New Saddle Creek Benefit Compilation Announced

Saddle Creek is releasing Lagniappe, a compilation to raise funds for hurricane relief. The CD costs $11 and all of Saddle Creek and its artists' profits will be donated to Red Cross relief efforts. The CD version can be pre-ordered at the Saddle Creek online store now. They expect to ship the CDs on Oct. 4 and to have it in stores in mid-October), or you can download it from iTunes now (or tomorrow, or the day after... you get the idea).

Lagniappe isn't a common word in many places; its origin is Louisiana French, from American Spanish and it's still used most often in the Gulf states, especially southern Lousiana. The word is used to refer to "a little bonus that a friendly shopkeeper might add to a purchase. By extension, it may mean 'an extra or unexpected gift or benefit.'"

Saddle Creek says: "Old favorites, new faces, and friends of Saddle Creek recorded these 13 tracks in bedrooms, basements, kitchens, living rooms, and even in a couple of studios. The album was put together in one week. It's a menagerie of mostly new songs, a few tracks that should have made it onto albums but for whatever reason didn't, a couple of B-sides, a demo song - whatever people could contribute."

Track listing for the Lagniappe CD:

Cursive - Ten Percent to the Ten Percent
Maria Taylor and Andy LeMaster - Breathe
Criteria - Booketa
The Elected - San Francisco Via Chicago Blues (this is a new song)
Broken Spindles - Move Away (Broken Spindles Remix)
Cocoon (Jake Bellows and Todd Fink) - She's a Ghost
Bright Eyes - Napoleon's Hat
The Faint - Hypnotised
Orenda Fink - No Evolution (acoustic)
Mayday - Footprints
Sorry About Dresden - Sunrise: Norfolk, Virginia
Two Gallants - All Your Faithless Loyalties
The Good Life - New Year's Retribution

mp3:The Elected - My Baby's a Dick (from Me First)

mp3:Orenda Fink - No Evolution (from Invisible Ones - the regular album version)

mp3:The Faint - Worked Up So Sexual (Death Cab Mix) - from the audio page at the Faint's official website).

Lots of mp3s from the bands on the compilation are available at the download sections of the artists' pages at the Saddle Creek website, although the quality of most of the tracks provided is not exactly top-notch. You can still check out what an artist (sort of) sounds like with a 32 or 64 bitrate mp3, but you might find yourself thinking they sound a bit tinnier than they likely do. Still, in my day there weren't even any mp3s! And we had to walk five miles in the snow for a giant "record" or tiny "cassette" we had to play them on either a weird, antique-y looking machine or in a "walking man" or "booming box" (I'm a little fuzzy on the details; this was a while ago). We could only choose from a selection of five "records" or "tapes" (which, oddly, were not sticky) at any given time, and that's only if er, "we" were the first one there that day! And we were grateful for that much!

'Till tomorrow...