One Way or Another Vol. 2

by Robin Holcomb

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Pre-order of One Way or Another Vol. 2. You get 1 track now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released.

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releases May 31, 2024

$10 USD or more
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
CD with full booklet. Photos by Nica Horvitz.

Includes digital pre-order of One Way or Another Vol. 2. You get 1 track now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released.

shipping out on or around May 31, 2024

$15 USD or more

1.	The Sweetest Thing
2.	Deliver Me 06:13	lyrics	buy track
Deliver Me Deliver me Deliver me The light is only perfect for a very short time Deliver me When you’re blinded to The moon and its rise How can you know the planting times? Streetlights tell lies Deliver me Deliver me The light is only perfect for a very short time Deliver me Love is good When you speak two ways Can you prove what’s holy when the river runs dry? These are trying days Deliver me Deliver me The light is only perfect for a very short time Deliver me Deliver me
3.	improvisation, singer-songwriter, experimental, Alternative, literary, - Old Man
4.	Nine Lives
5.	Be Still
6.	Here I Come Crying Again
7.	Kind Treatment
8.	It Is A Blessing
9.	So Straight and Slow
10.	Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair
11.	Blood In My Eyes For You
12.	Yr Mother Called Them Farmhouses

about

In October 2022, composer and songwriter Robin Holcomb returned to the public eye with the release of Vol. I of “One Way or Another,”. 2024 welcomes the release of Vol. II, recorded during the same sessions as
Vol. I.

In 1992, Robin Holcomb stunned the music community with her eponymously titled album, released on Elektra/Nonesuch records. Relatively obscure, Holcomb was best known for her compositions and improvisations as a pianist, and her association with the avant-garde and New York City’s downtown scene. The songs were in equal measure gorgeous, challenging, sophisticated, direct, and mysterious. The lyrics spoke to the times like no other. As critic Ben Ratliff simply stated, Holcomb’s music is “staggeringly beautiful.” At the time the term “Americana” barely existed, but to those in the know Holcomb’s music wrote the book – with a strange mingling of a long-lost agrarian tradition, and its intersection with the myriad contradictions of modern American life. Many artists have mined the vast repertoire of early American music, but few with such originality, poetic vision, and utterly unique harmonic language. As the Village Voice commented after her first release, “Satie goes to Appalachia, Morricone goes to the Knitting factory, and you, dear art-folk fan, die and go to heaven.” After years of focusing primarily on her composing, her family, and her garden, Ms. Holcomb returned to the recording studio to record “One Way or Another.” “I wanted to revisit the past, and also make public more recent work, cover tunes, and various other projects.” The recordings offer a stark and intimate view of these masterful compositions, without production touches, orchestrations, or overdubs. Holcomb spent four days at ShowGhost studio in Whitefish, Montana, with only her voice, a Steinway grand piano, and state of the art audio gear. Working with her husband - composer and producer Wayne Horvitz - they chose selections from her four previously released Nonesuch titles, plus compositions from two theater projects. The first, “The Utopia Project”, explored early 20th century experiments in collective living. The second, regarding the life of Rachel Carson, explores Carson’s public persona as a visionary environmentalist versus her desire for personal privacy, her battle with illness, and her struggles with personal identity. “Cast away everything empty, You win every time in the end, Four letter words that were sent but unopened, I’m gonna lose again.” In addition, a collection of cover tunes were recorded. In “I’ve Got that Feeling”, by Doc Pomus, Holcomb completely reimagines the harmony and rhythm, creating a powerful and unsentimental remake of the original. “Hard Times” with a lyric as prescient today as any in recent history, is treated for the 21st century as Charles Ives might have for the 20th, with a deeply moving and reconsidered harmonization of Stephen Foster’s original melody. Almost 20 years ago the New York Times wrote, “The music that results is as elegantly simple as a Shaker quilt, and no less beautiful.” Today, with the release of “One Way or Another”, this proves truer than ever.

credits

releases May 31, 2024

All compositions by Robin Holcomb, Skippens Music/Administered by St. Rose/Wise Music (ASCAP) except: I Dream of Jeanie by Stephen Foster; Old Man by Randy Newman, WC Music Corp. (SESAC); Kind Treatment by Walter Jacobs; I’ve Got Blood In My Eyes for You by Bo Carter

Robin Holcomb – Piano and Voice

Recorded at SnowGhost Music in Whitefish, Montana
Brett Allen – Recording Engineer
Nolan McCormick – Assistant Engineer
Digital Editing – Wayne Horvitz
Mixed by Eric Eagle at Skoor Sound
Mastering – Chris Gestrin
Photos – Nica Horvitz
Album Design – Jack Dunnington

Produced by Wayne Horvitz

Special thanks to all the Westerlies, the late Hal Willner, Brett Allen, Eric Eagle, David Bither, Nica Horvitz, Jim Keller, Ernie Sapiro, and all the amazing musicians who contribute to this music past, present and future.

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about

Robin Holcomb Seattle, Washington

Robin Holcomb’s music has been called “staggeringly beautiful.” by the New York Times. Through her times sharecropping tobacco as a young woman, as an improvising pianist on New Yorks’ downtown scene in the 80s, and three decades of creating an utterly idiosycratic catalog of songs, Ms. Holcomb has created a singular canon as a composer. ... more

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