Tompkins Square label has received two Grammy nominations:
Charlie Louvin 'Steps To Heaven' - Best Southern, Country or Bluegrass Gospel Album
Polk Miller & His Old South Quartette - Best Historical Album

Country Music Hall of Famer and half of the legendary
country duo The Louvin Brothers, Charlie Louvin releases two new
thematic albums on New York City's Tompkins Square label.

Steps to Heaven, released September 16th, 2008, features ten traditional
sacred songs, a collection The New York Times' Amanda Petrusich
calls "raw and stunning." The release will be followed by Charlie Louvin
Sings Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs, out December 9, 2008. Both
albums were produced, recorded and mixed by Mark Nevers
(Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Andrew Bird, Bobby Bare Sr.) Louvin's
2007 self-titled album was nominated for a Grammy, Best Traditional
Folk Album.

Although some might be surprised at a thematic Charlie Louvin album dealing with death and destruction, one needn't look any further than the very first Louvin Brothers album to find a connection. Tragic Songs of Life, released in 1956, is full of emotional songs detailing heartbreak, betrayal, violence and loss. Inspired by Tompkins Square's recent Grammy-nominated 3CD box set People Take Warning! Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs, 1913-1938, Charlie reached back for a couple of songs from that first Louvins album, and pulled five songs from the box set to create a moving and sometimes raucous new take on traditional songs of tragedy.

Nashville Record Release Events :
Dec 9th Release date: Grimey's Record Store signing 6PM (w/ Those Darlins)
Dec 13th Country Music Hall of Fame signing 4-5:30PM
Dec 13th Midnight Jamboree/Ernest Tubb signing 12AM
Dec 15th WSM live on air 7AM
Dec 18th Record Release show (presented by WSM) - 3rd & Lindsley 9:30PM

From Roothogordie.wordpress.com :

At the risk of seeming aggressively anachronistic, or perhaps atavistic, I'd like to suggest that you call off your slobbering dogs of insatiable aesthetic appetite and spend the rest of the year relishing an album by Polk Miller and his Old South Quartette. Recently released on the Tompkins Square label, the CD is the complete recordings made by Miller and his group, comprising their 1909 Edison cylinders and the Quartette's reappearance on 78 in 1928, fifteen years after Miller's death.

An introduction: Polk Miller was decidedly both anachronistic and atavistic. He was the son of a Virginia plantation owner who grew up serenaded by the music of his family’s slaves - spirituals, work songs, dance tunes - and who, later as a pharmacist and a veteran soldier of the Confederacy, made his name as the impresario behind "Old Times in the South." This traveling show (though Miller hated the term "show") consisted of a lecture, recitations in Southern black dialect, and a performance by Miller (vocal and banjo) with a rotating cast of black male singers of religious material, sentimental Dixie chestnuts, and a serving of minstrel songs. The anachronism is that Miller never trafficked in blackface, he dressed "his men" in suits, and as the show increased in popularity, touring elite clubs in New York, Boston, and Cleveland, it earned derision and threats of violence due to the semblance of "brotherhood", that it presented on stage. While the contemporary music publishers were pumping out such popular white-composed "coon songs" as "If the Man in the Moon Were a Coon", and "All Coons Look Alike to Me," "Old Times in the South" was presenting "authentic", Southern black song performed by a racially mixed ensemble.

Granted, this ensemble - of course barring Miller and his friend Colonel Tom Booker, who occasionally joined the troupe on banjo - was often billed as a representation of, as one program had it, "the real Southern Darkey." And there's the issue of Miller's discomfiting, atavistic motive behind the show: "I do try to give the older people something that would take them back to their childhood, and to give to the younger generation an insight to the happy past under the old regime in Dixie." Miller made it clear to reporters that the members of the Quartette were not his collaborative equals but, like the “men who are in my employ at my home," his "servants." "Old Times in the South" was a romantic trip down Miller's memory lane, when slaves loved their masters, the South was unspoiled by Yankee imposition, and the weeping willow was in bloom.

But it's also an example - are there many others? - of a willful nostalgia for a dark and evil chapter of history expressing itself artistically in a fashion too progressive for its times. Setting aside the Quartette's sociological dimensions, their music is thrilling; admittedly enriched by its historical peculiarity, but not solely because of it. It's awfully jarring to hear the anthem of the CSA, "The Bonnie Blue Flag," sung by African American voices (especially since Miller's voice is the lead, engendering an uncomfortable if not accurate feeling that "his men" have been compelled under no uncertain terms to sing lustily along), but if you allow yourself to ignore your vantage point atop this side of history and just listen, it’s gorgeous and stirring. The sacred songs are a fascinating reminder of how firm a foundation underlies black religious music in America. Already decades old when they were recorded in 1909, songs like "What A Time" and "That Old-Time Religion," recorded hundreds of times since, display their timelessness in the Quartette's able renditions. The same goes for the more egregious of the minstrel material. Sure, the "Watermelon Party" immediately conjures up all manner of awfulness, but it's also impossibly catchy. Mark Twain certainly thought so, declaring that "perhaps [America] can furnish something more enjoyable, but I must doubt it until I forget that musical earthquake, 'The Watermelon Party.' "

