One of my favorite music-relat­ed mem­o­ries is when Ted­dy Mor­gan and I asked our new friend Carl Broemel if he want­ed to ​“winthorp” with us. (For those of you not hip to this, it’s our side project of get­ting togeth­er to record hours of impro­vised space jams for almost no one’s enjoy­ment but our own.) The con­ver­sa­tion after we explained it:

“Sounds cool! I’ll bring my ped­al steel!”

“Oh, you know how to play ped­al steel?”

“No!”

“Per­fect!”

Carl is one of a rare group of fear­less musi­cians. He approach­es an unfa­mil­iar musi­cal ter­ri­to­ry with respect and patience, and it’s not long before these lands seem like noth­ing more than an exten­sion of him­self. 4^th of July, his new record, is a beau­ti­ful show­case of this.

Lis­ten­ing to these songs makes me smile so, so much — they are so well-craft­ed, the pro­duc­tion is near-per­fect, the expe­ri­ence of record­ing them was so fun, the play­ers — holy moses, can I talk about the play­ers for a bit? Jor­dan Caress of Pony­chase, Tom Blanken­ship and Bo Koster, his band­mates in My Morn­ing Jack­et…seri­ous­ly, there were times I fin­ished a take and thought, ​“I am the luck­i­est guy in the world,” and, ​“why am I here, this must be a mis­take,” at the same time. Neko Case sang on the title track and even though that was an over­dub with­out me I’m still going to tell every­one I’m on a record with her.

Any­way! The point I am try­ing to make is I think this is a great record, and I’d love it if every­one in the world would take a moment to lis­ten.