It is Bandcamp Friday so there plenty of new releases taking place today from some of your favourite artists. In case you’re new to the concept of #BandcampFriday, it was started by Bandcamp in response to those artists impacted by Covid-19 when they waive their revenue share for all sales on Bandcamp which means the artist gets more, or, as in the case of this release, the money raised goes to cause that the artist supports.
We will mention a few more if we get the opportunity today, but to kick things off we are going to start with a firm Folk Radio favourite: James Elkington.
Today, he releases his new single The Beechwood Park/Corridor Country which follows his 2020 full-length album Ever-Roving Eye. The single includes one studio outtake from that acclaimed album as well as a cover of the Zombies classic.
James shares his thoughts about both “Beechwood Park” and his relationship to memory and the past:
I’m not really a nostalgic person, but I write about the past a lot as if it happened in a dream and that I’m merely reporting on it. “Beechwood Park” by The Zombies has that same feel to me. On the face of it, it seems to be an idealized view of the past that’s almost trite in its remembrance of “summer rain” and “country lanes,” but the winding chord sequence and spidery guitar tone makes it feel like it’s happening in a different dimension, and I’m always drawn to music that does that.
I worked up this version last year when I was sitting in a studio in upstate New York, waiting for a cab. The band I’d been working with had already left that morning, and the studio engineer was elsewhere, so I was on my own for some time. I can’t remember what prompted me to start working on it, but I do know that the studio was on a country lane, and it was raining, late summer.
All proceeds from purchases of “Beechwood Park” b/w “Corridor Country” today via Bandcamp will be donated to Black Lives Matter Chicago. Buy it here: https://james-elkington.bandcamp.com/track/beechwood-park