In fact, my new Record Store Day goal is to show up as late as possible and see if I can still get what I want. Needless to say, we didn’t get to Stinkweeds until around noon. I still love the spirit of the day and what it represents, but the inflated secondary market for limited-edition releases has dampened my enthusiasm (but that’s probably a story for a different day). Not to sound like an old grump, but my days of waking up early, fighting crowds and squatting on achy knees to scour vinyl on Record Store Day are done (and have been for a couple years). I sent a follow-up note and Lenny responded back almost right away with a really kind missive. “It is amazing the lifeline of ‘Crazy Like A Fox’…and I’m surely happy to hear it utilized in such a consciousness expanding manner…Sounds like my kind of trance and dance.” Blessed by Lenny. Then I got over myself and thought of all the unread emails in my inbox. “I emailed Lenny Kaye to ask for his blessing. I didn’t hear back for a while, and I let a lot of self-doubt eat at me regarding the situation. I get lost in it each time I listen to it, still. He added these celestial electric guitar leads and synths and recruited Laraine Kaizer-Viazovtsev to play violin. “But ‘Always Happening’ is a song where Michael Krassner rightly suggested we let it drift outward. “For much of my debut record, I kept the songs really short, as I was very uninterested in overstaying my welcome,” Jason said. The premiere here, “Always Happening,” is the album closer, a 10-minute trip built on a short loop from Link Cromwell’s “Crazy Like a Fox.” In the same way Jason has worked tirelessly to cultivate our scene, he’s similarly developed such a unique vibe on this solo debut, a meditative montage of low-key psych - sounds lovingly warped and reformed in the way only someone who has spent a lifetime in the desert can synthesize. He’s been such a champion over the years for so many others, it’s nice to be able to return the favor, however small. And he’s always offered a positive word of encouragement. I recently began a massive undertaking of re-ripping my CD collection (I’ve made it all the way through “E”!), which sent me on a nostalgic trip - about music and this site, which I’ve often thought of reviving, a topic I’ve subjected Jason to countless times. It was, perhaps, kismet that Jason reached out this week. No surprise he’s been such a longtime stalwart - writer of words, host of podcasts - over at the legendary Aquarium Drunkard, among many of the hats he’s worn. Jason was a regular contributor here back in the heyday, and it was pretty obvious then (as it is now) his taste and talent are unimpeachable. This was less about promotion and more about connection, a “fun way to honor SMS and the ‘blog era,'” as Jason put it. It’s just the kind of selfless and kindhearted people he and his wife, Becky, are. The music blog hype machine dried up long ago.Īnd yet, that was sort of the point for Jason. Not sure if you read the part about me not updating this site in eight (8) years, but there’s not a lot of visibility I could offer here. He’s already had wonderful - and well-deserved - praise for the project heaped his way in Pop Matters, MTV News and in this great Phoenix New Times feature. It’s not surprising Jason reached out, asking if I wanted to check under the hood and rev this thing up to premiere a song off his upcoming album “Something Happening/Always Happening” (due out Sept. I wasn’t expecting that text from Jason Woodbury, let alone opening up this site to write something here for the first time in (gulp, checks notes) EIGHT years.