John Prine – Lost Dogs and Mixed Blessings (Oh Boy Records, 1995, expanded reissue 2025)

             30 years ago (can it really be that long?) John Prine released one of his best-ever albums, Lost Dogs and Mixed Blessings. I remember at the original Twist & Shout location on South Pearl Street that we needed to order and re-order the album because Prine was definitively back with this album. But where had he even gone? Nowhere really – he just kept being himself and releasing album after album of good-to-great material from his classic 1971 debut John Prine (which every single time we play it here people ask if it’s a Best Of record) right on up to 1991’s excellent The Missing Years. There were hiccups, sure – a longer gap than usual after he left Atlantic in 1975 before his 1978 Asylum debut, then another pause after three albums for Asylum, deciding he wanted to control his own fate and founding his own label Oh Boy, where he put out every album he made for the rest of his life at his own pace.

After the first two albums on Oh Boy did reasonably well – artistically great, but not as commercially kick-ass as he wanted – Prine waited nearly five years to start a new album. He discussed the idea with his then-manager of enlisting fan Howie Epstein, of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, to produce a new album and Epstein enthusiastically dove in, bringing half of the Heartbreakers with him (and Petty himself – along with a slew of other famous Prine fans – to sing backing vocals). The result, The Missing Years, a great collection of songs that’s undergirded by his divorce that happened in the interim – check “All the Best” for possibly the kindest and yet most final separation songs you’ll ever hear. And many said between a five-year absence and a saved-up batch of great tunes that Prine was “back” with this album, with critic David Fricke even noting later that he felt the songs were the equal of those on John Prine. I think it’s great, but not quite John Prine – after all, what is? Lost Dogs and Mixed Blessings is, that’s what is.

            For me, this one’s hands-down the best one since his debut. It doesn’t hurt that it’s the first Prine album I really dug into – this is the one that got me into the debut rather than the other way around – but I think back to all those folks making us need to reorder box after box of the album and I don’t think I’m the only one who thinks it’s in the upper echelon of his catalog. There was a Christmas album in the interim and a great two-disc collection for the CD era to catch people up – that probably helped boost this one too – but it’s really boosted by the songs. Second time out, Epstein and Benmont Tench have really dialed in their work with Prine, and Epstein knows how push Prine in just the right direction to decorate the album with hooks. Take “Lake Marie,” which became a concert staple performed in (I believe) every single live show I saw from Prine afterward, or “Ain't Hurtin' Nobody,” a (slightly) more grown-up version of the debut’s “Illegal Smile.” Check the way his divorce still haunts him seven years later on “Humidity Built the Snowman” – and probably the way “Day Is Done” and “This Love is Real” announce his burgeoning relationship with his new manager Fiona Whelan, who’d be named Fiona Prine by the end of 1996. Revel in his goofy sense of humor bordering on the surreal on “Leave the Lights On” and “He Forgot That It Was Sunday,” and his jabs at the overwhelmingly consumerist world on “Quit Hollerin’ At Me.” Enjoy guests from Marianne Faithfull to Waddy Wachtel livening up their respective bits. Enjoy the bonus tracks, five alternate versions and the completely prev-unrel “Hey Ah Nothin”  on the deluxe CD reissue. And I’ll leave the rest of the discovery to you. Top to bottom, he doesn’t have a better album. You ain’t gonna catch me saying this is his best, I swear, because the debut and maybe the next one, In Spite of Ourselves, are basically just as good, but neither one is better than this.

-          Patrick Brown

RSD SUMMER CAMP 2025

           

Big Chief Bo Dollis Jr.

Every year at the absolute hottest time of year, hundreds of indie record store folks from the around the country – and sometimes the world – descend on New Orleans’ French Quarter for the annual “RSD Summer Camp” a conference of independent record stores, indie and major labels, artists, and vendors. These are the people who came up with the idea of Record Store Day and have guided it throughout its existence based on what we’ve observed that works (or doesn’t!) and on feedback from customers about both the event and what works in stores throughout the year. Every year we come away brimming with ideas from the dozens of great record stores we get to hang with there – in the conference rooms, around the hotel, and less officially, out and about over dinners and drinks in the Quarter and elsewhere in the Big Easy. We always come home exhausted (and full) from the long days, but it’s worth it every time. If anything, I wish it could be longer – there’s never enough time with the folks we really want to hang with, meet new folks, and get actual face time with our industry partners; before we know it it’s Friday and we’re on a plane back home.

