Pine Tar Records

08/24/2026

Pine Tar Project 365
#134

Let me tell you something that I know to be absolutely true. I worked at the Athens Country Club for 6 years. During that time I put forth the effort to get to know an amazing group of people who mostly spoke Spanish. I asked them how to speak their language and didn't care if they spoke mine. It was a lot of fun. Of course, i learned the dirty words first and then started asking , "Como se dice?" or "How do you say?". With the knowledge of Spanish I learned at the ACC I can, to this day, make myself vaguely understood in most situations where I would need to know Spanish. I am not fluent but I like to say I speak at about a 4yo level.

I became really good friends with some great people: Jorge, Delilah, Moochie, Los Hermanos Pavos (Pavo Loco y Pavo Nino, later shortened to Loco y Nino), Sapo, Miguel, Pavel, and so many others over the years. I was invited to parties at Jorge's houses where the ladies sat me down at the kitchen table and fed me so much food that I had never had before. I ate it all. I spent a New Year's Eve at Jorge's house where I stuffed a bunch of grapes in my mouth at midnight. I was at Jorge's house one time and they introduced me to the band Molotov (still one of my all time favorites). The song "Frijolero" came on and I just dug it. It's kinda boppy but deals with some serious issues. I recommend you take a minute to check it out. I watched boxing matches over there and just hung out some times. Delilah used to make this sandwich for me on my birthday every year that had chorizo, white onions, and eggs that were essentially poached in the chorizo oil. It's the best sandwich I have ever had. It was super tasty but Delilah was tough and she didn't make birthday sandwiches for everyone. I think that added to the flavor.

I say all of that to say this. If I had not had the opportunity 22 years ago to be in that spot, with those people, I would be a lesser man than I am today. They taught me so much. They exposed me to new foods, movies, musicians, language, and ideas. They were immigrants to this country. They were (and still are) good people who wanted nothing more than to live and work in peace and create a future for themselves and their families. They made, and still make (I hope), Athens (or wherever they are) a better and brighter place.

I will be forever grateful for the time I had with them. I wish I could have a Delilah sandwich right now. If you are ever in a situation where people are speaking Spanish and you are confused or frightened because you can't understand what they are saying. remember these words and say them kindly, "Como se dice en Ingles?" You might learn something. And if you are feeling especially kind after that encounter, you could then say my favorite phrase in Spanish that I learned from Sapo, "Tu Tienes Huevitos. Yo Tengo Huevotes."

Music video by Molotov performing Frijolero. (C) 2003 Surco Records...

08/23/2026

Just dropped off a ton of new records Cotton Patch

08/22/2026

I spend entirely too much time worrying about whether or not my grandkids are going to think my record collection is cool. Anyone else?

08/19/2026

Pine Tar Project 365
#134

I asked my friend Katie McLeod a few months back if she would write one of these posts. She is a fine and talented writer. This is her post.

“Because it is our 25th anniversary, and I am celebrating it without him again, I want to tell the world about a song that felt like it was always ours, even though it was out in the world before either of us was ever born.

It was the first song we danced to. We weren’t dating at the time—not each other, at least. But while my parents happened to be conveniently divorced for that one year, and my mom happened to be on St. Simon’s with her sister, my Aunt Bennie, that year—my best friends and I had ourselves a damn NIGHT. We would refer to it, in all the decades that followed, as the Soul
Shakedown Party. That was because the entirety of the night consisted of the handful of us—Derrick, Kyle, Katrina, Joe, Jeremy, Coleman, and me—dancing to the albums we played for a full 8 hours on repeat: Bob Marley’s Soul Shakedown Party and Willie Nelson’s The Red Headed Stranger.

It didn’t matter that Kyle and Katrina had been working on the “night moves” together for a year-plus before that night. It didn’t matter that all of us were, in ways we couldn’t possibly know at the time, deeply and achingly in love with EACH OTHER—that we were in love with the WHOLENESS of us ALL—collectively.

We couldn’t know then that the feelings we felt that night would never be re-created. We couldn’t know that we could never manufacture or experience again what happened on its own that night. It was one of those perfect moments where magic is built…somewhere between the risks we don’t realize we’re taking, and the choices we are only vaguely aware that we’re making.
And it will always hold a beautiful, sacred place in my heart.