Twain gets cover billing on the Tompkins Square release: "I think that Polk Miller, and his wonderful four, is about the only thing the country can furnish that is originally and utterly American." Apart from the hilarity and wonderfulness of a CD bearing a Mark Twain "endorsement," he, as he was in so many arenas, was right. No matter how backwards-looking Miller might have been, he made forward-thinking music with his Quartette. Like other enormously influential American music that followed it - jazz, rhythm & blues, hip hop - theirs is a synthesis of disparate styles, locales, and identifications; the very sound of, if not true "brotherhood," then at least a nascent spirit of tolerance, collaboration, and mutual respect. After all, despite all his puerile longings and chauvinist business dealings, Miller undeniably loved black music, and he arguably made a significant contribution to its dissemination and appreciation. Ignore his goof-ball lead vocal on that august spiritual number, "Rise and Shine." Which song is instantly recognizable to 21st century American schoolchildren? It, or "All Coons Look Alike to Me"?

In 1928, when the Quartette mysteriously reunited in New York City - or reformed; no one knows for sure, as the names of the original members whose voices appear on the cylinders were never documented - their seven new sides slipped into a massive stream of black music being commercially produced and sold in department stores and catalogs across the country. Enough whites in positions of corporate influence saw a value (and of course in America economic value is always the penultimate value) in African American gospel, blues, jazz, and other dance music to invest in it; and enough Americans, both black and white, considered it worthy of consuming. While Polk Miller and his Old South Quartette might jar our ears today - lyrically, sociologically, sonically (although laurels for everyone aurally involved in this reissue for succeeding in reducing the disc and cylinder noise to listenable, even enjoyable, levels) - they deserve to be recognized as seminal figures in the history of American music. They also deserve to be listened to, not just for their historical value, but, as Twain had it, for being an utterly wonderful band.

Max Ochs.

Cousin of Phil Ochs.

Poet.

Schoolmate of John Fahey and Robbie Basho.

Friend of Mississippi John Hurt and Skip James.

Social Activist.

Takoma and Fonotone Recording Artist.

Composer of the tune "Imaginational Anthem".

Hooray For Another Day. Out November 18th.

Maryland's Max Ochs recorded two influential guitar pieces on a long out-of-print Takoma LP, 'Contemporary Guitar Spring '67', alongside tracks by John Fahey, Bukka White, Robbie Basho and Harry Taussig. 'Hooray For Another Day' contains exciting new instrumental works from this American Primitive master, including a new take on Fahey's arrangement of "In Christ There Is No East or West". The disc also contains several spoken word poems, one entitled "Phil", for Max's cousin, the late folk legend Phil Ochs. Max's tune "Imaginational Anthem" inspired the guitar compilation series of the same name on Tompkins Square. This album is a stirring personal statement from an overlooked yet vital American artist.

Enter To Win a signed copy of Max Ochs' recording debut - an insanely rare 1967 Takoma label compilation LP also featuring John Fahey, Harry Taussig, Robbie Basho and Bukka White. Answers to the following questions can be found in the liner notes of Max's new album, 'Hooray For Another Day'. Send them in to info@tompkinssquare.com by Dec 31, 2008.

1) What rock group was Max a member of in the 60's ?
2) Raga Puti was a favorite peace song of whom ?
3) Besides Takoma, what storied label did Max also record for in the 60's ?
4) Who co-wrote "Stranger" ?

I've been sitting here watching the remains of this short-lived country go down the drain, and there is no better soundtrack to this than People Take Warning, a grand and beautiful set - in every sense, from the remastered recordings to the notes to the extraordinary design work - that gives perspective both to these days and those of the past. This is white-hot history, a danse macabre, and, above all, a wealth of great old and timeless music.
- Nick Tosches

Tompkins Square label has signed Los Angeles-based musician Frank Fairfield. He will be main support for Fleet Foxes on their US tour this fall.

The label has released a 3-song digital single, and a 7" single featuring Fairfield"s take on traditional tunes "I've Always Been A Rambler" b/w "Darling Corey." An album will follow in early 2009.

Links and more info:

http://www.myspace.com/frankfairfield

Tompkins Square label will release guitarist Brad Barr's solo debut, The Fall Apartment: Instrumental Guitar, on September 16th, 2008.

Brad will be opening for Sonya Kitchell this fall.

As a member of Northeast-based band The Slip, Brad's guitar prowess has always been notable, but his true gifts and distinct musical voice are on full display throughout this solo guitar album. A heady set of original compositions is complimented by such diverse covers as "Maria La O" by legendary Cuban musician Ernesto Lecuona, Kurt Cobain's "Heart Shaped Box," and Le Trio Ferret's "Gin Gin." The introspective tone of the album recalls such overlooked loner guitar gems as Lenny Breau's Cabin Fever or Richard Crandell's The Flower of Our Youth, whilst staking out a thoroughly modern approach to solo guitar here in the late '00's.