Friday, 11 July 2025

Clay Riness - Rollin' in My Changes (Rare and great 1983 US Private Rural Folk LP)

 

I think this is an amazingly great LP.
Often one can get a pretty good idea about a record just by checking out the titles & various details on the cover and/or in the liners; this is a prime example of such examination. How could it not be raw, rustic folk with a label name like Weary Wolf & a publishing company called Folked Up Musics, with songs like "Trapper", "Yodelin' Cowboy", and "Knock Kneed Country Woman" ? How could it not have a slight beat/jazzy/coffeehouse cool to it with a poem like that by Robert "One Man" Johnson on the back ? Right - what you see is what you get, and it's all the better for it.
Only two songs have full accompaniment with drums, bass & femme backing vocals; otherwise Clay sticks to himself & he's doing just as good that way. The guitarplaying is absolutely topnotch, vocals are soulful & deliver the moodiness of "Me And My Old Man" and "Yodelin' Cowboy" with the same ease as the ironic wit of "Movin' To The City Rag".
The songwriting is also of a very high class, balancing the derivation that is part of this game with original ideas that stand up to comparisons with (should-be) classics of the genre, like the Bob Frank LP on Vanguard. Also mandatory for folkblues LPs, at least to my ears, is the need for a few spins to let the songs grab hold of you - it hardly ever happens right away.
Rivaling "Me And My Old Man" for the hotspot is the, also aforementioned, melancholic "Yodelin' Cowboy", full of nostalgia and late-night sadness that may come when looking back upon happier and/or easier times but I wouldn't want to be without any of these ten songs. "Rollin' In My Changes" is a seemingly lost chapter in the record lists, but I'm sure collectors will catch up eventually.
(review taken from https://www.beautifullies.se/farm-faves/)


Listen : A3. Me and My Old Man  &  B5. The Age of Consent


Complete with the original insert !

Clay Riness himself told me that there were only one thousand of this LP pressed and released. Rare indeed !

Record : EXC+
Cover : EXC (see pictures)
Insert : EXC
Price : 80,00 Euros (+ expedition costs - by registered parcel - calculated by the Belgian Post office)
Payment : PAYPAL only to etienne.reyser@gmail.com
Contact : etienne.reyser@gmail.com   

1 comment:

imnotgod said...

Good day ! Imagine my surprise to find my debut record of thirty years past so far from home! At first I misread the price thinking you were offering it for eighty-thousand euros ... then I realized the comma was likely supposed to be a period. I had a good chuckle over that.

I thought you might like knowing that there were only one thousand of this title pressed and released. Rare indeed.

Best wishes,

Clay Riness
Wisconsin, USA