A rusty electric fan was having trouble moving the air around the old hotel room, the intermittent metallic yelps from it strangely easing the throbbing beer-buzz that was settling in on an oppressively hot Mississippi afternoon. The room’s window was thrown open and yawned wide, unable to do anything about the ebbing traffic noise, random exclamations from the sidewalk below, and the hint of blues guitar, drifting in from down the street. On the kitchenette counter, a sink held a dirty pan filled with dish water diluting the remnants of some past meal, while an aging hot plate off to the side dangled the promise of coffee, but threatened damage to anything not showing the proper respect for the elder appliance.
No, wait…that’s all wrong.
It wasn’t Mississippi, but Knoxville, Tennessee, in the late 1990s. And, it wasn’t an old hotel room, but the front room of the house Steve and Mary Ann Pritchard shared with Bill Warden. The rusty electric fan was not there, but rather guitars, drums, and an old tape recorder with which the trio— going by the name Picks and Lighters—recorded their debut album TVA/Starvation (Living Room)—Steve Pritchard and Warden on guitars; Mary Ann on drums.
That album, which has been described as “two sides of tumbling lo-fi guitars and drums improvisation that stumbles across the under-explored territory that lies between the rough minimalism of early Terry Riley and the protean drone of Hill Country Blues,” is seeing a re-issue of its 1997 self-released recording on Friday, October 4, 2019, this time on the VG+ label.
Oddly, though, it seems the hot plate has survived the years.
The covers of the limited-run of 300 copies feature hand-burned scars from an electric hot plate, done individually by Steve Pritchard. The back cover art has been adapted from original back cover art by Pritchard.
In Knoxville, Raven Records and Rarities (1200 N Central) has confirmed they’ll be carrying the album—but other vinyl shops will probably have it as well.
Album page on Bandcamp
