$16.00
Last November, deep in meditation, Wolff was visited by the ghost of Leonard Cohen. “I saw his face in a black fog,” Wolff recalls. “I knew I had to write.” In the resulting song, the ghost sings: l am the ghost of Leonard Cohen, don’t you know? I am the one whose footprints vanished in the snow. I am the one who slit his wrist to ink these songs, to cover swastikas on bathroom walls. The Winterlings survived the rainiest winter in Seattle history while giving birth to their fourth album, American Son. The songs rose like mushrooms in defiance of the dark, and a line from “Puget Sound” describes it best: All this water taught us not to drown. We are at home in Puget Sound. American Son is filled with the stories of the duo’s favorite subjects: poems that live as people. One such poem-person traveled to India and bought a taxi driver a house, giving rise to “Birthplace.” Another made the Winterlings a leather journal where “Owl Mountain” took shape. As the song was being recorded, a nearly dead owl appeared in rural Florida and was rescued by Wolff’s nephew and niece (aged 6 & 3) who took “Murloc” to a bird sanctuary, and later released him into the wild. American Son is an album where: Salmon climb the mountainside with pieces of the ocean in their spines. Where a dandelion roars: here I am going white. Cut me down but you didn’t know I could fly. Where: the dead are still giving birth to all the light we have left. The album is an apple orchard grown above a graveyard, blossoms pink and swarmed with bees.
$16.00
Recipe for The Winterlings’ New Album, Poems That Live As People
1 suicide of a teenage son
1 harmonium, 1 banjo & a handful of synth bombs
1 bacon-loving housefly
1 Oliver typewriter, Circa 1912 2 new lungs for a dying fan
3 shows playing Nirvana songs at Seattle‘s EMP Museum
Octopus population explosion
The hubris and cruelty of the human species
Place 2 Winterlings (Wolff Bowden & Amanda Birdsall) in a rain-battered house just north of Seattle. Mix in electric guitar, violin, harmonium, banjitar, piano, drums, tambourine and a dash of typewriter. When Winterlings learn of a friend’s son’s suicide, add a housefly to distract from despair, followed by a fan with Cystic Fibrosis receiving new lungs. Sift in the demoralizing spice of music streaming until batter tastes of poverty. Add 2 weeks of studying Nirvana songs to play 3 shows at Seattle’s Experience Music Project Museum, mashing Winterlings’ creative sensibilities with Kurt Cobain’s. Sprinkle in 40 inches of rain and the death of Winterlings’ Seattle bass player’s wife. Refrigerate for 3 months until Philadelphia’s Michele Lynn steps in to play bass on 9 songs, including one about her son’s suicide. Separate dough into 10 islands of magic and melancholy. Bake for 10 days while Winterlings tour Oregon and California during the forecasted “Storm of the Century.” Cool until November 12, 2016 and enjoy with album release show at Seattle’s Ballard Homestead. These are not your ordinary cookies. These are “Poems That Live As People.”
$16.00
Save 25.0%!
$12.00
You Are Acres, 2016
From the duel between death and laughter in “Opening Line” to a child lashed to her family tree in “Easter Dress,” the songs go deep and stay there. And yet, the music is often celebratory, even jubilant. Throughout the album, Wolff and Amanda take turns singing lead, with words so vibrant the songs unfurl like tiny films.
$16.00
THE ANIMAL GROOM by The Winterlings
The Animal Groom is an album which opens a tiny, blue door in a forgotten wall of the listener’s mind. A wall battered by storms of asphalt, cell-phones, alarm-clocks and the plastic procession of stuff that swarms our lives. With a bold exhale into a harmonica, the wall is swept clear. Then, the door opens a crack and a gentle tide of sound spreads out along the floor. In the tide you hear the sudden shimmer of a guitar and realize an entire ocean is coming through. Choruses swim like penguins through miles of liquid salt. Violins soar above the water like flying fish. The haunting roll of a bowed bass sings like a great blue whale. Soon, a painted ship appears with a postman on its prow. He drops a bamboo ladder and your journey as a Winterling begins. You set sail with the bravest female soldier of The Civil War, who fought and lived as a man. You help a Belizean immigrant pin an orchid corsage on a girl he lost to the hurricane of time. You watch bats whirling above a newborn child. And inside the ship you’ll find eleven secret rooms with the titles of the songs from The Animal Groom carved in their doors. One by one, you will open them, and the worlds within will grow inside of you. Forests of story will lift their evergreen branches in your blood. Accordions will roar. Harmony will dance with melody like newlyweds on a glacier’s chest. And The Animal Groom will sing to you as rain sings to thirsty roots, as poets sing to paper in the deep winter of night, as muscle sings to bone, as children sing in their carnival dreams, as fire sings to snow.
$16.00
Described as “Poetry With Wings” the early work of The Winterlings features 12 Songs and a Lullaby. “On The Night You Were Born” takes you on a journey with: orphans on an 1850’s train, a runaway bride in New Orleans, a lion-loving foster child and a shotgun-wielding father hunting his own cancer like a fox. With haunting vocals, Woody Guthrie style finger picking, intimately crafted lyrics and poignant violin, these songs soar like owls through a wild summer swamp.
John Connelly, PHD (The Institute for Survivors) described these songs as “Leonard Cohen on a rollercoaster.”
Willi Miller of NPR’s Arts Spotlight said, “The Music is Great. People are going to enjoy this.”
$20.00
Handcrafted “Winter Mountain” Design printed on soft, lightweight 50/50 fabric. Pre-shrunk cotton/poly blend with double needle stitching for durability. Stretchy ribbed crewneck collar. A fine way to improve your wardrobe whilst supporting meaningful music. Limited Edition in this color/ink combination.
