2 new LPs out now on Woodsist! Simon Joyner and John Andrews & the Yawns

[woodsist]

SIMON JOYNER – Grass, Branch & Bone LP

Beautifully housed in a deluxe "old style" tip-on jacket. Includes download card

Simon Joyner is a renowned American singer-songwriter who first came to prominence during the Lo-Fi movement of the early 90's alongside contemporaries mining similar territory, like Will Oldham, Peter Jefferies, the Mountain Goats, Smog, and Alastair Galbraith. Joyner was championed early by the late British DJ, John Peel, who famously played Joyner's 1994 LP, "The Cowardly Traveller Pays His Toll", start to finish on one of his BBC programs, initially making Joyner more well known overseas than in his own country. Considered a forefather of the Omaha music scene, he's been releasing critically acclaimed albums on various independent labels every few years for over two decades. He keeps a low profile and tours only occasionally, spending most of his time working and raising a family, allowing writing and music to remain an artistic outlet rather than an occupation.

"Grass, Branch & Bone" is Joyner's thirteenth proper album and a sonic departure from 2012's "Ghosts". While his last record was a double album of dark, dissonant songs confronting death and loss in the vein of Neil Young's "Tonight's the Night", this new album is sparse by comparison, running with the likes of other singer-songwriter outcast aftermath albums like Dylan's "John Wesley Harding", Gene Clark's "White Light", David Blue's "Stories", Jerry Jeff Walker's "Five Years Gone", Townes Van Zandt's "Our Mother the Mountain" and Cohen's "Recent Songs". It's a natural progression, after a funeral we always take stock and reflect on our own life. "Grass, Branch & Bone" is a song cycle of short stories about time and memory, full of people you've known and people you've been.

"My favorite poet is Simon Joyner." - Gillian Welch

ORDER HERE:
http://www.woodsist.com/catalog/12/simon-joyner-grass-lp/

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JOHN ANDREWS & THE YAWNS – Bit By The Fang LP

Debut album from Quilt/Woods member. Includes download card

"Bit By The Fang is the first solo album from singer/songwriter John Andrews and his imaginary back up band "The Yawns." John began recording the album in 2013 while working at a Salvation Army in the Amish country of Lancaster, PA, his home at the time. As the new year rolled around, he followed a demanding schedule of writing, recording and touring with both Quilt (drums) and Woods (keys). It wasn't until a well-earned break that he would find the time and energy to complete the solo record he started months before. He recounts the difficulties involved. "Traveling so much caused my whole living scenario in PA to kind of fall apart," he tells us, lamenting over the comfort only home can provide. As he moved back to his hometown of Yardville, NJ, he set up camp in his grandparent's empty living room to record & perform everything entirely by himself once again. Warm acoustic guitars, honky tonk piano, lap steel, singing saw and fluttering violins all sing together and create this well crafted, yet comfortingly sloppy, psych-country/R&B record. A self-taught piano player, you’ll hear him maneuver around the keys with the precision of players well beyond his years. Lyrically and stylistically John is capable of tackling even the subject of death with the lightheartedness of a Saturday morning cartoon in "I'll Go To Your Funeral, If You Go To Mine". It's hard not to conjure comparisons to Michael Hurley, Daniel Johnston or Kevin Ayers. This album is a great introduction to the grandiose fables of characters at the mercy of Andrews‘ oddball mind." -Jeffrey Silverstein


ORDER HERE:
http://www.woodsist.com/catalog/12/john-andrews-yawns-lp/