DON GIOVANNI RECORDS
News Store Discography Artists Tour FAQ Store Locator

Don Giovanni News


Lee Bains + The Glory Fires Announce New Album "Old-Time Folks"
Posted on March 8th, 2022

"Lee Bains + The Glory Fires have long been one of my favorite live rock and roll bands, blowing the walls out of venues worldwide while also growing exponentially with each release into one of the most lyrically insightful and politically inspiring bands of recent years. Old-Time Folks, helmed by longtime DBT producer David Barbe, takes them to new sonic levels, making a record that comes closer than ever before to actually capturing their live assault while holding up as an album you’ll want to play (loud) over and over." - Patterson Hood (Drive-By Truckers)

On Old-Time Folks, produced in Athens, GA by David Barbe (Drive-By Truckers, Sugar, Son Volt),Bains sets out to investigate the band’s stomping grounds of Alabama and West Georgia, and to summon stories of that land’s peoples, rising up collectively to defend and liberate themselves from systems of power and exploitation.

Today, Lee Bains + The Glory Fires have released the epic album coda "God's A-Working, Man" across all streaming platforms and Bandcamp.

The album is available for pre-order now.

While Lee + the Glory Fires have spent a decade propagating what the New York Times calls “pandemonium with a conscience,” Bains and rhythm section Adam and Blake Williamson recently found themselves listening to records that were more produced, arranged, and textured than their own past work, to records that struck them as timeless and immense, ones that invited you in, to get lost in the details. On many bleary-eyed interstate drives, they talked about wanting to make a classic record – not a transparent document of their playing live with the occasional embellishment – but a record. They talked about working with a producer who had made such albums. About taking Bains’ songs and deconstructing them, stripping them down to their most minimal elements, reimagining them, and building them back up again. They talked about closely considering arrangements, digging into their varied influences. Swapping instruments. Getting high-fidelity sounds. Inviting guest musicians. Incorporating percussion and synthesizers and horns and strings. Maybe even doing a song or two without a blaring electric guitar, or even–gasp–without a guitar at all.

So, that’s what they did. They contacted Athens, GA's David Barbe, whose work with the Drive-By Truckers, Sugar, Son Volt, Vic Chesnutt and countless other artists has earned him a legendary reputation amongst Southern independent rockers, and they agreed to set about bringing this vision to fruition. After months of recording demos with John Paul Foster in Montevallo, Alabama and going over arrangements with Texas punk stalwart and longtime collaborator Tim Kerr (who the band calls their “coach”), the band decamped to Athens to record with Barbe at Chase Park Transduction in December of 2019. Soon after laying down the initial tracks, the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, and the usually hard-touring trio soon found themselves at home with yet more time to consider, flesh out, and arrange this new batch of songs. The result is an album whose levels of dynamics, nuance, range, and intimacy are new for the band. Enriching those explorations are kindred musical spirits like pianist Thayer Sarrano, organist Jay Gonzalez (Drive-By Truckers), singer Kym Register (Loamlands), horn players William Washington and Theresa May (Mourning A BLKstar), and string arranger Annie Leeth, whose idiosyncratic contributions to the album deepen that sense of collectivism that the lyrics invoke.

Just as the album’s music meanders between jagged rock’n’roll and churchy swells, feedback-drenched dirges and orchestral rave-ups, the lyrics lead us through those rich varied lands and time itself: black-masked protestors face SWAT tanks in smoggy cities; Muscogee warriors encircle a colonial fort along a muddy river; incarcerated workers noisily strike in a maximum-security prison surrounded by cottonfields; coal miners barricade the entrance of a mine; kids talk politics in the alley out back of a punk show; families gather outside a country church to prepare a dinner on the grounds. As we encounter these people and places, we sink deeper into what Bains calls “old-time,” that which connects us to those who have gone before, to the land, to each other, and to something deeper and older still.

While tackling such lofty political, historical and philosophical concepts, the album is also the band’s most intimate, vulnerable and spiritual to date. The perspective is both outward- and inward-facing, Bains never taking on the persona or experience of others, but rather writing about the way his own limited experience and perspective of the band’s place can lift the veils of false narratives, and uncover “piles of winding stories” through time. Throughout the record, great forces–whether exploitative or liberatory, reconciliatory or confrontational, grand or humble, condemning or merciful–show up in the smallest, most personal moments of our lives and relationships, both public and private. Little by little, we are drawn into a long arc of freedom, justice, and beloved community, and into a celebration of and thanksgiving for those who do its work.


