Limited to 500 copies! All on multicolored vinyl! Not two alike!
Early on in Jim White's touring days, an erstwhile young man in Seattle introduced himself, saying he was a fan of Jim's debut record, Wrong Eyed Jesus. That young fan turned out to be a musician, engineer and producer by the name Tucker Martine.
Tucker would, in the coming years, transform into a Grammy nominated producer, working with acts like The Decemberists, Bill Frisell, Sufjan Stevens, Laura Veirs and many many more.
Right out of the gate Tucker and Jim struck up a fast musical friendship, and so when Jim mentioned his desire to record a side project album of obscure songs that he'd written that didn't really fit his primary oeuvre, Tucker jumped in, offering his services free of charge.
With that Tucker flew to Jim's home town and the recording commenced, the end result being Permanent Stranger, recorded under the band name Mama Lucky. They enlisted Panhandle blues legend Linda Delgado to handle main vocals, plus a cast of local musicians, then Tucker took the tracks home to Seattle, tapping his crew of stellar studio cats, the likes of Eyvind Kang and Steve Moore.
The end result was a dreamy sonic freak show. Permanent Stranger was never released due to a variety of issues, and so slipped into the realm of mythological lost recordings.
So JukeJoint500 is proud to be able to ressurect this masterpiece! Because we love Jim White!
Tracklisting:
01. The Monster Song
02. House Of The Unknown
03. These Are My Tattoos
04. Where Would I Be?
05. Something Is Out There
06. Mighty Mountain
07. No One Is Who I Am
08. Driving in Texas
09. Palm Of My Hand10. Why Oh Why
Long long ago, around the time my second record No Such Place came waltzing into the world, I got in this off kilter state of mind and wrote a batch of songs that were, well, a touch odd.
Yes, they certainly sounded different than my normal songs, which to my eyes was a big plus, as I'm an inveterate horizon chaser...always on the prowl for new sounds, shapes, forms.
I dutifully presented these off-beat compositions to the folks at Luaka Bop, my record label at the time, and both big bosses there, David Byrne and Yale Evelev, they said these compositions were "interesting, but a little too weird", you know, like to put on a regular Jim White record.
I said okay and went back to the drawing board, not really processing the true significance of that observation. Wait...really? Too weird? For you two? Okay, well, by god, that's an accomplishment in an of itself, right?
A few weeks after that "a little too weird" comment I mentioned said conversation to my friend Tucker Martine, who at that time was just getting established as a record producer out in Seattle.
Tucker'd just come back from Mali, where he'd done field recordings of music he'd heard in taxi rides that he took, and was releasing an album of said recordings, and so clearly the idea of weird was by no means a drawback for him.
He asked to hear the material, and when I sent him the songs he gave them a big thumbs up and suggested we bypass the label and commercial angle altogether and just go ahead and collaborate on a side project---you know, just for yuks.
Tucker's good people, brother material, in fact--I got four sisters but never had a brother, so from time to time when I'd cross paths with some wildly sympathetic soul who I just intuitively understood, well, I'd label them brother material. Tucker was one on that brother list, as was Mike Ferrio, from the band Tandy.
With that, me and brother Tucker set in to assembling the components for a band that we eventually came to call Mama Lucky.
I got the name Mama Lucky from Jimmy Tuck, the shade tree mechanic who appeared briefly in that BBC film I made with them well meaning British folks. It was Jimmy who rented me the white Impala that we drove in that BBC film, and it was Jimmy who knew the Luckys, an impoverished elderly couple who lived in a trailer not far from him. They had no kids, no family and so Jimmy'd drop by to visit them often and fetch groceries for them and such and eventually they sort of adopted him and he them, and so he'd often mention Mama and Papa Lucky as we toiled over the engine compartments of various and sundry malfunctioning cars I'd bring him.
When Mama Lucky passed Jimmy was sad, and so I asked would he mind if she lived on in the form of a band name. Jimmy's big and mercurial, to say the least, so it was a relief when he smiled ear to ear and green lighted that proposition, saying "Hell yes, bubba". So that's the back story of the name.
