Your Own Private Idaho
Music inspired by a visit to Sun Valley & Ketchum. An escape into the American frontier sensibility inhabiting these places. A book on Vladimir Putin's peoples.
# of Tracks: about 50
Length: about 4 hours
Themes: native sons of Idaho like Doug Martsch (Built to Spill), Josh Ritter, Trevor Powers (Youth Lagoon)1 and Gary Peacock ~ an overabundance of dudes ~ one local daughter of Idaho named Ronee Blakley ~ expansive contemporary instrumental music which reminds me of the region’s landscape (i.e. Michael Harrison, John Luther Adams, Taylor Deupree) ~ a bunch of Neil Young recordings because he might be spiritually Idahoan? (libertarian, environmentalist, egoist, avatar of freedom and the open range) ~ a few references to North American ambition and exploration (i.e. Hemingway, manifest destiny, crossing the 100th meridian) ~ two tunes I Shazam’d at the Smiley Creek Lodge, a rest stop en route to the town of Stanley and the Sawtooth Mountains ~ an undercurrent of “lawyers, guns & money” (credit due to Warren Zevon)
Link: spoti.fi (Spotify) — apple.co (Apple Music) — youtube.com (YouTube)
By what strange twist of fate did I find myself in Idaho? In mid-summer, I arrived as a guest of a guest of the Sun Valley Writer’s Conference (SVWC), an annual gathering of authors, journalists and other writerly public intellectuals held at a fancy resort. A week earlier the town hosted an event sometimes referred to as “a secretive summer camp for billionaires.”
In theory the Writer’s Conference could be cast as an equally elitist affair, but in practice it felt rather sweet. For example, the most prominent events and talks are simulcast to the assorted retirees, fancy vacationers, and townies who populate the area and then posted online, all for free.
As someone both familiar with overcommercialized music festivals and exhausted by America’s current electoral circus, it was a nice change of pace. No exploited indie musicians. No promo for new energy drinks, probiotic sodas, or CBD-infused whatever. No dodgy tech innovations of the AI/NFT variety which one finds at fêtes like SXSW.2 Finally, there were no pop culture celebrities trotted out to low-key embarrass themselves as happened at this summer’s presidential nominating conventions.3
SVWC traffics in cultural relevance but in a more elevated yet intimate way. It felt like a multi-generational book club /slash/ sleepaway camp. At one point I turned around and could have snapped an unlikely group photo4 featuring Judy Blume, Padma Lakshmi, Anne Lamont, and Clarissa Ward.
Current events were not entirely absent. I found out that Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race when The Atlantic editor-in-chief saw an alert on his mobile phone and said it out loud in the book store tent. Generally, the talks and conversations felt of a different time—thoughtful prepared remarks rather than a ramble chat with frequent diversions familiar in our podcast cultural moment. In one talk, conservative historian Niall Ferguson mounted a defense of Henry Kissinger—a weird flex as they say, but I welcomed a pithy speaker working purposefully toward an unlikely thesis.
For the week, I didn’t mind being away from the…[gestures] all this. No, I would not trade my world for Idaho. It is a state with intense white people energy and extremely conservative politics. (Among other things it is certainly Trumpist and has eliminated protections for women’s bodily autonomy.) However, if you ever have the opportunity, it’s okay on occasion to retreat into your own private Idaho5 for a brief break from our world.
That’s what this mix is. I hope you find it beautiful, natural, unbothered, and spacious.
Spotify version
Apple version
YouTube version
The playlist includes songs such as…
^ Charlie Rich: “Rollin’ With The Flow”6
^ Youth Lagoon: “Idaho Alien”
^ Neil Young: “Cortez the Killer”
^ Ronee Blakley: “My Idaho Home”
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Extra credit:
• A project called Pegg: About two weeks ago, an LP I helped make was released onto the Internet. Use this link so you can hear it —> ffm.to/friendofpegg. Here’s what to look for so you know you landed in the right place:
In my history of doing music things, Pegg's debut is probably the closest I've ever come to 'producing' a record on a conception / studio supervision / band curation level. Bartees Strange served as the actual producer and Maintainer of Vibes7 throughout the sessions. An Irish composer named Alex Dowling (who I haven’t even met) finished the thing remotely. Congrats to all involved!8
ATTN: New Yorkers — this weekend Sept 12-14 there’s a run of intimate Pegg shows at Williamsburg’s The Brick Theater - details here
• A scene report about Vladimir Putin’s enablers: The world is in the midst of what some pundits have branded the polycrisis: energy shortages + extreme climate + pandemic + financial instability + unpredictable regime changes + a slide toward dictatorship + mass migration. These things amplify one another. Cause becomes effect, effect becomes cause. Examples: a half million displaced and a nationwide state of emergency in Haiti; up to one third of Venezuela’s population predicted to flee after a flawed (or outright fraudulent!) election; open warfare in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
To understand these crises, I’m trying to extend my reading beyond news and social media apps which feed us an addictive content-drip of updates but very little deep context. In particular, I had been hunting for a primer on Russia’s vortex of autocracy and oligarchy for awhile. How is Vladimir Putin maintaining his power? Did the world really not anticipate the deranged ambition of one guy whose vendetta-like war has killed well over 500,000 people by some estimates?9
In Idaho, I found my primer, when I discovered the work of a SVWC speaker, Mikhail Zygar, a co-founder of the Russian independent news channel TV Rain. He left that outlet in 2015, and published All the Kremlin's Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin in 2016. The book depicts the financial, administrative, and political enablers behind Putin’s regime. Each chapter focuses on a different member of his circle while also charting a chronological account of Putin’s growing dictatorial power.
