DESCRIPTION:
Bonnie "Prince" Billy & Nathan Salsburg's Untitled EP is available from Paradise of Bachelors.
LP/CD/download/stream: http://smarturl.it/PoB-037
http://www.paradiseofbachelors.com/pob-037
http://www.paradiseofbachelors.com/bonnie-salsburg

This delightful 45rpm 7" EP, the pair's first recorded artifact, is limited to an edition of 2000 copies, and is available for purchase exclusively on Record Store Day, April 22, 2017, in-person at participating brick-and-mortar shops. Please feel free to request it in advance from your favorite local shop, so they can place the necessary order with Secretly Distribution. We will also offer a small number of copies for sale here to coincide with the release of the digital version of the album on June 9, 2017.

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“Our names are Sals and Bonnie, two rounder boys you know”: In which the intrepid Louisville duo gamely paddle forth to explore two Kentucky creeks, singing an ode to Beargrass and meeting their match in two hitchhiking, car-riding young ladies of the Cigarette Crew.

Paradise of Bachelors is honored to shepherd unto your ears and hearths this charming first recorded artifact by revered songwriter, singer, and actor Bonnie “Prince” Billy (né Will Oldham, aka Palace Brothers, Songs, and/or Music) and Nathan Salsburg, curator of the Alan Lomax Archive and distinguished writer, solo guitarist, and accompanist to Joan Shelley and James Elkington (see also their Ambsace album, PoB-21.)

Historians and statisticians may note that this untitled treble-jewelled travelogue, moving and amusing in equal measure (and available in a limited edition of 2000), is our second official Record Store Day release and third collaborative 7” Extend Play record, following in the formidable footsteps of Hiss Golden Messenger and Elephant Micah (PoB-04) and Messrs. Mike Cooper and Derek Hall (PoB-25).

Grab a paddle and hop in. Heed the words of Sals and Bonnie, who write:

This “Beargrass Song” was made at the behest of filmmaker Morgan Atkinson for Beargrass: The Creek in Our Backyard, his 2016 documentary about the history and status of Louisville’s Beargrass Creek. Nathan wrote the intro, and Bonny birthed the subsequent bulk.

“Wallins Creek Girls” isn’t so much about a creek, but a brief impression of two free-spirited women who spent one long ago September 11th (a Friday) bumming cigarettes and hitching rides around the Harlan County coal camp of Wallins Creek, Kentucky. It was presumably composed by Dawson “Little Daw” Henson (1886–1974) of Clay County, who recorded it for Alan Lomax in 1937. His singing opens: “My names is Hicks and Henson, two rounder boys you know.” Who Hicks is in fact sadly we don’t know.

Nor do we know much of Henson except that he kept a farm on Billy’s Branch of Goose Creek and is buried in nearby Goose Rock. With Daw on our minds, we enlisted a demo made of what he performed as “Fare You Well, My Little Annie Darling” (more commonly known as “My Home’s Across the Blue Ridge/Smokey Mountains,” or “My Own True Love”), a song that we had worked up as a contribution to a 2015 celebration of Lomax’s Kentucky recordings at Appalshop’s annual Seedtime on the Cumberland festival in Whitesburg, Kentucky.

Lyrics:

Our names are Sals and Bonny, two rounder boys you know
We come around to Wallins Creek not many days ago
One she was blonde-headed, she’s fair-skinned and blue-eyed
The only thing they wanted to do was smoke cigarettes and car ride

The other one she’s black-headed, dark-skinned and black-eyed too
We never saw her smoke cigarettes but she belonged to the cigarette crew
They get out on the highway, they flag both up and down
The first men stops and picks them up, they’d go from town to town

September the 11th on Friday they both came down the road
There’s not been girls in this wide world can flag like them and go
They ask us for a cigarette, we have them both to roll
We give old Prince Albert but they’d rather have Old Gold

Although these girls is pretty as the flowers that bloom in May
But if they could get them one cigarette they’d car-ride every day

Adapted from the singing (and presumed composition) of Dawson "Little Daw" Henson. Recorded by Alan and Elizabeth Lomax on October 11, 1937 at Botto on Billy's Branch, Clay County, Kentucky.