December 2020

This month I’m releasing Deadstock: Uncollected Recordings 2005 – 2020, an album gathering up the songs that no one got to hear: unreleased tracks and alternate versions from six studio records and scattered sessions, that form a kind of alternate history.

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It sounds funny to say, 'Here's a bunch of songs so good I never put them out,' but these are as good as anything I ever wrote, and we've played some of them on the road for years. They didn’t make it onto albums because I still think of albums as the unit of measure, and it's more important to me to make a record work than it is to make sure a particular song sees the light of day. They tend to find their own way out the door anyway.

Deadstock isn't a documentary, it's an album. It's arranged and meant to be heard that way, with seven new original songs – and two released prior only in Europe – as well as new full-band takes of back catalog numbers like ‘Mesa, Arizona,’ ‘Ghost Repeater,’ and ‘Pretty Hands.’ Some of these are blood relatives, like ‘Real Love,’ ‘Any Town Will Do,’ and ‘Mesa, AZ’ (three songs written in three days driving around the desert southwest before the Ghost Repeater sessions) while some show the obverse side of the coin, like ‘Cold Late Spring Bark River’ (a less austere telling of a night I wrote about in ‘Heart to the Husk’ from Horse Latitudes), and ‘Crown of Smoke,’ the present-tense companion to the narrative flashback in ‘Little Warble,’ from Blood Brothers.

There’s a song I wrote for one of my heroes, the late great Rainer Ptacek of Tucson, and a song called ‘Jacaranda’ that I wrote while driving up the 101 in California years ago, feeling lucky; there's a song called ‘Adios Mexico’ that I co-wrote with my friend Airon Kluberton – an airplane mechanic in Talkeetna, Alaska – when I was up there on tour, and there are two songs I always loved from the Cold Satellite collaborations with poet Lisa Olstein and guitarist David Goodrich, presented in new versions. The band is mostly the one you know from the last many years (featured on the Wolves and Blood Brothers records, and on the road), and then the Iowa boys – Chief, Rico, Bo, and the great Dave Moore – from Ghost Repeater on two tracks, plus guest appearances by Kris Delmhorst, Pieta Brown, and Caitlin Canty on backing vocals.

Deadstock comes out 12/18/20, and you can order copies for everyone you know right now to get it in time for the holidays. To make that decision easier, you can listen through all sixteen tracks right now, and hear/see the full single of 'There's a Destruction on This Land,' (from the Salt As Wolves sessions). All older (in-print) albums from the back catalogue are available all this month 20% off, with the promo code JF2020. That's right, I have a promo code. I'm having it tattooed on my ass.

I'm not going to play a livestream concert this month, but I'll be back in the new year to play through Blood Brothers, and maybe Deadstock too. In the meantime, keep an eye on the STORE, as we'll announce a few more things in the next few weeks. And then, if you would, please share the link for Deadstock around with your people, and add it to a playlist.

I'm not hiring publicity or touring to promote this record, it's just something to keep the party faithful amused, and a way to make a little cash in a lean year. You're all deputized Junior Publicists now. Badges and hip boots will arrive by mail.

I'm grateful to all of you out there, for taking care of each other, and for looking after us in a hard year. It's meant the world. You're all just aces.