If you’ve not yet come across the Delmore Recording Society, then I strongly suggest you go and check them out. The Nashville, Tennessee record label, founded by Mark Linn, is responsible for uncovering some wonderful rare recordings including the work of Karen Dalton. Their latest, Shuckin’ Sugar, is a riveting 12-track live set recorded in 1963-1964, featuring the earliest known duets of Dalton (with then-husband, guitarist, and songwriter Richard Tucker) and seven never-before-heard solo performances.
Alongside albums covering Diana Darby, Peter Walker and Fred Neil is an album released in 2018 featuring unreleased recordings of Jay Bolotin. Titled No One Seems To Notice That It’s Raining, the recordings were originally made between 1970-75.
One of those songs was ‘It’s Hard to Go Down Easy’, a story of a woman picking up the pieces from a broken relationship. It begins:
Linda lost a lover in the early part of autumn
And she moved out to the country hoping all would be forgotten
The last time that I saw her she was making sure the winter
Wouldn’t come through that old doorframe
Where the door is several inches from the ground
The cold hard ground
Dan Fogelberg covered the song on his 1985 album High Country Snows but titled it “Go Down Easy”.
His music was described as Leonard Cohen crossed with John Jacob Niles recording Blood On The Tracks.
“LISTEN! You gotta hear this guy!” – Mickey Newbury
While he pursued his love of music during the 1970s, in the early 80s, he began to focus on one of his other loves – making prints. He seemed to favour woodblock although he also uses other materials. One museum described him as being first and foremost a storyteller who interweaves universal and personal mythologies to better understand and to comment on the human condition. The process, as you can probably imagine, is both meticulous and time-consuming.
One of his pieces of work that I kept coming across was The Book of Only Enoch which tells the story of a sensitive Jewish boy from Kentucky and his journey of self-awareness and spiritual clarity. It was created using countless drawings and sets made by Bolotin.
Another is The Jackleg Testament. You can watch THE JACKLEG TESTAMENT: ACT I – The Serpent Appears and Gets into Mischief below. The work is described as a postmodern take on Genesis, and the first woodcut motion picture ever made.
Order No One Seems To Notice That It’s Raining via Bandcamp.