Marshall Crenshaw “More Pretty Girls Than One” Live at City Winery

Beneath the hot stage lights at City Winery the Presto (and its operator!) sweated, but Marshall Crenshaw was totally cool.  He avoided hypnosis and kept everyone at ease by telling stories.  And when the Presto was running he performed with mesmerizing intensity and delightful serenity.

We posted Marshall’s digitized acetates, “More Pretty Girls Than One” and his original Flipside “Passing Through” just after he recorded them at our live music revue in May.  If you haven’t heard them yet, listen now.   Marshall’s performances that evening were magical.

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Episode #10 of The 78 Project: Valerie June “Happy or Lonesome”

Where ya headed?  We meet like fellow passengers at the end of a nearly abandoned train car in Brooklyn.  But the train doesn’t budge, because we’re not there to travel, not really.  It’s dark inside, and we light candles, it’s chilly outside so we bundle up.  It’s silent at first, without the chugging of the engine and the tripping of the steel wheels over hundreds of miles of track, so we fill the space with music.

She’s a New Yorker now, but Valerie June brought her Memphis along in her reedy, bouyant voice.  And as she sings the sweet longing for a long-distance love in “Happy or Lonesome,” we almost expect her hometown to answer.  But it’s the Presto that does, in the end, with a satisfying click.

This train’s not leaving the station, but it doesn’t need to.  So what if we’re rooted in place, we’ll still get carried away.

Thank you so, so much to Pete’s Candy Store for giving us such a warm Brooklyn welcome, and for mixing our 78 Sours so strong!

Episode #9 of The 78 Project: Adam Arcuragi “How Can I Keep from Singing?”

Adam Arcuragi "How Can I Keep From Singing"Two doors on an unassuming block in Harlem open to reveal a splendid church turned into a home. All instruments are laid down to reveal the human voice in all of its vulnerability and glory. Some beautiful things, usually hidden, are revealed all at once.

Adam Arcuragi has a churchgoer’s understanding of how to sing praise, how to surrender fear and fill up the immense space with feeling, to lift the spirit closer to its devotion. He has nearness in mind when he plunges into “How Can I Keep from Singing?” unaccompanied except for the natural reverb in the vaulted room.

We felt so close to Adam’s bare voice that we became aware of the nearness of the ceiling to our heads, and when we took the finished acetate outside to the garden to listen, we felt the sky close to our faces and the nearness of a time long gone.

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Dearest thanks to Michel for his generosity and hospitality.

Episode #8 of The 78 Project: Loudon Wainwright III “Old Paint”

There was a playful confidence in his motions as he got out his guitar and told stories of hats and ukuleles and cowboys and family. Industrial street noises and a lively chill air seeped in through the walls of the secret Brooklyn fishing club as we set up to record. “Old Paint” is a distinct and fundamental piece of Loudon’s personal musical history, and he put all of his years of performance into those three minutes of acetate. The song is so much a part of him that he played it with a concentration nearing transcendent, his voice so familiar to us that it filled the space and we could no longer hear the trucks passing. The click of the switch announced the end and the Presto’s turntable slowed. The things best known to us are sometimes most able to surprise.

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Special thanks again to the Brooklyn Rod & Gun for making us honorary members for the afternoon. We love your peanuts.

Episode #6 of The 78 Project: Rosanne Cash with John Leventhal “The Wayfaring Stranger”

It was sunny on Wednesday.  But on Thursday, when we arrived on Rosanne Cash’s doorstep, the rain and cold were looming over our plans to record in her beautiful garden.  So we set up in Rosanne’s kitchen while she made tea.  John picked on his guitar, the morning rested on the hands of the clock and the black tuxedo cat investigated our Presto on the counter.  A sense of comfort and family reverberated through the room.  “The Wayfaring Stranger” is a spiritual made most beautiful by it’s simple narrative: after the toil of life’s journey, we will find home.


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Episode #5 of The 78 Project: Amy LaVere “The Railroad Boy (Died of Love)”

It was a mild day for December in New York, but it was winter nonetheless.  And there was a quickness in our steps as we walked with Amy through the windy Harlem streets, to get the blood moving, to stay warm. Murder ballads are in Amy’s blood, she was raised on country songs filled with agony and ardor, and she poured that lifetime of woeful narratives into the deep blackness of the acetate.

“The Railroad Boy” is often sung as “The Butcher Boy”, and while the story is always chilling – a scorned young girl meets a sorrowful death – it can be for different reasons. “The Butcher Boy” sometimes lives up to the imagery its title evokes, ending with the boy murdering his lover, a variation Amy speculates may have spawned from a misinterpretation of the line “He took his knife and he cut her down.” In Amy’s version of “The Railroad Boy,” as in most of the song’s incarnations, the line refers to her father releasing her from the rope she has used to take her own life.

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It’s no surprise when Amy reveals that her favorite song ever is “Thin Line Between Love and Hate,” a crooned warning that your lover could kill you if you wrong them. Her flipside, “Red Banks,” like many of the songs she records and performs, depicts acts of passion that more often lead to the grave than to the altar.

Episode #4 of The 78 Project: Vandaveer “Banks of the Ohio”

The 78 Project: Vandaveer “Banks of the Ohio”

When the PRESTO clicks on and the platter starts to spin, there is a moment where the whole room focuses in and everything becomes a part of the music; the radiator’s hiss is a harmony and the sounds of traffic below tune to a G so perfect you can check your strings against it. And so it was on a wintery afternoon in New York, as every whisper of steam and every squeak of the bed’s springs under the weight of the PRESTO merged into Vandaveer’s “Banks of the Ohio.”  The hotel seemed, on that December day, built to make this record, its purpose finally revealed in a rush of song.

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Special thanks are due to Ye Olde Carlton Arms, the artbreak hotel that was kind enough to host our crew for this episode. They are true to their history and truly kind to their fellow eclectics.

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