Album Notes

There is a hand-painted thought-rock zine that goes with this disc! Allow me to introduce myself if you are a total stranger to me and my music. My name is Thistle and I like to ride my bike to places school, cars and capitalism can't take me. In the Fall of 2003 I took off, heading South from Madison, Wisconsin on my bicycle after selling almost everything I owned in a garage sale, getting rid of my car and house I was renting with my intimate comrade and quitting my job. We gave ourselves to the road and trusted nature and our instincts to take care of us. We lived outside for five months on the road without getting into a car or high-speed vehicle of any kind. We made it all the way down to New Orleans, then to Austin, Texas and finally back to Wisconsin again after three and a half years of traveling and exploring and settling for a year in Austin and a year in Southern Humboldt County in California. Woa. We had a lot of fun, but it was hard too, seeing all the road-kill, the destruction of the land, our habitat and environment up close on the side of the road where we were living most of the time. Now I live in Madison again at a collective farm where we grow our own corn, beans and squash while helping others to grow their own food too. See http://www.drumlingarden.org for more information about our struggle to save the land from corporate development. My music is really personal but also very political and bold in its descriptions of feelings many of us have as capitalism and the oil and gas economy collapses and we are left with nothing but our two hands and each other. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed creating it by listening to the steady rhythm of bicycle wheels beneath me as I ride.