{"title":"Lonnie Holley","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"oh-me-oh-my","title":"Oh Me Oh My","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eOh Me Oh My\u003c\/i\u003e is both elegant and ferocious. It is stirring in\none moment and a balm the next. It details histories both global and personal.\nLonnie Holley’s harrowing youth and young manhood in the Jim Crow South\nare well-told at this point - his sale into a different home as a child for just a\nbottle of whiskey; his abuse at the infamous Mount Meigs correctional facility\nfor boys; the destruction of his art environment by the Birmingham airport\nexpansion. But Holley’s music is less a performance of pain endured and more\na display of perseverance, of relentless hope. Intricately and lovingly produced\nby LA’s Jacknife Lee (The Cure, REM, Modest Mouse), there is both kinetic,\nshortwave funk that call to mind Brian Eno’s \u003ci\u003eMy Life in the Bush of Ghosts\u003c\/i\u003e and\nthe deep space satellite sounds of Eno’s ambient works. But it’s a tremendous\nachievement in sonics all its own.\n\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt’s also an achievement in the refinement of Holley’s\nimpressionistic, stream-of-consciousness lyrics. On the title track which deals\nwith mutual human understanding”, Holley is able to make a profound point\nas ever in far fewer phrases: “The deeper we go, the more chances there are,\nfor us to understand the oh-me’s and understand the oh-my’s.” Illustrious\ncollaborators like Michael Stipe, Sharon Van Etten, Moor Mother and Justin\nVernon of Bon Iver serve as not only as choirs of angels and co-pilots to\ngive Lonnie’s message flight but as proof of Lonnie Holley as a galvanizing,\niconoclastic force across the music community.\n\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Jagjaguwar","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50482036801867,"sku":"2006561","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Clear LP","offer_id":50482038243659,"sku":"2006562","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":50482035687755,"sku":"2006560","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/jag437.lonnie.ohmeohmi.lp.3000_404d9c6c_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727548476"},{"product_id":"mith","title":"MITH","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe expansive American experience Lonnie Holley quilts together across his astounding new album, \u003ci\u003eMITH,\u003c\/i\u003e is both multitudinous and finely detailed. Holley’s self-taught piano improvisations and stream-of-consciousness lyrical approach have only gained purpose and power since he introduced the musical side of his art in 2012 with \u003ci\u003eJust Before Music\u003c\/i\u003e, followed by 2013’s \u003ci\u003eKeeping a Record of It\u003c\/i\u003e. But whereas his previous material seemed to dwell in the Eternal-Internal, \u003ci\u003eMITH\u003c\/i\u003e lives very much in our world — the one of concrete and tears; of dirt and blood; of injustice and hope. Across these songs, in an impressionistic poetry all his own, Holley touches on Black Lives Matter (\u003ci\u003eI’m a Suspect\u003c\/i\u003e), Standing Rock (\u003ci\u003eCopying the Rock\u003c\/i\u003e) and contemporary American politics (\u003ci\u003eI Woke Up in a Fucked-Up America\u003c\/i\u003e). A storyteller of the highest order, he commands a personal and universal mythology in his songs of which few songwriters are capable — names like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Joanna Newsom and Gil Scott-Heron come to mind. \u003ci\u003eMITH \u003c\/i\u003ewas recorded over five years in locations such as Porto, Portugal; Cottage Grove, Oregon; New York City and Holley’s adopted hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. These 10 songs feature contributions from fellow cosmic musician Laraaji, jazz duo Nelson Patton, visionary producer Richard Swift, saxophonist Sam Gendel and producer \/ musician Shahzad Ismaily.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e2LP - Double Black Vinyl housed in Gatefold tip-on sleeve with 8 Page Booklet.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e2LP+ - Double Smoke Coloured Vinyl housed in Gatefold tip-on sleeve with 8 Page Booklet.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Jagjaguwar","offers":[{"title":"Tape","offer_id":50497679950155,"sku":"1049166","price":19.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"LP","offer_id":50497680179531,"sku":"1041913","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":50497681490251,"sku":"1041911","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/ead65ba0-8f68-4892-a762-564b86b309e7_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727730184"},{"product_id":"national-freedom","title":"National Freedom","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis 5-song collaboration between artist Lonnie Holley and the late visionary producer Richard Swift is a tribute to urgent, raw, American art — from Howlin’ Wolf to Captain Beefheart, from Cecil Taylor to Bo Diddley. The songs pulse with anger, hope, energy and a bit of swagger. You can hear sweat and tears through the speaker. Swift left us two years ago today, but his spirit buzzes through these songs. