Name: A Stone's Throw
Brand: Russell Potter

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

TSQ5791

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Colour

Black

Colour details

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music GB

Limited edition

Release date

2021-06-25

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

Cargo

Tax rate GB

Standard:20

UPC / Barcode

0856225005791

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Total Cap

1 / Extended format: No / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No / black

Artist

Russell Potter

Genre GB

Singer Songwriter

Folk

Label GB

Tompkins Square

Tompkins Square label, established in 2005, is a renowned music label that has gained recognition for its exceptional releases. The label has worked with talented artists such as *William Tyler*, *Peter Walker*, *Ryley Walker* and *Michael Chapman*. With a focus on folk, old-time, gospel and American Primitive Guitar genres, Tompkins Square has also brought forth remarkable reissues of classic recordings. Their dedication to quality music has earned them an impressive eight Grammy nominations.

The two latest reissues to spin off from our acclaimed Imaginational Anthem Volume 8: The Private Press feature the solo guitar compositions of Russell Potter, recorded in the last waning days of the initial American Primitive explosion. A then obsessed teenaged devotee of John Fahey, Robbie Basho, and Leo Kottke at a time when Punk and New Wave were ascendant, Potter harnessed a similar DIY ethos to his own ends by starting his own label and self-publishing his first record, A Stone’s Throw, while a freshman enrolled at Goddard College in Vermont in 1979.

Assembled at the legendary Boddie Records in Potter’s hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, and sprinkled liberally with references to his heroes, from the initial record label name of Fonytone (which more than a little recalls Fahey’s earliest record label, Fonotone), to the arcane song titles and references to obscure rags. Even as he looks to his elders, Potter’s debut release nimbly evinces a complete mastery of his form and is all the more remarkable for one of such tender years, as only the chutzpah of youth can account for such moves as successfully grafting one of your own composition to one of John Fahey’s, as he does here. There’s a very immediate, lovely, and real homespun quality to Potter’s chiming twelve-string compositions that puts it in the realm of those classic records that seem to simply exist outside of time. Shortly after ‘A Stones Throw’, Potter produced and released a 45rpm single by an Ohio bluegrass band featuring the cult singer songwriter Bob Frank performing a cover of Devo’s Mongoloid, before moving on to his second (and sadly final) album the following year, Neither Here Nor There.

Following an independent study with a Goddard College ethnomusicologist, Potter’s compositions and performance only deepened on his second release — the recording quality steps up a little but loses none of the immediacy, the playing gets more exuberantly virtuosic —but then more reflective too, particularly on the tunes that are influenced by the gorgeous traditional Irish slow airs. He’s still tipping his hat to Fahey occasionally as well, this time with an audacious electric guitar setting of the classic Dance of the Inhabitant of the Palace of King Philip XIV of Spain. Though these albums landed at a time when American Primitive guitar music’s 1960s and 1970s heyday was in the rear view mirror, they absolutely look ahead to the genre’s eventual 21st Century resurrection, anticipating both in form and content many of the same concerns you find in the great contemporary work of the last two decades by Jack Rose, Glenn Jones, Daniel Bachman, et al., and as such provide about as fine a stepping stone between these two eras as you’re likely to find.

A Stone's Throw

Music GB