Anyway. When “Hands on the Wheel” came on that night, for what must have been the third or fourth time as we cycled our way through the two albums on repeat, Kyle and I held hands. And we danced…just the two of us, in a dark, cramped living room, flanked by two mismatched and outdated couches, and our handful of very favorite humans.

Now my hand’s
on the wheel
Of something
that’s real
And I feel
Like I’m
going
home

When we left the courthouse after we got legally married a decade and a half later, we danced to this song again.

When we had our Wedstival a few years after our marriage was good and legal, and I had finally made an honest man out of him, we danced to it again.

It’s been the anchor song—the “OUR song”—of our long, long many years together. And I just love it to pieces every time I hear it.

We have others, too, of course. We do. But THIS one. This one is the ONE, for us. And I know it. Because we declared such, on a dare and a whim, on two separate pieces of 2 x 4 lumber one night when we were half drunk and in our late 20s. Four kids asleep in bed. Half a bottle of something-or-another dancing in our veins. And we both filled up our little pieces of lumber—front and back—with as many of our favorite albums and songs as we could name.

Wouldn’t you know it—we had the same Number One on both our lists! The same one that would always, ALWAYS, bring us back home.

❤️And that’s this one. ❤️”

"Hands On The Wheel" by Willie Nelson - Live From Austin City Limit...

08/08/2026

Pine Tar Project 365
#133

In the fall of 1997 I moved out to Colorado with Kirby, Krisha, and Deric. We got out there right after Thanksgiving which, im sure you all realize, was around the same time that Natalie Imbruglia released her album Left of Middle.

We ended up renting this small condo in Breckenridge and my room had a waterbed that was only have filled so if you moved the wrong way you would end up sprawled out on the plywood frame. The only radio station I could pick up on my clock radio was the local Clear Channel. It played a steady stream of top 40 Pop songs and Imbruglia was all over the radio that winter. I woke up many mornings with her song jangling and announcing the start of a new day.

I immediately loved this song. Of course I did. It was a continuation of of all the other female pop stars that I loved…Madonna,Tiffany, Debi Gibson, Wilson Phillips,Lisa Loeb, and so many others. It’s a beautiful song and it is so damn bouncy. I really get in to bouncy some times. It’s one of the songs that I really belt out if no one is around. A Chevy Equinox can barely contain the emotions.

So, fun story. I never knew this song was a cover before today. I never thought she wrote it but I didn’t know that a band called EdnaSwap had written and recorded it 2 years earlier. There version is much less cheerful than Imbruglia’s. Anne Preven, EdnaSwap’s singer and songwriter, brought it out slowly and overflowing with melancholy. If I had heard her version before Imbruglia’s I think it may have changed my entire musical philosophy. It is amazing. You should check it out.

At this point, though, I will never abandon my love for the Natalie Imbruglia version. It reminds me of snowboarding til they close the slopes and sleeping on a half filled waterbed. Good times, indeed.

performing her hit Torn live in front of ...

08/01/2026

Pine Tar Project 365
#132

9/11 started for me around 8:30am. I had closed Buffington’s the night before at 2am and probably made it to bed by 4am. The next morning I briefly woke to the sounds of Aaron crashing around the house getting ready to head to Brewer’s Cafe for his opening shift. Once the house descended to stillness again, I went back to sleep. About 45 minutes later the house phone rang until the answering machine picked up. The call disconnected and then the phone rang again. I let it go to the machine and this time the caller left a message. Through the fog of the previous evening’s revelry I heard Aaron shouting into the answering machine, “Wake up and come down to Brewer’s!! We’re at war and we all just started drinking! The end is here!”

I pulled myself out of bed, confused and annoyed. Everyone knew I didn’t normally get out bed back then until around noon. No reason to be all excited so early in the morning. I walked in to the living room and flicked on the TV that Mark Dobbs had abandoned at the house. I sat down, found CNN, and didn’t get off the couch until I had to be at work at 7pm.

I used to hear my grandparents talk about where they were when Pearl Harbor was attacked and my parents talk about the assassinations of Kennedy and Lennon. At 24 years old, my only memory like that was the Challenger explosion. It immediately hit me that I was in such a moment. Little did I know that everything was changing in real time.

I am 49 years old and, right now, 9/11 is sitting right around the mid point of my life. The days, weeks, months, and years following 9/11 have been a such a change from what I thought the world would be. The divide began immediately. More hatred towards people with brown skin and different religious beliefs ramped up quickly. People’s understanding of current events were shaped only by what they saw on television 24 hours a day. The world got uglier. Country singers made a lot of money by pretending to be patriotic and country singers were canceled for exercising their right to question our government.

