Pitchfork

Bonnie "Prince" Bryant reports:
Will Oldham is all set to return, in full Bonnie "Prince" Billy regalia, January 28th with Master and Everyone, his third full-length under the Bonnie banner. This date is, by the way, in full compliance with the 1997 Indie Rock Release Accord which mandates that highly anticipated indie-rock records not be available for Christmas, not even for the novel hilarity of checking your aunt Gladys trying to score some limited-edition Shellac vinyl at the mall store. Anyway, the Drag City dragoons were kind enough to pass along a tracklist, but had to go and shit on our parade by reassuring us that opener "The Way" is not, sadly, a Fastball cover. Tracklist:

01 The Way
02 Ain't You Wealthy, Ain't You Wise?
03 Master and Everyone
04 Wolf Among Wolves
05 Joy and Jubilee
06 Maundering
07 Lessons From What's Poor
08 Even If Love
09 Three Questions
10 Hard Life

And speaking of covers, by all means check out the link below where Drag City has posted the sleeve art for Master and Everyone. Dude, is that Freud? Talk about yer loose fur! You go, Billy!

As previously reported, the album will be preceded by a single, but only if your local record store actually hides the actual CDs behind the seven-inchers. The slab o' wax will include the non-album cuts "Happy Child" and "Forest Time", and also hit shelves on January 28th. And even though it kind of scares us to tell you this, we have it on pretty good authority that Bonnie Billy will be releasing another seven-inch down the road which finds our man Billy covering tunes from Monitor Records' shock-rockers the Oxes. Then again, those kooks at Monitor said something once about Bonnie jamming on a Mariah Carey cover with Wu-Tang's Buddha Monk and that shizznit never came out, so we'll see.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot... Oldham apparently needs your help booking his spring tour in alternative venues in Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. "We want to do where there's good places to play, doesn't must be too big," reads the grammar-challenged open call posted on Drag City's site. So if you're an Oldham fan stuck in the boonies of the lonesome crowded west, truck it to Drag City's website to drop the address of your favorite biker bar, abandoned drive-in theater, or trailer park in the kitty. In the meantime, the Bonnie one has booked the following 2003 gigs all by his lonesome:

01-27 Pittsburgh, PA - Rex Theater
01-28 Washington, DC - Black Cat
01-29 New York, NY - Irving Plaza
01-30 Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church
01-31 Cambridge, MA - Middle East
02-01 Northampton, MA - Iron Horse Music Hall
02-03 Albany, NY - Valentine's