The first full length record I ever wrote and recorded with my old band One Hundred Dollars, has been reissued on vinyl. It hasn’t been available for a long time and isn’t on streaming services.
Forest of Tears was recorded at Elder School house in 13 hours in 2008 by Rick White. It came about because Rick had seen me and Ian play as a duet when we opened for him at the Music Gallery, and offered to make our record. I was told this was a great honour, but only listened to George Jones and had never heard of Eric’s Trip, so I spent most of my time nodding like I knew at everyone who was wide eyed and stoked for me. We assembled a band quickly. Ace pedal steel player, Stew Crookes, had already graced us with his angelic tones after seeing us play the Tranzac months before, and we asked Ian’s bandmates from Jon-Rae and the River to fill in the rest – Paul Mortimer on the bass, Dave Clarke on the drums and Jonathan Adjemian on the organ. We arranged the songs over a few rehearsals, went out to Rick and Brian’s, set up in front of some mics, played the songs, and ate a huge steak dinner.
To write this now in the past tense as if I was there seems like the only way to do it, but I’m not totally sure I was. I probably necessarily don’t remember that time in my life. I know I was 24 and I had begun writing songs with my boyfriend Ian Russell a few years earlier, late in life for most songwriters. Mostly he’d write intricate music on guitar, I’d belabour lyric and form, and we’d fight about chord changes. Sometimes I wrote chords too. I swore I was singing what no one else seemed to be able to hear.
Ian had been diagnosed with Leukemia in 2007 and we didn’t want to talk about it publicly lest it overshadow the music or the meaning. Cool thing was we didn’t have to talk about it publicly that much because it was Myspace time, and social media was only just becoming a tacky necessity that was decimating message boards. Clearly in some of the photos of the time Ian’s going through chemo - the Dana Farber protocol in particular. (Yes Ian survived! Our love didn’t! He’s making guitar music now too - you can listen to that on bandcamp: https://ianrussellguitar.bandcamp.com/album/in-light-2). I know that, at the time, performing live music on Ian’s good weeks was largely what I looked forward to, and writing songs was where I exacted what little control I felt I had left over my life.
Maybe I don’t have the memory because I have song. Now, looking at the track list and singing the lyrics ever etched in my mind, some things are clear: On Forest of Tears, songs provided me the setting to experience an emotional life that had nowhere else to be lived. In Hell’s A Place I fantasize about escape and murder with a queer lover. In Careless Love the singer leaves her rapist. In Tirade of a Shitty Mom I take the voice of my worst fear: a mother rejecting her trans son. I imagine my grandmother’s love song on 14 Hour Day as she mourns my grandfather, and pay what I thought was an appropriate tribute to him on Marbridar. Nothing’s Alright is just as it was, and In Juice & Sage, I’m jealous and uselessly premonitory of the great toll and isolation that now, in my obsidian years, I know accompany pushing away/letting go. I do not find this record easy to listen to for its meaning, but I know it means a lot to people who came up with it because I keep getting emails that you want to buy it. So here we are, 2023, and Brian Taylor, generous as he was the first time around, re-pressed it on blessed Blue Fog Recordings. Thank you Brian dad, for making it possible for me to release music. And thank you Rick for showing me how simple it is to make a record if the music is there.
Another clear thing upon listening is that I'm so grateful to the musicians who played with me in One Hundred Dollars. Everyone made the thing happen so generously, and we repeated the exercise so many more times. More than the recording, that act of repetition was a vital release for me. So thank you Jonathan Ian, Dave, Stew and Paul for offering me that.
Money stuff at the end: Largely this music isn’t available digitally - it’s only on bandcamp. https://bluefogrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/one-hundred-dollars-forest-of-tears-2008
My friend Creig just told me that in $100 in 2008 is now worth $140.14. That said, the record still only costs $25 and you can buy it via the bluefogrecordings.bigcartel.com . Thanks so much, Simone Fornow