This acoustic performance of “My Hero” was filmed on September 21, 2001. 10 days after 9/11. Over this ten day time span, just about every moment of time not spent at work was spent watching endless hours of 9/11 coverage. The fatigue of despair was settling in on the country. It was definitely hitting me. This night I was watching Craig Kilborn because I was cool and edgy. Foo Fighters were announced at the beginning of the show and I shrugged my shoulders. When Dave Grohl and bassist, Nate Mendel, finally show up on screen they are sitting on stools and Grohl has an acoustic guitar. I knew of “My Hero” because it was already a huge hit but I had never heard it like this. They played slower and quieter as a tribute to all of the men and women who were still in the act of trying to save lives. It was a dedication to the ordinary men and women who were doing extraordinary things. By the end of the performance, I was crying. It was a cathartic moment of release. Ten days of unthinkable tension and heartache had been slightly relieved by the goofy ex drummer of Nirvana. It is in my top 5 live performances I have ever seen (even though it was tape delayed show that I watched on TV, it counts).

I still don’t really listen to Foo Fighters but I will always have a place in my heart for what Dave Grohl and Nate Mendel did that night. They honored men and women with a song about ordinary heroes. In the days and weeks that came later I thought of this song often. As it became a financially lucrative proposition to write songs about whoopin’ ass and retribution, I often thought of how Dave Grohl ended this performance.

He didn’t call for revenge and violence. He quietly says, “Peace.”

Foo Fighters - My Hero (Acoustic on Kilborn)

07/31/2026

Pine Tar Project 365
#131

Glen Hansard died yesterday. Back in 2008 I got real into his music for a little while. I’m pretty sure that during one of our late night shift recaps, Danny Coulter told me that I should watch the movie Once. This was about the same time he turned me on to August Rush. Our appreciation for these movies should convince you that Danny and I are two highly emotional and sensitive men.

Danny was not wrong. Glen Hansard wrote and performed the music in this movie and it ranks up there with the best ever. His unique voice and guitar perfectly play with the voice of Markèta Irglová. There is a calmness and gentleness to his music that belies the themes of his written work. It’s beautiful.

Other than that small amount of time in Athens, I never really went back to his music. I wish I had. Between the albums he made with The Frames, The Swell Season, and solo, Hansard put out more than 15 albums. That’s not a bad accounting over 15 years.

In the intimate setting of the PETROF Gallery, musical magic comes ...

07/22/2026

Pine Tar Project 365
# 130

Aaron Irons
Jeff Daniell
Spencer Scott
Yujiro Konuma

Those are people who died, died.

I learned of “People Who Died” from the movie The Basketball Diaries. I still consider this movie to be the best film that any of the actors in it were ever in. The movie, for those of you who haven’t seen it stars Leonardo DiCaprio as the extremely talented poet, author, and musician, Jim Carroll. When it came out in 1995, it immediately appealed to my inner poet/junky.
I romanticized his lifestyle and talent to an unhealthy degree. This same situation repeated itself a few years later with Good Will Hunting. Much like with Elliot Smith from Good Will Hunting, The Basketball Diaries and led me to the music of Jim Carroll.

Carroll was a beat poet 20 years too late. He took the spirit and the beatniks and mixed it with Lou Reed and Iggy Pop. “People Who Died” was originally released on the 1980 debut by The Jim Carroll Band. It is a hard charging punky ode to people that he watched die. It’s a weirdly uplifting song that never wallows in despair but occasionally finds itself knee deep in disbelief. It’s a song that Aaron Irons played from time to time on his accoustic. That was one of the songs where he regularly busted a string because he hit those notes so strongly. It’s a song that I saw Drive-By Truckers use to help close out their live sets. It’s not a sad song.

Aaron Irons
Jeff Daniell
Spencer Scott
Yujiro Konuma

Lou Reed - People Who Died - Jim CarrollRecorded Live: 9/25/1984 -...

07/14/2026

07/13/2026

I put some CD’s out in the booth today! This is a phenomenal selection of late 90’s/early 00’s metal, hip hop, and R&B. OutKast, Blur, System of a Down, Ashanti, Jay Z, Akon, Spice Girls, Biggie Smalls, 2Pac, and so many more! Over 50 CD’s went to out today. Stop by Cotton Patch this week and check ‘em out.