Today, Lee + The Glory Fires have released the epic-in-scope, nearly eight minute long album coda: "God's A-Working, Man." Bains had this to say about the track, which oscillates between Exile-era Stones guitar swagger and somber Southeastern-style Jason Isbell confessionals:

"In the last couple of years, like a lot of folks I know, I’ve gone through periods of bewilderment and despair about the state of the world, between racist police violence and carceralism, economic austerity and exploitation, gender and sexuality policing, rampant imperialism, the alienation of technology, the ravages of the pandemic. What’s apparent is that the world and its systems can be brutal, isolating, cold, hateful. Folks I look to have suggested I try and look around here in my place, and to look around through time, and look for the ways in which another type of spirit moves through creation. All around is evidence of a liberatory, healing, equalizing, loving, collective, accepting, faithful spirit working through people and places. Those movements unfold through and over generations and decades and centuries. They touch each and every human life. I never fully know where they’re at or where they’re going. But I get glimpses. People working together with that spirit to take care of each other and, in so doing, themselves—to create something on earth as it is in heaven."

Old-Time Folks will be released on August 5, 2022. It is available for pre-order now.

"God's A Working, Man" is available across all streaming platforms and Bandcamp now.


Lee Bains + The Gloryfires are on an extensive US tour, including several appearances at SXSW, this spring. Catch them in a town near you.

Wed 3/9 - Oxford, MS - Proud Larry’s
Thu 3/10 - Memphis, TN - DKDC
Fri 3/11 - Little Rock, AR - White Water Tavern
Sat 3/12 - Tulsa, OK - Whittier Bar
Sun 3/13 - Denton, TX - Dan’s Silverleaf
Wed 3/16 - Austin, TX - SXSW - Sidebar @ 5:20 p.m.
Thu 3/17 - Austin, TX - SXSW - Sidebar @ 4:15 p.m.
Thu 3/17 - Austin, TX - SXSW - The Creek and the Cave (Official SXSW) - 12:00 midnight
Fri 3/18 - Austin, TX - SXSW - Breakaway Records @ 1:00 p.m.
Fri 3/18 - Austin, TX - SXSW Sidebar @ 4:00 p.m.
Sat 3/19 - Austin, TX - SXSW - Sidebar @ 1:30 p.m.
Sat 3/19 - Austin, TX - SXSW - Full Circle Bar @ 4:15 p.m.
Sun 3/20 - Austin, TX - SXSW - Sidebar @ 7:00 p.m.
Tue 3/22 - New Orleans, LA - Gasa Gasa
Wed 3/23 - Hattiesburg, MS - Hattiesburg Community Art Center
Thu 3/24 - Montgomery, AL - The Sanctuary
Fri 3/25 - Mobile, AL - Alabama Music Box
Sat 3/26 - Tuscaloosa, AL - Druid City Brewing Co.
Thu 4/21 - Greenville, SC - Radio Room
Fri 4/22 - Raleigh, NC - Wicked Witch
Sat 4/23 - Washington, DC - Quarry House
Sun 4/24 - Philadelphia, PA - Johnny and Brenda’s
Tue 4/26 - New York, NY - TV Eye
Wed 4/27 - Morgantown, WV - 123 Pleasant St.
Thu 4/28 - Whitesburg, KY - Appalshop

Fri 4/29 - Greensboro, NC - Flat Iron


Old-Time Folks Tracklist:
1. Old-Time Folks (Invocation)
2. Lizard People
3. The Battle Of Atlanta
4. (In Remembrance Of The) 40-Hour Week
5. Outlaws
6. Gentlemen
7. Rednecks
8. Post-Life
9. Caligula
10. Done Playing Dead
11. Old Friends
12. God's A-Workin', Man
13. Old-Time Folks (Benediction)

Pre-Order Pre-Order Old-Time Folks


Announcing our 2022 SXSW Showcase
Posted on February 9th, 2022

Don Giovanni Records SXSW Showcase

Thursday, March 17 2022 // 8pm
The Creek And The Cave: 611 E. 7th Street, Austin, TX

with: Bad Bad Hats
Lee Bains + The Glory Fires
Mikey Erg
Nana Grizol (solo)
Paisley Fields
Anna Fox Rochinski
Teenage Halloween
Weakened Friends




The Sad Tomorrows (Members of The Ergs!, Hunchback, Night Birds) Release Debut Self-Titled EP
Posted on January 28th, 2022


