RELEASES:
It's Going To Be Alright - Various Artists
CBR-003 - Released Sept. 5th, 2009 - $6 Donation
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It's Going To Be Alright: Songs Inspired By Chase Korte is a compilation disc that Chase Bliss Records has been wanting to make for a long, long time. It is available as a thank you gift with a $6 donation to StutterTalk. Joel Korte had this to say about the compilation:
"One of my goals over the past year was to gather all of the original songs inspired by the memory of Chase Korte I could find and put them on an album for people to enjoy and remember my brother. In doing this, I also thought it would be cool to have some sort of an event (concert) associated with it on or around his birthday, September 6th - and have all the proceeds go to a worthy cause (The Stuttertalk podcast).... this is that event."
Artists contributing to this compilation disc include The Blend, Ghost Towns of the West, Nikki Schultz, Lion Man, Jones Korte, Glass Gills, Adri Mehra, Naked Transit, and C.M. Nelson.
Strange Red Afternoon - Jones Korte
CBR-002 - Released April 4th, 2009 - $6
All major credit cards are accepted through Paypal's secure servers. You do not need a paypal account, just a credit card. Shipping from Chase Bliss Records is always free.
Strange Red Afternoon is a collection of five Jones Korte songs recorded in various residences over the past 8 years. In some ways it is a departure from Melrose, including synth arrangements and programmed drums for certain tracks. This EP was released with Melrose, and Jones wrote the following in an insert included with the CD at the release show:
"I think I would consider the actual song Strange Red Afternoon my magnum opus – (haha! That sounds pretentious! But, I'm too happy that I used 'magnum opus' in this note to remove it now) If I had to guess, I would say I spent around 70 hours recording and mixing just that song. I wrote the structure of it in Acapulco on a Spring Break trip in 2004 on a cheap classical guitar I bought down there. One lyric haunts me though (for obvious reasons)… I was trying to be clever by using the analogy or idea that Mexico is so close in proximity to us… the lyrics are 'Mexico… my southern brother / but I don’t want a brother / when I need a lover' and it just kind of makes me sick to listen to even though I was in no way referencing my actual brother – it is unfortunate because I love the song but I cringe at that part. Maybe I was more concerned with trying to be clever rather than being honest back in those days."
Melrose - Jones Korte
CBR-001 - Released April 4th, 2009 - $10
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In his debut album, Jones Korte reflects on the last several years of his life after losing his brother by way of a drunk driver and coming to terms with a failed relationship thereafter. Melrose is a deeply personal concept album. The songs proceed chronologically, and the entire album serves as a story. Regarding the album, Jones wrote the following in an insert included with the CD at the release show:
"It tells a story, and the songs proceed in chronological order. In a way, it is kind of like a 40 minute play about the last few years of my life. The semi-oddball track is the first song on the CD, The River. I wrote this song when I was 16 or 17, and it has always been my brother’s favorite song of mine. I never have had a decent recording of it, so I wanted to include this song in the project. Being that I recorded this CD - in a large part - to honor my brother, I felt like I needed to include that song. The next song, We fit together – I wrote when I was 21, and the songs then continue to proceed in chronological order to the last song on the album, which was written about 6 months ago. So, The River really isn’t an oddball per se – since it fits with the chronology concept, it was just written a long time before the other songs. The album can be sad sometimes, but in these past two years, I have been dealt some blues.
Much of what I seem to care about in music, these days, is honesty. The melody, the songwriting, and the appeal of the singer’s voice are all secondary to me. I know this is probably not typical; however, this ideology is primarily what I focused on when I wrote the songs on Melrose. I continually kept asking myself, 'Am I being honest?' with every song. With this in mind, I recorded Melrose in an unconventional way. I wanted the songs to sound as authentic as possible. In other words, I wanted the songs to sound like how I was playing them when I wrote them. I went up to my Grandma’s now vacant house in Melrose, MN (she passed away a few years ago and I set up a make-shift recording studio for the week. No internet. No cell phone. I recorded these songs all day and all night for one week. I did not interact or communicate with anyone the entire time…. so I think I may have been in a bit of a strange state, at times… but I wanted to get in the moment of each song, and try to feel like how I was feeling when I wrote the songs. I think I accomplished that. I know it probably sounds like I am a Bon Iver wannabe at this point. Probably some truth to that – but I was only gone for a week. I should note that I recorded a few piano parts after I got home, and Andy Dwyer contributed bass guitar for 3 tracks after I got back – Judah Birkeland also contributed back up vocals on two tracks… but I would say 95% of the album was recorded in that one week."
Inspired by the works of Mason Jennings, Bon Iver, and Jeff Tweedy, the album is successful in the sense that the songs are very much contextually driven, but still work on an individual basis.