‘Bridging the gap between American primitive pioneers John Fahey and Leo Kottke and the California Modernists… the private side of the solo guitar movement from 1966-81.’ 40-page booklet, usual Numero class.

Male folk singers mithering and dithering all the way from 1970 to 1983: very introspective, sombre, spare and intimate, most of it originally pressed privately, plenty of it beautiful and haunting.

‘Gram Parsons had been orbiting the idea of Cosmic American Music for some time. In ‘68, he’d parted ways with the Byrds and was looking to take air with a new project. “It’s basically a Southern soul group playing country and gospel-oriented music with a steel guitar” he told Melody Maker, on the subject of The Flying Burrito Brothers. So it was that when A&M’s Burrito Brothers debut The Gilded Palace of Sin made it to shelves in February of 1969, early adherents to the Cosmic American gospel were already echoing its message from areas flanking Gram Parsons’ Southern California hills and canyons. There was F.J. McMahon in coastal Santa Barbara, Mistress Mary further inland in Hacienda Heights, and Plain Jane of Albuquerque, New Mexico…’