James Elkington

James Elkington in Paradise.

We’re excited to welcome to PoB Mr. James Elkington, whose masterful guitar playing and arranging you’ve certainly heard, even if you didn’t realize it. An inveterate collaborator, Jim has been the other guitarist in Steve Gunn’s band since Way Out Weather. He has also toured and/or recorded with Michael Chapman (on 50), Nathan Salsburg (on Ambsace), Jeff Tweedy, Richard Thompson, Joan Shelley, Tortoise, and Brokeback, just to name some of his many enthusiastic admirers. Stay tuned for details on his debut solo album, and catch him onstage this week with Jake Xerxes Fussell and Wilco.

Jake Xerxes Fussell Shares “Furniture Man” via Aquarium Drunkard.

After presenting debut single via NPR Music’s Songs We Love, the Durham, North Carolina singer and guitarist now shares “Furniture Man,” a desperate tale of poverty, dispossession, and imminent homelessness, as relevant and heartrending now as it was when first recorded in the 1920s. Aquarium Drunkard calls him “a national treasure.” Jake plays Chapel Hill tonight and opens for Wilco this month and next in Chicago and New York.

Michael Chapman: 50 Release Day.

If you need a distraction from the eldritch horrors of Inauguration Day, take a lesson from the Fully Qualified Survivor. Get thee to your local record store to grip what is shaping up to be one of the most critically acclaimed albums of 2017. Or, as Laura Snapes (Pitchfork, NPR, Guardian) recently recommended: “If you’re looking for a peaceful record for this torrid week, 50 is it.” Check out Uncut’s career-spanning 7pp. feature and new rave reviews in The Times, Daily Mirror, i, etc.

Stream Michael Chapman’s 50 in Full via Stereogum.

January 20th sees the release of Michael Chapman’s 50, produced by Steve Gunn and described by Pitchfork as “a startlingly current and nearly apocalyptic vision of America… an album full of brimstone and brine, perhaps more perfect for this moment in history than we’d like to admit.” Now Stereogum presents 50 in its entirety.

Michael Chapman Premieres “Memphis in Winter” via Noisey.

Taken from his anticipated album 50, out January 20th, the hellish travelogue approaches a pure distillation of the perfect Chapman song, with its dark lyrics and mesmerizing, elastic instrumental passages. (We’re snowed in here in North Carolina, so it feels particularly apropos to the season.)

Michael Chapman Live Session on BBC 6 Radio with Marc Riley.

The legendary Michael Chapman joined Marc Riley on BBC 6 Radio Music today, playing several songs and chatting about his new album 50; recording with Steve Gunn, Nathan Bowles, James Elkington, Jason Meagher, and Jimy SeiTang (“a stick insect who plays the bass!”); his first American tour disaster in 1971; and … run-ins with Jimi Hendrix, among other things.

Pre-order Michael Chapman’s 50 + Hear “That Time of Night” via NPR Music.

Michael Chapman’s new record 50, produced by Steve Gunn and titled to commemorate fifty years of touring—and released four days before Michael’s 76th birthday—stands as a formidable monument of retrospection and introspection in his adventurous catalog, embodying his undeniable late career masterpiece. Today Chapman shares debut track “That Time of Night” via NPR Music’s Songs We Love. Pre-order and watch an album trailer.