$20.00
Handcrafted “Winter Mountain” Design printed on soft, lightweight 50/50 fabric. Pre-shrunk cotton/poly blend with double needle stitching for durability. Stretchy ribbed crewneck collar. A fine way to improve your wardrobe whilst supporting meaningful music. Limited Edition in this color/ink combination.
$20.00
Heavyweight Champion of the Night Poems & Songs by Wolff Bowden Redwood River Press
From the rainy streets of Dharamsala, India to the hurricane-ravaged coastline of Belize, this collection of poems was written to take the reader on a hundred stunning journeys. The book begins with a love poem in which hinges on the death of a gecko and ends with a song in which the author’s father buys a secondhand shotgun and hunts his cancer as if it were a very clever fox. Through 61 poems and 25 songs, Wolff praises equality by reflecting on his mother’s Lesbian relationship (The L Word), explores the insanity of war (The Dead That Do Not Know & Poetry Reading at Auschwitz), reflects on the merger of technology and nature (Cellular Vultures) and carries on his personal tradition of condensing the world into vivid moments. Wolff’s poem, Into The Day of Saturn, won the Sarasota Reading Festival’s top prize, and his poetry has appeared in 27 literary magazines including The Asheville Review, The Madison Review & Folio. The “Songs” section of the book will make readers understand why John Connelly, PHD described Wolff’s songs as “Leonard Cohen on a rollercoaster.”
$20.00
Orphanage of Imagination By Wolff Bowden
Sample Poem which won The Sarasota Reading Festival Grand Prize for Poetry:
Into The Day of Saturn
Happy Valentine’s Day. May your face appear in every parted locket and every disowned scallop shell. May the color blue behold your body while sun washes your shoulders near the window. May gorgeous creatures invest their lives to understand the borders you mark between flesh and mind. Happy Valentine’s while we still have a chance. While breath still moves her broom across the floorboards of belief. You belong to love as nests belong to trees, as snails belong to swirls, as musk belongs to the hunt, as phlebotomy belongs to vampires, as rings belong to promises, as corn belongs to crows, as trophies belong to illusions, as ponds belong to the thirst of ponies, as wheels belong to roads, as shadows belong to the ache of heat, as oars belong to wake, and as happiness belongs to the capricious pangs of the soul. Bliss to you on Valentine’s. Roam wide on Thor’s day until it becomes Friday, then sleep deeply into the day of Saturn. Fasten your cape to the sorrow of a mule. Give birth to your obstreperous intellect and become light as a child again. Write in apocryphal veracity. Roll your eyes at Orion. Shave your head until it pulses as smoothly as a human heart. Punch out the teeth of your fears. Throw your body of pine needles into the fires of fate. Because we have today and only today. Because we have Valentine’s and only Valentine’s. Because we are. Awake and come forward alone, to the place where you will meet a lover with mistletoe eyelashes, a lust as muscular as the demon who shovels coal in Hell, and eyes for only you; a lover who refuses to acknowledge the despair of the world; a lover as much at ease with actions as with words; a lover who laces fingers with you and walks until you both are suffused with constellations, orphanages of imagination, the sound of one river boring into blackness. Suffused with red light in homesick windows, the ghosts of brevity and butterflies, listless mandolins, cartographer’s wandering dreams, the exhausted oxen of discipline, and the scent of a thousand seasons surrendering to each other beneath the circus tent of time. Valentine’s of happiness: May your ambitions conquer without combat; may your apples spin upon their stems like dizzy globes; may your love come to you soon and never depart; may your crayons draw forever and your glue seal every wound; may your lunar and solar meet against a sea of sand; may your lips refuse the kiss unless your heart is home; may euphoria seduce your loneliness; may penguins sew all oceans into faith; may you light a billion candles with your mind; may ripe peaches fall like legends in your mouth. Happy Valentine’s. Go outside. Stay in Love. Oil your heart more thoroughly than an angel’s printing press; oil it with the milk of jasmine and the sweat of poppies. Use poems for rags because inspiration’s grease is pure and plentiful. When you talk in your sleep, tell your hopes you are on the way. Warm them with sound instead of light. They listen to you. Reassure them. They know why you cry sometimes and cannot sleep. They loiter like homeless kings outside these walls and wait for bravery to manifest.
$2.00
A lovely addition to your music room, guitar case, tractor, truck bumper, laptop or bicycle rickshaw!
$80.00
Original Art Purchases support our ongoing musical mission and bring an amazing energy to your home!
Please visit WWW.ThePaintedPoet.com to learn more about Wolff's art.
Mixed Media Painting on Gallery Wrapped Canvas by Wolff, wired and ready to hang without a frame.
$60.00
Original Art Purchases support our ongoing musical mission and bring an amazing energy to your home!
Please visit WWW.ThePaintedPoet.com to learn more about Wolff's art.
Acrylic Painting on Gallery Wrapped Canvas by Wolff, wired and ready to hang without a frame.
$80.00
Original Art Purchases support our ongoing musical mission and bring an amazing energy to your home!
Please visit WWW.ThePaintedPoet.com to learn more about Wolff's art.
Mixed Media Painting on Gallery Wrapped Canvas by Wolff, wired and ready to hang without a frame.
$300.00
Original Art Purchases support our ongoing musical mission and bring an amazing energy to your home!
Please visit WWW.ThePaintedPoet.com to learn more about Wolff's art.
Acrylic Painting on Gallery Wrapped Canvas, wired and ready to hang without a frame.
$400.00
Original Art Purchases support our ongoing musical mission and bring an amazing energy to your home!
Please visit WWW.ThePaintedPoet.com to learn more about Wolff's art.
Mixed Media Painting with Sculpted Faces on Canvas Panel by Wolff. Will need a frame to hang, but is a standard size for easy frame purchase.