Last March, singer-songwriter Sonny Smith unveiled his ambitious 100 Records project, which found the Sonny & The Sunsets' frontman inventing 100 fake bands and commissioning artists to make individual album covers for each. Sound ambitious? It gets better. Smith then proceeded to write 200 tracks for the project, creating real A-sides and a B-sides for all 100 fake release. Now Smith is teaming up with upstart Austin-based label Forest Family Records to bring one of these "records" to life -- “nomadic psychedelic folksinger” Earth Girl Helen Brown's lost EP, Story of an Earth Girl. The creative crooner even has a detailed backstory on the release:
“Helen Brown was born in Vancouver, Canada, but raised in an Athens, Georgia-based religious cult, and was blinded in one eye from a childhood baseball injury. As an adult, she dropped out of Evergreen and traveled the country for a while as a nomadic psychedelic folksinger, before forming her first band One Eyed Tramps. For years, she lived alone in a mountaintop in southern Alaska, where she befriended a Cherokee Shaman (later revealed as a fake) who encouraged her to pursue a frustrating academic career. Rampant drug use, frequent fainting on stage, and occasional self-inflicted knife wounds on stage led to more interest in her stage antics than her music. However, a few sides did emerge in the late ’90s (recording dates unknown), which feature a unique mix of country, girl group, R&B, and ghoulishness. Crude and amateurish at best, these recordings are appreciated for their sincerity and intensity of feeling.”
Sounds like Best New Music material to us! Amazing backstory aside, the EP is actually a collaboration between Smith and his friends Heidi Alexander and Grace Cooper from local throwback outfit The Sandwitches. Yes, an impressive pairing in its own right. Check out an MP3 of the "band" and pre-order the limited 10" over at the label site.
You can catch Smiths' true-to-life band January 30th at Great American Music Hall with lo-fi pop favorites The Blow and a February 22nd Noise Pop show at The Fox Theater with indie legends Yo La Tengo. Tickets are $15 and $25 respectively. And for those still looking for where to rage tonight, project co-conspirators The Sandwitches are set to play the final $5 (((Folk Yeah))) Winter Residency show at Slim's tonight – show at 8pm.
Related Stories
((Folk Yeah))) Launches Winter Residency at Slim's
Where To Hear The Best Albums of 2010 Live
Noise Pop Announces Preliminary 2011 Lineup
