Jimmie Dale Gilmore & The Flatlanders - All American Music 2 LP

You know how it is when you cant stop talking up a record. Someone will say, Okay, but who do they sound like? Or, Lets go see them. Flatlanders fandom hits a wall right there. By the time the first compilation of Flatlanders work appeared in England in 1980, they'd been apart for seven years, and another ten before their music was available in the US. Sort of....

Recorded in 1972 and scheduled for release the following year, All American Music was put on hold and went unissued except for a few copies that were released on 8-Track. It took a 1980 UK compilation to collect the known Flatlanders material, with a now out-of-print German compilation unearthing one more track in 2015.

Finally, in 2024, Omnivore Recordings brings all the known original Flatlanders tracks back to CD and a three-sided LP with a musical saw etching on Side 4. (Did we mention the musical saw yet?). All American Music features all known 18 tracks from the sessions. The Grammy-winning team of Michael Graves, Colin Escott, and Cheryl Pawelski have respectively remastered, written liner notes and produced the new compilation.

As Escott says in his notes More than a half-century later, The Flatlanders original music still sounds fresh. It was truly a sound like no other. Its a stretch to call an artist prophetic if no one heard them, but in some ways The Flatlanders foretold the grab-all that became Americana Music.