I've got the Xmas Blues MIXTAPE

Merry Xmas everybody, if your not going home for Xmas like me cuz your family is too far away or for whatever reason, let this Xmas Blues mixtape keep you company over those cold holwin' nights.

Xo

Alex

Tracklisting:

1)Lightnin' Hopkins - Santa
2)Lightnin' Hopkins - Heavy Snow
3)Manhattans - It's that time of the year
4)Charles Brown - Please come home for christmas
5)Charlie Parker Quintet - White christmas
6)Blind Blake - Lonesome christmas blues
7)Charles Brown - Merry xmas baby
8)Ella Fitzgerald - The secret of christmas
9)Charley Patton - I'm goin' home

FREE DOWNLOAD LINK

Golden Blonde

An old track from DB's 2007 debut "Old Blood" via Fixture Records, which marked my first release under the moniker Dirty Beaches. Written somewhere between 2006-2007, I've cleaned up the recording digitally the best that I can, and hopefully one day will have the time and resource to re-mix and master the album in its entirety. The mix on this album is horrible as it was the first time I've mixed an album, and it shows. Perhaps only time will tell if this material is worth revisiting someday. But heres the touched up version of Golden Blonde, and I hope you guys will enjoy this little time capsule I dug out from my hard drive.

A Xmas mixtape will follow shortly on this blog...

Golden Blonde (New mix) by Dirty Beaches

PS.
Heres the impromptu piano version I pulled out of my ass for Yours Truly earlier this year on the Dum Dum Girls Tour. Thanks again to the Yours Truly crew for shooting this beautiful video.

DB & Lantern LIVE at Glasslands, Brooklyn, NY

Happy Holidays everyone, I'm putting together some FREE downloads over this weekend as a xmas present to all DB fans, so first off the bat we got:

DB & Lantern LIVE at Glasslands



A big thank you to William Chin for recording this bootleg to document this wild one-off idea we came up with 3 days before the actual show. We had a lot of fun that night. Wanna thank Zach and Emily for uploading this on their bandcamp/blog. More info on this collaboration set at zach's blog here: LANTERN BLOG

Man Meets Bear

Soren Brothers, a very dear friend of mine who is a Canadian biologist currently living in Berlin with his wife, on a contract job as a researcher examining samples from various lakes (pretty cool job) but I like to think of him as an incredible musician and the first person I call when I find abandoned architecture that we can explore. As I was packing my belongings getting ready for a move back east to Montreal, I found this old transfer Soren left on my hard drive before he moved to Berlin 2 years ago. I had helped him transfer his 4track recordings into digital format. We forgot about it after the transfer and I made him a copy as well as a duplicate for my own listening pleasure.

Everytime I hear Soren's music, I think of stumbling upon a home movie he has made over the past years of his travels in North America, Japan, and Eastern Europe. It somehow reminded me of the feeling you get when you look through your old photos, some makes you laugh hysterically, some makes you cry, or both. But that feeling of "what's gone is gone" hits home so hard and deep for me on this album. I contacted Soren, and asked for his permission to share this with all of you on this blog.

Let this beautiful music accompany you through this long winter.

Man Meets Bear - Rose Road Revolution SIDE B by Dirty Beaches

http://manmeetsbear.bandcamp.com/

Desert Shore

Road trip across the desert

DB Live instore at Luchador Records, Barcelona

DIRTY BEACHES from WAAAU.TV on Vimeo.

The track is an old B-side that never made it to the Night People Tape I put out in 2009 titled "Valentine". Back in 2007-2009 this was the Dirty Beaches set up, RC-2 loop station pedal, and a holy grail reverb pedal (the only pedal I've kept since 2002 when I was still playing in bands) it was very light to travel with, as sometimes I had to play shows after work, I would bring the 2 pedals and my microphone to work, and take a bus to the venue and borrow other bands amp and guitar. Very economical and compact. Although the stripped down set up is not for everyone. But sometimes you have to work with what you have and play the cards that your dealt with. Luchador is a nice, relatively new record store in Barcelona, for those of you that live in Europe, go check it out if your there for a trip. Scenery: Skaters skating on ultra modern architecture/art gallery entrances, mixed in with an old looking neighborhood where old Spanish ladies dry their laundry and knickers out from their windows and balconies.

Rhyolite, Nevada

There was a think out loud WTF moment when we saw the giant nude blonde 8-bit/lego statue in the middle of the desert; albeit a ghost town.

Salvation Mountain by Leonard Knight

Palm Springs / Joshua Tree