Bring Back Shuffletown
How come no one has ever heard of Shuffletown? I'm all the time mentioning it to music people as a record that had a big influence on me in the early 90s when I was struggling to find my voice as an acoustic musician after years of playing fast, hard, and loud, but I rarely meet anyone who even knows Joe Henry, let alone this great album.
It was originally released in 1990, but I didn't get it until 92 or 93 when a good friend gave me a cassette copy. Even thenI couldn't find the CD in the local record stores. And of course this was pre-Internet (at least in the shopping sense).
Evocative of The Trinity Sessions, Shuffletown was recorded live to 2-track tape and produced by T Bone Burnett. The sparse arrangements with instruments like mandolin and violin and muted trumpet draw you into the room and into the beautiful melodies in a way that make the words almost superfluous. But the lyrics are, by and large, pretty great too. Though occasionally vague, they're mostly vivid and compelling without being overly artsy or hifalutin. Shuffletown is easily in my top 10 or so records of the 1990s.
And yet the CD is out of print and I've lost my cassette copy! On the Internet, I can choose among a handful of used copies in varying conditions for about $30 (after shipping), or I can step up to a "collectible" copy pushing $50. There's no (legal) digital source anywhere that I can find. Pandora, Rhapsody, Last.fm . . . . Forget it. Every other Joe Henry album I can listen to on these services or order new, but not my favorite! So what gives?
It reminds me of when we bought a five-speed station wagon several years ago. We had to pay top dollar because it was such a rare car. Then when we tried to trade it in, the same dealer low-balled us because it was such an unusual car. Jeez.
(I know: don't tell me about specialized demand and how time-sensitivity creates an over-supply of exactly one when you've got an odd-ball item you need to move. I'm not looking for rational explanations; I want sympathy!)
