SMALDONE, MICAH BLUE - Hither And Thither

deluxe 180 gram vinyl pressed at record technology, inc., with an 8 page booklet, housed in a beautiful full color old style/tip-on" jacket printed at Stoughton printing. limited edition of 500.\r\nMicah Blue Smaldone. A distinctive name, no? Micah? A minor Hebrew prophet. Blue? A hippy-ish middle name. Red white and? Moon of Kentucky? Smaldone.could be Italian, or Old English. I understand his grandfather (on his mothers side) fought with the John Brown Battery in the Spanish Civil War and taught young Micah plenty of the old songs - but dont ask him to play Jarama Valley in Catalan. Its just too sad. His grandfather never got over it, and the whole Comintern business still sticks in his craw. His great grandfather (on his fathers side) was the local IWW guy who saw to it that a little bit of Joe Hill was scattered in the Pine Tree State. \r\nWell, I just want to say to the country that this is a real decent, fine boy. Micah Blues got an original voice, reedy and spare, and hes a virtuoso ragtime finger-picker, too. His songs are charming, antique ditties - austere Tin-Pan Alley tunes with lyrics by Soren Kierkegaard. Like a single bright light, his music illuminates much while also casting a lot of sharp shadows, lovely, dark and deep. \r\nWhen he plays live, he tenses up his whole body - tenser than youd expect for a folk musician, like he might snap the strings, or snap the neck of his guitar, or just snap. But theres not a trace of irony in his music or in his performance, and I guess thats the Yankee in him. \r\nSee, it gets cold at night up there in Maine, where hes from, and when you got the blank eye of god bearing down on you, and you got the Jukes and the Kallikacks next door getting high on Freon or something, it just makes a man think seriously about where he fits in. Willem de Kooning, gazing up at the star-spangled sky over Black Mountain in the forties, remarked "the universe gives me the creeps," and I imagine Micah might agree. \r\nHuman consciousness may be a makeshift contraption held together with bailing wire and duct tape, but it will have to suffice. And it may well be true that regret and loss are inescapable human conditions (if you marry you will regret it, and if you dont marry youll regret that too). But it is also true that music is a bulwark against such notions of human frailty, and Micah Blues music does more than suffice. It offers balm and succor to a weary soul. \r\n"Micah is so good," Jack Rose told me, "hell make you throw your dick in the dirt!" I certainly agree with the spirit, if not the letter, of Mr. Roses sentiments. Ill have to let you personally be the judge on that score, though you ladies will have to determine some sort of equivalent for yourselves, assuming you concur." - John Jacob Niles.