Country Artist Charles Hill Jr releases heartfelt new single benefiting hurricane relief
MaraRobinsonPhotography
Posted On October 15, 2017
Cleveland country artist Charles Hill Jr recently recorded a direct-to-wax performance of his new song Little Buddy with new studio The Earnest Tube run by local engineer Clint Holley.
All Earnest Tube recordings are done straight to lacquer, with no overdubs, multitracking or mixing.
Hill wrote Little Buddy with hope that anyone with a child, grandchild, niece or nephew can relate.
The song was written the night of his baby niece’s first Christmas. “The whole song is about the moment I met her. Little facial expressions she was making when she was only a number of hours old, I looked at my sister and was like, ‘Well, you messed up. You made a me. You better try to make another one that’s like you.'”
“I’d actually sat down to write a song about Ken [Janssen, Cleveland friend, frontman and founder of Stow House Records, who died of ALS New Year’s Day 2015] said Hill. “This one just came out instead.”
This single is the very first Earnest Tube recording. Neither Hill nor Holley had done it before.
“We were just testing out how the process was going to work,” said Hill. “It was never to be released.” But since the recording turned out so well, he decided to run with it.
“[This recording process] humanizes the whole thing. There’s a little warble in it just because of how it’s done, but I like that. It gives it a sort of old school aesthetic.”
The single also features a cover of Blaze Foley’s If I Could Only Fly and will be available in a limited edition of 25 hand-made custom pressings, signed and numbered by Hill, with proceeds benefiting hurricane relief efforts in Puerto Rico. These pressings from Wax Mage Records go on presale today on Hill’s Bandcamp.
“I’m not one to go on Facebook and bitch about the president. I just don’t think it does any good,” says Hill. “Obviously he didn’t approach or execute as well as he should have with the hurricane in Puerto Rico. I mean, you can just see the apathy in the press conferences. So instead of getting mad about it on the internet, I decided it’s just better to try to stay positive and do something good about it.”
Additional copies will follow November 17 on Stow House Records, with a release party that night at Survival Kit, part of the 78th Street Studios art galleries. Hill will be joined by Al Moss on pedal steel and Mike Allan (The Dreadful Yawns) on bass. Supporting acts Clint Holley and Brandon Scheel (The Luckey Ones) will also perform.
“I love playing [at Survival Kit]” Hill says. “It’s intimate. And especially with the third Friday [shows] you sort of get a built-in crowd and it’s all people that are there to absorb art in whatever way you give it to them.”