The Sad Tomorrows is a new band featuring a bunch of New Jersey veterans (some might say royalty!) from groups like The Ergs!, Night Birds, Black Wine, and Hunchback. While relying on the elegant melodies and top-notch songcraft that characterizes the members’ other projects, the Sad Tomorrows recall an earlier era of alternative music, before melodic punk bifurcated and calcified into indie rock and pop-punk. Their snappy, energetic, and open-hearted songs bring to mind 80s bands like the Lemonheads, Big Drill Car, Sebadoh, indie-era Goo Goo Dolls and Soul Asylum… artists that bridged the gap between Hüsker Dü’s angsty post-hardcore pop and the more polished and anthemic music of the 90s alternative rock boom.

If that boom were still happening, the suits would be lined up outside the Sad Tomorrows’ door, because tracks like “Forget It For Me Retail” and “Unsustainable Practices” sound like they could have slid into MTV’s Buzz Bin… you know, if they’d come out 30 years ago. While I’m sure the Sad Tomorrows would have appreciated the financial spoils of stardom, the underground feels like a more appropriate home for these four intimate, homespun slices of punk-pop bliss.

The EP is streaming everywhere now. A one-time pressing of 100 cassettes is available for pre-order now.

One-time pressing of 100 cassettes available for pre-order now
-
Now available to stream across all platforms and Bandcamp
-
Catch the band LIVE on April 26 in Brooklyn, NY at Our Wicked Lady
w/ PEARS and NEIGHBORHOOD BRATS


Ex-Vöid Announce Debut Album Bigger Than Before
Posted on January 25th, 2022

"Exuberant. Hook-stuffed."
– Pitchfork

"(Ex-Vöid) have continued to mix sugary sweet harmonies with furious blasts of noise."
– The FADER

"Ex-Vöid puts all their chaotic energy right up front, McArdle burning her way through... knotty guitars and frantic drumming"
– Stereogum

Don Giovanni Records has announced the debut album from UK power-pop punks Ex-Vöid titled Bigger Than Before.

Ex-Vöid draw on guitar pop through the ages - The Byrds, Big Star, Teenage Fanclub - and attack it with the ferocity and economy of a hardcore punk band. Bigger Than Before will be released on March 25, 2022.

Today, Ex-Vöid have released lead single "Churchyard" across all streaming platforms and Bandcamp.

The album is available for pre-order now.

Bigger Than Before is the debut album from Ex-Vöid, the "dangerously melodic" pop group formed by Joanna Gruesome singers Lan McArdle and Owen Williams. Expanding on the “exuberant, hook-stuffed” (Pitchfork) compositions of their previous band, McArdle and Williams have written an album of solid gold power-punk tunes.

Even on more mellow numbers, the band have a way of pummeling the listener with an unhealthy quantity of hooks, harmonies and Thin Lizzy-inspired dual guitar solos.

Yet there’s also a delicacy to the vocal which brings to mind the eye-of-the-storm melodies of Bilinda Butcher which imbues the album with a kind of grounding ethereality. On tracks like lead single "Churchyard," McArdle and Williams’ voices blend and trill with a folk-like quietness while, down in the grubby engine room, bandmates Laurie Foster (bass) and Jonny Coddington (drums) thrash their way through noise jams, hardcore breakdowns and open-chord power-pop riffs.

Bigger Than Before was laid down live, with a few minimal overdubs, in just over an hour in Hackney, London. The songs were recorded without breaks, and Foster was reported to have “kept on playing even though his belt came loose and his trousers fell down”.

"Churchyard", the first single from Ex-Vöid’s debut album Bigger Than Before, is a 1:57 power-pop epic stuffed with hooks. Guitarist Owen Williams describes the single: “I wrote it when I was like 24 and living in Brighton. My friend and I were unemployed and we used to spend a lot of time drinking cans of lager and taking legal highs in a pet graveyard. It was boring so at the end we sing: ’I get so bored’ over and over etc.”

Bigger Than Before will be released on March 25, 2022. It is available for pre-order now.

Bad Bad Hats announce new album!
Posted on March 5th, 2024

Sug Daniels "When I'm Gone" OUT NOW!
Posted on March 3rd, 2023

Rodeo Boys - Home Movies out June 16th!
Posted on February 21st, 2023

Announcing our 2023 SXSW Showcase
Posted on January 20th, 2023

Franz Nicolay - New River out November 11th
Posted on September 14th, 2022

She/Her/Hers Announce New Self-Titled Record
Posted on September 6th, 2022