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDuring a West Coast tour with Deerhunter in late summer 2013, Holley was put in touch with Swift by a friend who suggested using a day off on tour to record at Swift’s National Freedom Studio in Cottage Grove, Oregon. Now rather legendary, Swift was in a breakout moment as a producer having recently worked with artists like The Shins, Foxygen and Damien Jurado. Holley’s essential debut album, Just Before Music, had come out the year prior. The cosmic connection between Holley and Swift was immediate. They put down five songs in their day together: all conjured in the studio and one-of-a-kind. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt the end of that day in 2013, Swift — always up until the wee hours — made a late night call to the friend who had set up the session. He was effusive about the experience — thrilled to have found a kindred spirit in Lonnie Holley and thankful to spend a day crafting unclassifiable, extemporaneous and soulful music. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Jagjaguwar","offers":[{"title":"LP","offer_id":50498898723147,"sku":"1103298","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/992d4ac3-678f-4d40-954e-f80f2bc5a0ab_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727761118"},{"product_id":"tonky","title":"Tonky","description":"\u003cp\u003eThere are poets like the great Mary Oliver, who might suggest that one’s primary function when moving through the world, for as long as they have life and the ability to move through the world, is to play close attention to that which others may foolishly call small, or quotidian. The brain and heart are both containers, with as much space as you wish for them to have, and to live is to create collections of found affections. Sounds from your beloved and familiar blocks, movements of the trees and the people beneath them, the way someone you adore may hold you for a few lingering seconds before releasing from a hug and vanishing into a crowded crosswalk. To think of our living, our making, and our loving in this way means that, at least for some of us, we may be propelled forward by the prospect of what’s next. What moment we can hold and place in our overflowing pockets. The work of Lonnie Holley is, for me, a work of this kind of accumulation and close attention. The delight of finding a sound and pressing it up against another found sound and another until, before a listener knows it, they are awash in a symphony of sound that feels like it stitches together as it is washing over you.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eTonky\u003c\/i\u003e is an album that takes its name from a childhood nickname that was affixed to Holley when he lived a portion of his childhood life in a honky tonk. Lonnie Holley’s life of survival and endurance is one that required – and no doubt still requires – a kind of invention. An invention that is also rich and present in Holley’s songs, which are full and immersive on Tonky, an album that begins with its longest song, a nine minute, exhaustive marathon of a tune called “Seeds,” which begins with a single sparse sound and then expands. Chants, faint keys, strings, and atop it all, Holley’s voice, not singing, but speaking plainly about working the earth when he was young, the violence he endured in the process of it all, going to bed bloodied and in pain from beatings. The song expands into a metaphor about place, about the failures of home, or anywhere meant to protect you not living up to what it sells itself to be, even if you tirelessly work at it, work on it, work to make something worthwhile of it. “Seeds” not only sets the tone for an album that revolves around rebirth, renewal, and the limits of hope and faith, but it highlights what Holley’s greatest strength as a musician is, to me, which is a commitment to abundance, and generosity. He is an incredibly gifted storyteller with a commitment to the oral tradition, such that many listeners (myself among them,) would be entirely content sitting at the feet of a Lonnie Holley record and turning an ear to his robust, expansive storytelling. But \u003ci\u003eTonky\u003c\/i\u003e is an album as expansive in sound as it is in making a place for a wide range of featured artists to come through the door of the record and feel at home, no matter how they spend the time they get on a song.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Jagjaguwar","offers":[{"title":"Black LPx2","offer_id":51134783226187,"sku":"2240395","price":33.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Red LPx2","offer_id":51134784504139,"sku":"2240396","price":39.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":51134782538059,"sku":"2240394","price":11.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/9ae3fcd1-84c8-99b9-5112-80e582e9ce01_e40b5ef7_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1737465441"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/collections\/lonnie-holley.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}