First up I contacted blues singer Linda Delgado and asked if she'd handle vocals, as the songs were a little more challenging than I could perform. Linda was local to Pensacola, and sang the searing backing vocals on The Wound That Never Heals. I knew her range and intensity was such that she could handle the broad spectrum of singing assignments on this weirdo project. Linda reported that she'd been out of music for some years and missed the action, and so she jumped right in and off we went.
I'd been touring No Such Place with a rhythm section of Steves from Pensacola at the time; Steve Ferry on drums and Steve Maples on bass, and so I asked the Steves if they'd pitch in.
Tucker then enlisted some of his now legendary west coast players, keyboardist Steve Moore, violin virtuoso Eyvind Kang and more, and off to the races we went.
Tucker eventually admitted that one of the reasons he wanted to do this side project with me was so he could observe my workplace tactics, as he and some of his producer friends were curious about some of the more out-there configurations of sounds they'd heard on Wrong Eyed Jesus.
The core tracks were all to be done in my garage in Pensacola. Tucker flew in and when I showed him the raggedy ass space and my incredibly rudimentary recording set up, well, he just shook his head then got a tight little grin on his face and looked away, trying not to bust up.
I asked what was so funny and he said, "Well, a lot of my musician friends, they want to know how you get all those cool sounds on Wrong Eyed Jesus, so the first thing I'm gonna tell them is to get rid of their expensive professional studio monitors for playback and replace them with a set of really cheap stereo speakers like you have, and make sure that the woofers are completely blown out."
See, I didn't know much about recording at that time. I'd paid $5 for those speakers he was talking about. They'd come from the flea market, and I had no idea that there was supposed to be a thin diaphragm of paper surrounding the cone of the lower, larger speakers---such was my technical comprehension at the time.
We dove in recording (sans low end), and then life got in the way. The weird song album languished, eventually getting finished five or so years down the line.
In the interim I was busy with touring on Drill A Hole and then battling the catastrophic devastation of Hurricane Ivan and subsequent relocation to North Georgia to keep close to my daughter Willow, whose mom had had enough of living in Pensacola and relocated with Willow to the tiny railroad town of Carlton, Georgia.
As such the Mama Lucky album, entitled Permanent Stranger, was never officially released anywhere, just briefly offered as a "rare recording" over in the UK via tastemaker Rough Trade's site. I sold occasional copies at shows and off my website. That supply dwindled and I figured that would be that---he project had run its course, coming up shy of our hopes and expectations for it.
In the meantime Tucker, he became, well, real famous. He produced records for the Decemberists, Bill Frisell, REM, My Morning Jacket, Laura Veirs and too many more to list here. He was named by Paste Magazine as one of the 10 most influential producers of the ought decade. He got a Grammy nomination even.
Me, I just kept doing my under-the-radar thing. I like it that way. Never enjoyed being famous. It just flat out freaked me out.
Flash ahead about fifteen years and I get this hello on Facebook from some German guy named Reinhard. Turns out this Reinhard character was one of the founders of Glitterhouse Records, a terrific German label that early on embraced the Americana influx when Calixico and all those bands were first coming to prominence in Europe.
Reinhard reported he'd left Glitterhouse and was starting his own imprint and asked if I'd be interested in working together. We talked a bit and then he off handedly inquired if I had any rare or off-beat material that I might be interested in releasing. From there you can connect the dots.
And so as I write this, something in the hinterlands of Germany, skilled German hands are assembling vinyl copies of the long lost "a little too weird" collaboration between me and super producer Tucker Martine under the band name Mama Lucky.
Permanent Stranger will be released in Europe and the UK in October in conjunction with my upcoming tour of Belgium, Holland, Germany and Ireland. You can pick yourself up a copy at one of the shows, or order one from Reinhard, once he provides me with the necessary links.
This offer won't be viable in the US until I get home from said European tour, as I'm a one man operation and the US Mama Lucky copies won't be in my hands until December at the earliest.
Reinhard tells me that with the vinyl manufacturing they did a special process of randomly inserting flakes of color, so that each record is different from the next, just like goddamn snowflakes, only bigger and noisier.
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