Live at Lost Art Open Mic LP

A little over fifteen years ago, I produced and released a compilation of recordings from Alex Pogosov's and my open mic at Bill's Records. This CD, ultimately numbering around 200-250 copies, was conceived as a means of promoting the weekly gathering at Bill's and featured performances by a number of our regulars up to that point in time. More than a decade and a half later, I've had that promotional album cut to vinyl, fulfilling a long harbored fantasy dating all the way back to childhood. I'm just barely old enough to (dimly) remember actual records being played on the radio, and when I was three and four years old I wanted to make one of my own. Today's manufacturing on demand services have now made that possible.

In order to fit the original Lost Art release onto a single disc, additional edits had to be made to the intros and outros many of the selections, and five less interesting or overly lengthy pieces were omitted altogether. The result was a stronger collection of material than what was presented back in November 2010, when the first batch of original CDs saw circulation via Bill's. Total cost for the project, including shipping, was $300. This was pricey for sure, but the order was for five vanity copies cut individually on a lathe as opposed to a large run of hundreds or thousands made via a traditional record cutting plant, where substantial volume discounts can come into play. I've framed one copy, two have gone to interested parties who appeared on the album, and the other two have gone into storage along with the other collectibles I've acquired over the years. This closes the book once and for all on my Lost Art Open Mic experience, providing me with a unique physical memento I can point to a decade and a half later as I continue to pursue my more recent interests and activities.

You can hear the LP version of the album (transferred directly from one of the LPs rather than from my original, edited WAV files!) on the Downloads page.

The service I used for the vinyl cutting is a company called Tangible Formats, a one man operation based out of Florida that specializes in lathe cut vinyl. This allows short runs of as few as a single copy to be made on demand. I recommend looking into this type of service if you have a special demo or other recording from your past that you'd like to memorialize on vinyl, and you don't need a large run suitable for selling at events or online. If you're only interested in a very small number of copies, perhaps to gift to friends and family or (as I have done with mine) to frame, this type of service may be the way to go. I may go a bit more into the technical aspects of my particular album, and what to take into consideration, in a future blog post or possibly as one of my album comparisons at some point in the future.

Further recorded material (and interviews) from some of the artists featured on the LP:

Emmeline | Emmeline interview
Johnny Olson | Johnny Olson interview
Lilly Penhall
Opalina Salas
Josh Weir

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