Our new record El Pulpo comes out in the US on October 20th, October 14th if you buy the Shrimper Records tape version from a participating brick and mortar store on Cassette Store Day.  For the first time, I will be selling music through Bandcamp.  I’ve uploaded the new double album as the homepage, (download, Shrimper CS, Arbouse Recordings CD), as well as the 2013 double album Spare Parts (CD, 2XVinyl, and download.)  Check it out online at https://jdsoundbite.bandcamp.com/ and tell a friend.  You can pre-order the new album there now.  You can also pre-order it prior to the release date from Pledge Music, https://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/jdsoundbite, with the advantage of being able to download it prior to the 10/20 release date.

10% of all sales from Pledge Music and Bandcamp go to support Durham For All’s 10K Strong Campaign, for which I attended a great block party this afternoon.  : )

I also had a great time on tour this summer. I’d like to thank everyone who helped us set up shows as well as those who came out and put us up, played bills with us, etc.  The best part was meeting and talking to so many new friends as well as reconnecting with old ones. Highlights for me included getting out to play in Omaha for the first time & meet some of the folks who played on Spare Parts, getting to play three shows and hang out in Barcelona with the fantastic improvisatory rock group Seward, sharing a bill with Mike Ladd in Paris, and being introduced to Mike’s friend Bonafide Rojas, who was kind enough to give me a copy of his fantastic book of poems, Notes On The Return to the Island.  He’s on tour promoting the book this fall and I highly recommend checking that out.

I’ve been thinking about Puerto Rico – the island in question – recently because I have a teaching colleague who is from there.  Her elderly parents live right on the beach and have been struggling in the wake of the recent hurricanes.  As in the wake of the earthquake in Haiti, there’s a disaster porn effect of mainstream CNN type coverage that mystifies the human causes of the dire situation.  I’m not primarily talking about the fossil fuel industry and climate change, though there’s that for sure.  I’m also thinking of the sources of the poverty of Puerto Rico that leave its infrastructure much more vulnerable to these new turbo storms than, say, Miami.  Bonafide’s book does much to illuminate the colonial relationship between the US and the island over the past 118 years or so, while showering sparks with striking similes and metaphors that made me smile left right and center.  It makes excellent use of end notes to educate the reader about the resistance movements for independence that continue today.  Some of the figures he cites in the poems were familiar to me from having read the excellent recent book War Against All Puerto Ricans: Revolution and Terror in America’s Colony by Nelson Denis, which is also highly recommended.

I’ve been planning to do a “Best and Worst” of list for the summer tour, stay tuned for that, as well as upcoming shows in Chapel Hill, Pomona, and San Francisco, with others being planned as my teaching schedule allows in the NE, NW, and SE over the next 6 months.

Ciao,

JHD