It filled in many details on some folks whose names seem to pop up again and again in the newspapers. (For my fellow music nerds: the cast of characters in Zygar’s book recur in a way that reminded me of Lou Reed’s role in Please Kill Me or Greg Ginn’s in Our Band Could Be Your Life…only about the Russian political scene after the year 2000.) For example, Mikhail Prokhorov was an oligarch and politician in Putin’s court from the 1990s until the 2010s when he ran afoul of The Leader in ways too ornate to summarize. For my New York City peoples, you may be aware of Prokhorov because he also happened to own the Brooklyn Nets and Barclay’s Center from 2010 until 2019.
For an idea of the scale of change and repression in Russia, Zygar himself, the platform he helped start, and even the oligarch I mentioned in the last paragraph have all been in-exile since the Ukraine war kicked off in 2022. Zygar moved to Berlin, TV Rain is now based in the Netherlands, and Prokhorov emigrated to Israel.
To avoid closing on a too-heavy note, I’ll end this with a surreal pic of the new coffee chain that’s emerged in Russia since western companies like Starbucks left the country.
Similarly, Russia has replaced every last McDonald’s franchise with a replacement chain called Vkusno i Tochka which translates to something like Tasty — and that's it! or Tasty — period.
Above is what a McVkusno10 meal looks like. Familiar, right? You can read more about the chain’s odd 2022-23 transition on Wikipedia, including how the “new” franchise used up remaining supplies of McDonald’s dipping sauce—only with the “M” on the packet scratched out using a marker. I’m not sure what implications this kinda thing has for the Golden Arches Theory of world peace.
p.s. Zygar also has a Substack which seems to have about as many followers as…my dumb mixtape blog?!? This seems unjust so give him a follow.
People Who Died: Bill Walton ~ Eoin French ~ Kinky Friedman ~ Lewis H. Lapham
I’ll leave details on most of those listed above to your own curiosity and desire to use Google. The death of Irish musician Eoin French, however, was truly shocking and hit a bit closer to home. He died a few weeks ago at the age of 36, after a (private) battle with cancer.
I admired Eoin’s music—released under the name Talos—mostly at a distance but also a few times closer up. I saw his group perform at various 37d03d events when that creative network was really thriving. Once, just before the pandemic, he and a bandmate paid a brief visit to Brassland’s office/studio while visiting NYC. He seemed quiet, kind, and somewhat surprised his swelling and melancholy music resonated as much as it did. I’m envious of all who might now discover Talos' recordings and Eoin's otherworldly voice for the first time.
In the infamous words of the Charlie Rich’s hit, I’m just rollin’ with the flow.
In The Guardian’s profile on Trevor Powers, I found the descriptions of Idaho both true and bracing. About growing up evangelical there:
“The Bible is taken very literally. You read it almost like a rule book.”
Even his perspective on Idaho’s urban mecca — as recounted by the profile writer— encapsulates a specific variety of “upside-down Americana.”
A good number of [songs] are drawn from the Boise citizens [Powers] feels neighbourly fondness for. The 80-year-old piano teacher who lives across the street; even the meth addict next door who mows the lawn at 3am, burns her trash and uses her garden as a campsite for fellow users. “It’s as Idaho as it gets.” Also very Idaho are his solitary trips into the country around Boise where many of the songs were written: “From absolute desert to to golden prairies, to mountains so full of trees it feels like Narnia.”
Based on my brief time in the American west, this checked out: shocking beauty; open landscapes punctuated by mountains; Mormon nuns-in-training hanging out in an airport lounge; awkward compromises between monied luxury and rural iconography (or at least rural cosplay).
FWIW, as a music manager, I once had a band I was working with play the Dorito’s Stage at SXSW. I don’t regret it but I’m not above reproach in regards to my ethics or ability to navigate the music business.
Stevie Wonder’s set at the Democratic National Convention was just…not good. However, I also have that particular American shame of being a grown-ass man who once loved Hulk Hogan. It was pretty upsetting watching his dumb strut at the RNC — a sad perversion of a living cartoon who electrified my childhood.
I did take this pic of my kid with Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer in the frame. My kid is the one with his hands over his face. I think he’s inherited my dislike of #selfies with the illuminati. (I’ve anonymized the faces of all other humans in this photograph using Photoshop’s new AI tool.)
#FunFact: There seems to have no meaningful history behind the name of the state of Idaho. It sounds kinda like a transliteration of a native American word but, in fact, seems more likely to derive from a kid named Ida or a steamship. Wikipedia take it away:
Ho boy I love this song. Over the past six weeks I’ve taken some big ass jaunts by plane, boat, and automobile. Whenever I’ve felt stressed, this tune has been my soundtrack:
Once was a thought inside my head
'Fore I'd reach 30 I'd be dead
Now somehow on and on I go
I keep on rollin' with the flow
This being a country song, by the next verse it’s knee deep in Jesus and outmoded gender roles, but bear with me, it’s a helluva jam.
As Bartees put it in this social media post he was a “certified shmacker dawg”
Impossible without project leader Xander & his merry band including (alphabetically) Blake Fusilier, Brian DiMeglio, Brandon “Buz” Donald, Jon Bap aka Maurice ii, Teeny Lieberson and many more who created the project's visual world.
The New York Times cited that half-million casualities figure from U.S. officials over a year ago, in August 2023.
The letter “M” does not appear in Вкусно – и точка or Vkusno i Tochka. (To be fair, the latter is just a transliteration.) But the chain’s new logo is certainly holding fast to that Big M energy if not the literal golden arches.
