2013, 'Time'.

And here's a live reading of 'The Clearing' from 2008's 'The Red River'.

(Previous Micah Blue Smaldone post here.)

Saturday Scratch #21/Version City #6

Quite often on Saturday Scratch, I attempt to shine a light on a lesser known gem or overlooked nugget from Lee Perry's back pages. Today's tune, however, is an unarguable, stone cold classic, from what is, in all probability, the strongest vocal album produced by Scratch. The album is 1977's 'Heart of the Congos' by The Congos and the track is the adapted and updated traditional song, 'Fisherman.'

I've chosen this particular piece as a way of introducing another musical favourite of mine, Micah Blue Smaldone. Micah started out playing in bands from America's hardcore punk scene in the 1990's, but by the time of his solo debut, 'Some Sweet Day', in 2004 he had become what can best be described as an old-timey acoustic folk-blues troubadour. Since then he has released two further studio albums, the magnificently titled 'Hither and Thither' and 2008's deep and dark 'The Red River', in addition to the 'Live in Belgium' EP in 2007. His extra curricular activities betray his increasingly neo-traditional folk leanings as evidenced in his ongoing collaboration with Fire on Fire and his mid-noughties work with Death Vessel.

I will delve further into Micah Blue Smaldone's oeuvre at a later date, of that you can be sure, but for the time being check out his inspired live reading of that Congos classic.