Cameraphone pics from a lil’ birthday dinner I had the other night at Los Nopales Mexican Restaurant…
Sarah Dandelles and Eric Ziegenhagen
Jason Toth and Sarah Dandelles
Not pictured: The elusive Geoff Buesing…
I want to talk about a particular music-related collectomania of mine. Well actually it’s such a deep and narrow subgenre of music that it’s hard to even call myself a collector, seein’ as how I can pretty much count these albums on one hand! Okay. I don’t know of a good term for this music so I just refer to it as "ambient country". Which is a horrible term I admit, but it’s the best I could do. This music, it’s kinda like Brian Eno but with guitars. It has to be instrumental, and it must be sparsely arranged. It should evoke rattlesnakes and desert landscapes that drone on and on. It should incorporate touches of slide guitar, steel guitar or maybe both. So anyway here’s my very short list of albums I love that more or less fall into the category I’m describing. If you can think of other albums along the same lines, post a comment!
Hello, how are y’all? Feels like I just posted that show-cancellation notice yesterday, I guess I just slept through that whole time since then. And whoo-hoo, I’m almost caught up with my backlogged All My Children’s! Yep. Productivity. But yeah, I’ve been a good girl, I’ve stayed very very quiet since the weekend and only left the house a few times (very quietly). I don’t want to test it out too much but the voice seems a bit better, squeakin’ out about four or five more notes that I had this weekend, so that’s good. I’ve never gotten too scientific about it but I’m pretty sure my normal range is about 2 good octaves… I’m up to about 1-1/2 octaves now I think (squeaking at least), which isn’t bad considering I sounded like frickin’ Harvey Fierstein one week ago.
I had a pretty fun weekend. Sarah comped me a ticket to see Otis Clay open for Marty Stuart last night (=Sunday) at the Old Town… Eric tagged along too, and I finally got to meet Sarah’s friend Mark, he was nice. The show was soooo goooood. I knew Otis was going to be awesome but I had no idea about Marty. I vaguely remembered seeing him talk about older artists on various documentaries, but had never heard his own stuff. I guess I saw the mullet and didn’t think I needed to… what a mistake that was! Remind me next time not to judge a mullethead so quickly. He was totally great. The real deal, no doubt about it. An amazing musician (mandolin mostly) and a super-crack band too. Loved every minute. There was a group of fucking assholes sitting next to us who couldn’t stop cracking up during the most inappropriate times despite our intense glares, but oh well. It wasn’t so bad that it ruined the show for me or anything. You gotta wonder what they were doing there though. Maybe they were just too drunk to give a shit, who knows.
Played two songs at Thomas Dunning’s Hoot Night Holiday Show at Schuba’s
My band: Tom Millard (drums)
Other performances by: Tom Dunning & Your Boyfriends, Joe Cassidy of Assassins/Butterfly Child, Jacquie Krupka of Joie de Diva/The Plunging Necklines, James Dague of Scribble Monster, Tommi Zender of Trinkets of Joy, Thomas Negovan of Ver Sacrum, Eric Ziegenhagen, Stacey Earley, Dan Phillips of Zapruder Point, and Dag Juhlin.
 front cover |
 back cover |
 promo poster |
Edith Frost: IT’S A GAME
©2005, Drag City #DC301 (LP and CD)
Download the one-sheet
Purchase the CD or LP at Drag City, or get the CD on Amazon
MP3s are available from iTunes and Amazon
Produced by Rian Murphy
Engineered & mixed by Mark Greenberg at Mayfair Recordings and Barry Phipps at North Branch Studio
Bleh. I broke up with Eric today. I’m sad it didn’t work out between us but not surprised. Don’t want to talk about the whys and wherefores here, just wanted to get it out there so there’s no confusion and it’ll be as not-a-big-deal as possible for us and all our mutual friends etc. I think the world of Eric, we’re great friends and he’s a great guy. We’ve had a lot of excellent times together and I’m pretty sure we can still be good friends and let the fun times continue… only time will tell but I don’t see why it shouldn’t work out that well. Both of us have a lot of work to do in the coming months and I think I can speak for both of us when I say it’s all good, we gave it the best we could and we’re both better people for having known each other. I don’t harbor any bad feelings to speak of about Eric, I’m grateful for what we had while it lasted, and I hope we can retain the excellent friendship we’ve enjoyed thus far. So, not much has changed really, I’m just not going to be dating him anymore, that’s all. And that’s about all there is to say on that topic!! No drama here, just the facts. It’s all good, really.
Pics I took last Thursday at a show by Shelley Short and Eric Ziegenhagen at Silvie’s Lounge in Chicago…
Today’s my 41st birthday! And, not that one has anything to do with the other, but the time is finally right to talk a little bit about my new album It’s a Game. It’s going to be released on CD and LP, on November 15th if all goes as we hope, or even if it doesn’t! On Drag City of course, catalog # DC301. What you’re lookin’ at up there is some proposed poster art, not the cover — I’m keeping that under wraps until we get it all finalized, but you’ll see it soon enough. That poster photo was taken by Eric Ziegenhagen just last week at the Palmer House downtown — it got dolled up and pinkified by Dan Osborn, who’s doing the album layout like he’s done for all my rekkids.
Me and Will Clinger, the host of Wild Chicago, one of the greatest shows ever. We were at the Chopin Theatre attending a performance of Sketchbook 5; Eric (who took this picture) directed one of the sketches. If you go to the performance on Monday (the 20th) you’ll get to not only see that play, but also see Eric play some of his own music between sketches! I’m pissed I won’t be able to go myself, but oh well.
EZ grabbed my camera for a shot with me and the Ditty Bops last night at the Hideout. They put on a great show (again!).
I thought tonight (=last night) was gonna end up suckin’ a llama’s dick — I was all ready to be bummed and stressed out ‘cuz it’s the night before I start recording and all. Poor, poor Edith!! It’s not the recording so much, it’s that the skating thing didn’t work out and I got a little disappointed about that. (Because I’m stressed about the recording and I needed a scapegoat for that, so Not Going Skating was the most obvious choice.) But I got back together with Eric again anyway, he broke out some champagne, took me to his rooftop, got me all tipsy and made sure I had a really fun, special night after all. What a great pal he is!! Yay.
To catch up a little with my blogging, here are just a few highlights from the past few weeks:
Low point of our Austin trip: Taking Eric to the top of Mount Bonnell and finding a BUILDING under construction up there, WTF!?!?
Tonight (=last night) we saw the movie Heat at the Gene Siskel Center. Fuckin’ awesome — almost three hours long but I never thought about the time.
