In cryptic Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy fashion, the musician shared bits and pieces of his new album, I Made a Place, on Drag City’s Instagram account. Bonnie, AKA Will Oldham, took over the account for the day and posted disturbing images of dead frogs and snails. With each photo, he posted the title of a song off the new album along with some lyrics. Halloween might be over, but Bonnie is still dishing out the tricks and treats.

I Made a Place is Oldham’s first album for Drag City containing new material made under the Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy moniker since 2011’s Wolfroy Goes to Town. In the intervening years, he worked on albums featuring previously recorded songs (like the Chivalrous Amoekons record) and a collaboration with Bitchin Bajas. It’s almost like Father John Misty (AKA Josh Tillman) stepped in to hold the fort until Bonnie returned to form. We can’t wait to see how these eccentric alter egos co-exist in the twenty-twenties.

Bonnie has shared some insights into the new album that you can find in his own words below. He explains how the record is inspired by Hawaii, which is where the songs were initially conceived. He also explains how he sees the record as being two distinct sides. The first is “big and happy and dense,” and the second “questioning and happily sad.”

This whole record is intensely inspired by the 50th state. In fact, for a while there the working title of the record was 49th State of Mind, after the mid-20th century Hawaiian music record label optimistically and ultimately erroneously called “49th State Records.” The songs likewise are influenced by certain Hawaiian musics, mainly the recordings of Johnny Lum Ho and Edith Kanaka’ole; also by the recordings of Jake Xerxes Fussell; by the songwriting of John Prine, Susanna Wallumrod and Tom T. Hall; by the neo-Zydeco cassette compilation Trail Riderz Vol. 1; and by the desire to have some songs that might be learned on the fly at get-togethers at my friend David ‘Fergie’ Ferguson’s house. As these songs were worked on, in the night, my wife would wrap her pregnant body around mine while I sang the songs over and over and over. They’re the first music that our daughter heard.

The arrangement and production of the record come dominantly from the players themselves and the very circumstances in which the recording of this record was undertaken. Danny Kiely played bass on this, as he had done on Wolfroy and Best Troubador and the Babblers tour as well as Funtown Comedown and many other musical adventures. The mighty mighty Mike Hyman plays drums, Nathan Salsburg plays the lead guitars, Joan Shelley sings along, and Jacob Duncan brought the power with his sax, his flute, his clarinet, my harmonium and the studio’s piano and hammond organ.

The record is broken into sides, with the first side big and happy and dense and the second side open and questioning and happily sad. It targets the sprawl and bloat of Western Civilization by illuminating the intricate and wondrous of everything that is not celebrated by modern populist mindsets. It’s about the one-step-back rather than the two-steps-forward. It’s about the riches of the unspent past that “isn’t even past.” That, coupled with a perpetual desire to have hooky power tunes that are about themselves and about other musics while still trying to reach into the common space shared by the audience and the singer.

On a visit to Pearl Harbor (where my mother was born), our guide saw a photo I brought of my mother sitting perched on her father’s shoulders facing away from the camera. She (the guide) started to cry. She told us that the pose, where the subject faces away from the camera, is a traditional pose for Hawaiians and that it signifies the idea that we face away from our future and that our past is before us. So, in that spirit, flip the record over and start from “New Memory Box” again, why don’t you?

As for the musician on Instagram, aside from his takeover of the Drag City page, he’s actually quite prolific. His personal account is wignifier. He posts mostly about music, dogs, and beer.

Rather than force you to view images of smashed and decomposing frogs, we pulled out the track list and song lyrics the artist posted on Drag City’s Instagram. If you are purchasing the vinyl, previously released songs “In Good Faith” and “At the Back of the Pit” (see videos below), appear on a separate 7″. If you’re compelled to see the photos he posted, most of which are flagged on Instagram as being “sensitive content,” feel free to click here. It appears he selected the frog images in protest of Trump, as the president’s campaign was associated with Pepe the Frog.

I Made a Place is due out on vinyl on November 15 via Drag City. You can pre-order the album now at the Drag City website.

I Made a Place
Side 1
1. New Memory Box
Lyrics:
you need to knock this one
out of the park
don’t let the monsters
creep out of the dark

2. Dream Awhile
Lyrics:
when I have a problem
I know just what to do:
I go to bed and dream a while
something will come through

3. The Devil’s Throat
Lyrics:
a bad captain won’t give out good orders
a bad sideshow won’t show good mutilations
a bad emperor won’t redraw good borders
a bad tailor won’t make good alterations

4. Look Backward on Your Future, Look Forward to Your Past
Lyrics:
Richard was a stout-hearted man
he’d been through the bulk of his life

5. I Have Made a Place
Lyrics:
I don’t have much at all
but I have a sheep
I have nothing like a fortune
but I can sleep

6. Squid Eye
Lyrics:
give me a pile of hell
give me a minute or three
I’ll do what I do well;
get down on my hands and my knees

Side 2
1. You Know the One
Lyrics:
you won’t be hungry
for the touch of others
once you’ve found
the truth of one

2. This is Far From Over
Lyrics:
though half of life is gone for good
and we haven’t acted as we should
you feel it in your heart of wood
that this is far from over

3. Nothing is Busted
Lyrics:
the rest of the world
is not to be trusted
we must meet in the place
where nothing is busted

4. Mama Mama (Cover)
Lyrics:
heaven in such a pretty place

5. The Glow. Pt. 3
Lyrics:
you allowed me to love
became my best friend

6. Thick Air
Lyrics:
the thick air of duty has died

7. Building a Fire
Lyrics:
your are building a fire
you are making it bright
we are staying indoors
for the rest of the night

7”
A. In Good Faith
Lyrics:
rocks are buried beneath tons of earth to become diamonds

B. At the Back of the Pit
Lyrics:
were do we put our precious things?

 

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Sidebreak. #sidebreak #godblessuseveryone #bismillah #thankyou #votetomorrow #imadeaplace

A post shared by Drag City Records (@dragcityrecords) on Nov 4, 2019 at 11:06am PST

Photo credit: Mickie Winters