A Retrospective.
I’ve got something special and fun planned for next month, so allow me to get a little sentimental and navel-gazing about this project for a bit.
I started this monthly mixtape project in 2020 with a loose goal of one day hitting 50. This month marks 49. If you’ve been with me from the beginning, thank you. If this is your first time receiving the monthly mix, welcome, and thank you. I promise I’ll go beyond 50, but, oh man, what a milestone.
I think it’s getting a little harder to connect with music. We have unlimited access to almost every recorded song in history, but that emotional, spiritual, intellectual…whatever moves you…connection seems harder to latch onto. I remember reading about records before they came out, seeking out the singles, buying a physical copy, poring over the liner notes, and making a mixtape to share the love with a friend. Now you can just… stream it and forget it.
I don’t mean to badmouth streaming at all (although there’s plenty of compelling arguments out there for how it has changed the music industry for the worse). This newsletter wouldn’t realistically exist without it, and I’ve discovered so much incredible music specifically because of it. I just think it has the potential to cheapen the experience of music, and you have to work just a little bit harder to make it matter.
Critical resources are dwindling. Bandcamp laid off half its staff when new ownership took over. Pitchfork just recently laid off almost everyone on staff as it was folded into GQ. I really hope they both can retain a bit of the magic, but it seems like there’s very little landscape for once titans of trusted media to stand on (RIP Sports Illustrated, Jezebel, Buzzfeed News, etc.). Trusted sources for discovery are fading.
Ultimately, I really hope this project serves as a way for you to connect with music, to discover it in a more personal manner, rather than allowing an algorithm to dictate what you should listen to next. Curation is such an undervalued resource and skill, and I try my best to put forth something excellent for you to read and listen to each month. Thanks for being here. Hope you’ll stay a while.
Like the mixtapes? Help me spread the love by throwing a few bucks my way via BuyMeACoffee or opting to become a paid subscriber. Thanks to everyone who has already supported me this way.
And hey, if you like it, why not share the mix or this newsletter with a friend?
Quietly Building Histories
Created for slow and constant growth.
*****
The closest I’ve ever come to having an idea journal—that thing you jot funny jokes or story ideas down in when you wake up in the middle of the night—is a playlist full of songs I love that could be great in a mixtape, but I don’t quite have the context for just yet. I started it at the beginning of this project, and it’s over 200 songs long at the time of writing this.
As I approached the end of my original goal, I thought I might try to piece together a mix out of just songs that have found their way onto this loose pile of ideas. I started with Nadia Reid’s “Richard,” a beautiful song that for a long time felt doomed to linger on this purgatory playlist. It only found a home when I decided to build one for it.
There’s real creative power in restrictions, any artist will tell you. Some of the most inventive works are often born out of technical or resource limitations, simply because you have no other choice. Being told to draw a picture can feel crippling. Being told to draw a house lets you begin to interpret and envision and express. Making a mixtape is hard, but making one out of 200 songs makes you work to make it work. There’s a full project sitting in your pile of disconnected ideas.
Quietly Building Histories is an homage to and direct iteration of those works made in the background, slowly and maybe not so methodically. Unified by feeling, it’s quiet, even if you play it loud.
The first song I ever added to my brainstorm playlist was Kamara Thomas & the Ghost Gamblers’s “You Wreck Me,” and the playlist had that same title for years. It felt fitting for a list of songs that emotionally grabbed me but gave no instant context. In many ways, I feel like it’s a perfect closer, but it opens up the mix here. That also feels right. I’ve moved it into its new home and renamed the old one. It’s different now. One chapter ends in order to begin another.
*****
Love you all. Hope you enjoy!
Join Me: Make it matter.
I love finding new, personal ways of discovering and sharing music. Kristin got me this incredibly beautiful cassette player and cassette club subscription for Christmas, and the absolute thrill I felt when putting the tape on and hearing amazing new bands and artists I’ve never heard of before was exhilarating. It comes with a mini magazine with artist profiles that you can obsess over while you listen. It’s wonderful.
You could buy a record that seems fun based on album art alone, go to a concert and show up early for the opener, listen to your local killer radio station, or explore curated shows on platforms like NTS radio.
One big way you’re doing that is by subscribing to this newsletter. I love you for it.
I know I ask you all the time, but it would mean the world to me if you shared this with one person that you think would dig it. Every month more people find their way here, and I think that’s pretty exciting.
RIYL: music
Check out Minneapolis’s incredible listener supported radio station, The Current.
Some Old Solo Mixtapes That I Love
(that you might love too!)
Coming Up on Blanco Canyon - A mixtape for the Wide Open Prairie. May 2020. A peek into the mind of a man who lost his 9-year job at the top of the pandemic and starts dreaming of the promise of the American West. Full of stellar country, bluegrass, western swing, and Americana. I really love this one, and I like to revisit it anytime I need to feel free.
Heatstruck Heart - A mixtape for neon highways. August 2020. An exploration of a hot summer night in a bright lights city. Loosely inspired by the sounds that accompanied the movie Drive, I dream of a night in the future when I can drive around with the windows down and bask in the warm glow of electrified gas tubes.
Reunion - A mixtape for a gentle return. April 2021. As the world opened back up a bit with the sudden availability of vaccines, I made a soft and cautiously optimistic soundtrack for getting back together with loved ones for the first time in over a year. A meditation on isolation, human connection, and being gentle with yourself.
Since My Soul Got A Seat Up In The Kingdom - A mixtape for the beautiful side of community and vision. February 2023. A recent favorite. This one is full of American gospel, songs of worship, etc. Inspired by Smithsonian Folkways records. It’s got some of the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard on it.