Pre-dinner at Etolie

This year was something special because the coalition of stores that Twist & Shout is part of, the Coalition of Independent Music Stores (CIMS) celebrated their 30^th anniversary (in style, I might add!). CIMS was formed in a very different time, 1995, when a group of like-minded stores fought with the industry at large against things like Best Buy’s loss-leadering of CDs, huge chain stores receiving special discounted pricing and exclusive products, and the like – with chain stores often cashing in on artists who broke through at our stores. CIMS consists of some of the best record stores in the country: Waterloo Records in Austin, Music Millennium in Portland, Record Archive in Rochester, Electric Fetus in Minneapolis, and many more (you can see the full list of their amazing stores and find out more about them HERE). As the retail landscape has changed, the stores of CIMS have continued to modify our approaches to whatever challenges the industry tossed up, with one of the chief successes being the Record Store Day event itself. But CIMS alone didn’t do this – within a few years of CIMS forming, another coalition sprung up: the Dept. of Record Stores (DORS - featuring such heavies as Bull Moose in the northeast, Graywhale in SLC, Reckless in Chicago, Zia in the southwest, and others which you can find the details for HERE) appeared to do work in a similar vein. Soon after followed the Alliance of Independent Media Stores (AIMS – with Atlanta’s Criminal Records, Austin’s End of an Ear, Grimey’s in Nashville, Seasick in Birmingham, and of course many more which you can learn more about HERE), furthering the spread of the seed that CIMS planted that although all the independent stores in the country retain their own identity, we are all working toward the same goals. Flash forward to 2021, when another coalition joined into the fray – 

Candid group pic

Forever A Music Store (FAMS), focusing on Black-owned music stores like DBS Sounds outside  Atlanta, Offbeat in Jackson MS, VIP Records in Long Beach, and of course, many more (details HERE again). All these stores ultimately chose to invite non-coalition stores into the mix too – again, affiliated or no, we’re all working toward the same goal and as part of the same industry.

If there’s one thing that’s clear to me every time we go to this, it’s this: each of these stores retain their own personality, their own flavor, reflecting the tastes and interests of the owners and staff of course, but also of the region and the customers. We’re all different, but all ultimately engaged in the same kind of community-oriented efforts to connect with customers over a shared love of music and culture in a personal and direct way in an increasingly mechanized and dissociative world. Music and art heal and sustain us all, and THAT is what independent record stores bring you, and that goes for all the stores mentioned above as well as every indie store here in Denver and beyond – Wax Trax, Black & Read, Chain Reaction, Angelo’s, Invincible Vinyl, Drop To Pop, Recollect, City Records, Sold Out, Records On Main, and outside of the metro area Paradise Found in Boulder, Leech Pit in the Springs, Absolute Vinyl in Longmont, All Sales and Driver 8 and Bizarre Bazaar in Fort Collins, and so on. We’re all working different facets of the same goal – keeping our communities less homogenized, unique, and locally-focused. It’s always flowing through my mind when people ask me if I’m concerned about the number of other stores in town, to which I always answer “No, the more the merrier – every one that opens is good for the health of the independent music industry and culture.”

Pool of Hotel Monteleone

So it was incredibly validating this year at Summer Camp to be shown this reel, from Ben at YELLOW RACKET RECORDS in Chattanooga TN, putting the words that have long bounced around my head on the topic into a fantastic short reel on the subject, which you can watch in-full HERE. Go visit them if you’re passing through Chattanooga and say hi to Ben and tell him you saw his video. Check out all these Coalition sites and see where the best indie stores are wherever you’re traveling. Do a quick online search anyway even if you don’t see one in a coalition, because there are an estimated 1500 independent record shops in the U.S. alone, there’s almost certainly one nearby, and they’re all worth visiting to help keep the uniqueness of our cities alive. And with the current construction along the Colfax corridor wreaking havoc on many small businesses, this is on my mind a lot these days – keep this principle in mind as you consider who you’re supporting in every realm, not just record stores. Shopping local makes a difference in the makeup of the landscape and keeps our city, and every city, more interesting places to live, work, and have fun.