Kind of Like Spitting
Learn: The Songs of Phil Ochs
RDIS003 (HSH052) | 2005 | CD

A great Hush release distributed by Redder!
From the Hush Records website: “Recorded at the Gene Autry Theater in Los Angeles on Autry’s vintage two track machine in 2004, Kind of Like Spitting (here consisting solely of Ben Barnett and David J) deliver a selection of songs from the Phil Ochs catalog. In the months preceding the recording they took to performing six song intermissions of the not-too-well-known folk singer’s music inside their own sets on stages across the country, interweaving the songs with biographical insight and contemporary relevance. This recording aligns itself with the production of Ochs’ early, seminal records (All The News That’s Fit To Sing [1965] and I Aint Marching Anymore [1966]) consisting solely of acoustic guitars and vocals. It also documents a transformation in the lives and art of Barnett and J, having taken to Ochs as a musical father figure early on, identifying with his underdog status and trumpeting his songwriting nerve and brilliance, only to come to accept him as a brutally narcissistic person who suffered from manic depression and alcoholism, ultimately taking his own life in 1976 in relative obscurity after a spectacular downward spiral, witnessing his peers Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell rise to superstar status.”