Danny Barnes - Get Myself Together (Limited Edition 140g Colored Vinyl)

With Get Myself Together, Danny Barnes – America’s irreplaceable alchemist of acoustic razzle-dazzle gets back to basics. Or so a record of lively blues and old-timey-tinged songs, played on banjo and guitar with occasional fiddle and bass guitar accompaniment (Brittany Haas and Garey Shelton, respectively), would seem. This record came on the heels of the widescreen epic Dirt on the Angel and a magic-barrel profusion of experimental-edge side projects. Get Myself Together sounds at first like a return to the earlier, leaner aesthetic of Bad Livers, the Texan avant-hillbilly visionaries whom Barnes steered through seven records from 1994 to 2000. But his fans know to listen more than once. When Barnes is driving there are no entirely straight routes, forward or back, and nothing slips off the back of the truck. “One of the themes that interested me in the writing of this project was the law of cause and effect,” Danny says. “How people basically cause their own misery and happiness. It’s always amazed me how people, myself included, volunteer for misery.” Threads of continuity bear out Danny’s assertion that Get Myself Together “is set up like a modern film, various stories get woven into the fabric in disjointed ways, little lyrical themes that pop in and out across the selections, much like classical music.”13 stark jewels, all recorded in a small room (by Garey Shelton/Seattle, WA) and unfussily presented, This music breathers between the notes as it maintains an amiable give-and-take with dead masters – the student holding his own, neither showboating nor allowing the exchange to flag. Originally released in 2005, Get Myself Together is now available on vinyl for the first time. The limited edition 140g version is beautifully remastered by Pete Lyman at Infrasonic Sound and available on glacial blue vinyl.

Vinyl Track Listing:

Side A

1.         Get Me Out of Jail

2.         Let Your Light Shine on Me

3.         Rat’s Ass

4.         Get Myself Together

5.         Wasted Mind

6.         Cumberland Gap

Side B

1.         Big Girl Blues

2.         Corn Kingdome Come

3.         Sympathy for the Devil

4.         Cut a Rug

5.         Cat to the Rat

6.         Big Shoe