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LP
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JJ 5015LP
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Limited to 500 copies. Reinhard Holstein: "I've always had a soft spot for weird misfits! Ramsay Midwood is such a weirdo. I first heard him when Neal Casal and I were on our way to Big Pink (the house where The Band lived and recorded The Basement Tapes with Bob Dylan). He popped a CD into the player of his red Chevelle, and I was immediately hooked. Shortly thereafter, we released this album on CD through Glitterhouse Records. That was in 1999. Now, over 25 years later, after a long struggle, I finally convinced Ramsay to let me produce the first vinyl version of this masterpiece. Because of the approximately 800 records released during my time at Glitterhouse, Shoot Out At The OK Chinese Restaurant is my absolute favorite. Like JJ Cale jamming with Tony Joe White on Valium! Here's what others are saying: Shoot Out at the OK Chinese Restaurant draws deep from two American wells. Traditional music nourishes these performances, but so does that part of American culture that produces idiosyncratic, somewhat twisted individualists. In a laconic drawl that recalls both Woody Guthrie and Levon Helm, Midwood projects an ageless, enigmatic quality; like Leon Redbone, he might be a prematurely rustic twentysomething, a crotchety yet poetic septuagenarian, or anything in between. Vivid images fill his lyrics and drift over shambling tracks marked by banjo plucks, beat-up old pianos, and other garage-sale relics. His songs offer romantic insights based on distant experience, bits of aphoristic wisdom fashioned as koans from a Dust Bowl Buddha, reflections on redneck bravado and stream-of consciousness ramblings that seem more wise than coherent. Perhaps his most compelling lyric, 'Spinnin' on a Rock,' documents the murderous fantasy of a laid-off dockworker in couplets more reminiscent of a playground game. In one song, Midwood advises listeners to hear him out with the wry line, 'Take a tip from a real smart feller.' That's a suggestion worth listening to, given the broken-down brilliance of this debut."
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