Red House Painters

THIS IS JUST A FAN SITE. No member of the band has anything to do with it or its content, other then having made the music. But anyway.



Mark Kozelek was a troubled teenager in the 1980s, being addicted to drugs at a very early age. He entered rehab intermittently during those years and began to play guitar. While in Atlanta, he became friends with Anthony Koutsos, a drummer. He then moved to San Francisco, adding guitarist Gorden Mack and bassist Jerry Vessel to complete the lineup for Red House Painters.



They signed up with 4AD Records in England in 1992. 4AD issued the group's first demos as an album entitled Down Colorful Hill. It was a compilation of haunting melodies complemented by Kozelek's eerie yet rich and emotional vocals. In 1993, the group came out with two self-titled records (now commonly referred to as Rollercoaster and Bridge based on their cover artwork), solidifying Kozelek's reputation as a talented songwriter with their harrowing autobiographical tales of his troubled life and errant living with no punches being pulled. The music, which ran the gamut from beautiful acoustic folk-rock to intense, dissonant, lengthy soundscapes, effectively conveyed the sadness of the lyrics.



In 1994, they released an EP entitled Shock Me and in 1995, the introspective Ocean Beach, which saw Kozelek's songs becoming more acoustic-based and folk influenced, and featured far less of the lengthy, dreamlike epics of the group's first two albums. His lyrics also showed a considerable shift in tone, as he increasingly began to write about the power and comfort of memory, a subject that would become an obsession in his subsequent recordings.



When Kozelek was beginning work on a solo project, 4AD Records quit on him after a tumultuous relationship. Entitled Songs For A Blue Guitar, it was released on Supreme (Island) in 1996. It was more of a guitar-driven rock album that they released under the Red House Painters name to give the album more publicity. A year later, they came up with Old Ramon, arguably their most accessible, optimistic recording to date. However, major label mergers during the late 90's would leave them without a record label, and it wasn't until 2001 that they were able to release the album on Sub Pop.