On the 100th anniversary of Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology, Merge is reissuing the epic it inspired: Richard Buckner’s The Hill. The Hill started in 1996 in an old garage that had been converted to The Ranch Olancha Motel, a dusty place near the mouth of Death Valley, between Lone Pine and Dunmovin, California. Buckner, who was en route to Tucson, Arizona, to record what would become Devotion & Doubt, stayed a week in a room with no phone, no television, carrying his guitar, a four-track recorder, and a copy of Masters’ Spoon River Anthology. He tinkered with a few of the book’s poems, put them on a cassette, and forgot about it until an acquaintance discovered it in his truck four years later.

Tracklist:

Mrs. Merritt
Tom Merritt
Elmer Karr
Ollie McGee
Fletcher McGee
Julia Miller
Willard Fluke
Elizabeth Childers
A.D. Blood
Oscar Hummel
Nellie Clark
Johnnie Sayre
Dora Williams
Reuben Pantier
Emily Sparks
Amanda Barker
The Hill
William + Emily

UPC: 673855035628
Label: Merge Records
Release Date: 7.10.15
Format: CD

Richard Buckner - The Hill (CD)