Joel R.L. Phelps is one of the greatest living musicians in the world today. Definately top ten, maybe even in the upper five.

His last full length album, Blackbird, is my second favorite record ever, behind only Neil Young's After the Gold Rush, probably because that one got to me first. His latest EP, Inland Empires, is one of the saddest and most cohesive musical cycles ever waxed, and all but one song is a cover.

He sings like Coltrane played the sax--wild, all over the place, with care taken not in what's musically correct, but in what's emotionally correct--and every single note hits its mark. He writes some of the deepest, most empathetic lyrics I've ever heard, and he plays guitar like he's the bastard child of Neil Young, only better.

He's good. He's damn good.

Unfortunately, if you take all the people who have bought his records and put them in one place they wouldn't even fill a good-sized stadium. Half of his recorded output is out of print in the US, and I have never ever seen any of his records in any music store I have visited. Believe me, I've looked.

There is no justice in the world, and no sense of taste in the public. Things like this make me understand why Alexander Hamilton advocated oligarchies.

Joel started his musical career with the band Ein Heit, which later mutated into the amazing and underheard Silkworm, currently still kicking around somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Both bands, on top of featuring

Joel and his songs, had a pair of other talented singer-songwriters--Tim Midgett and Andy Cohen. The latter of which sadly may be better known for his current gig as Bush's touring guitarist.

Trying to get away from the whole touring rock band crap, Joel left Silkworm in the mid-nineties and started up his solo career as Joel R.L. Phelps and The Downer Trio, with Robert Mercer (ex-DeFlowers) on bass and William Herzog (the bassist for Citizen's Utilities) on drums. They put out a couple of records in a couple of years--1995's Warm Springs Night, 1997's Downer Trio EP, and 1998 saw their third album, appropriately titled 3. Most everyone who listened to those albums said they were good, but I can't say much about them because I've never heard any of them. All but 3 are currently out of print and really pretty hard to track down. Then came the aforementioned Blackbird in 1999 and now the Inland Empires EP, which is what this article is focused on.

On that EP, Mr. Phelps takes songs from people as diverse as Iris Dement and Townes Van Zandt and fashions an amazingly moving, thematically consistent song cycle dealing with his sister Charissa's recent death. It's brilliant and sad and scary and uplifting. It makes the listener feel as if they are experiencing everything the songs describe, something than can approach emotional voyeurism in those who have never lost anyone close to them, but is transcendent and full of the best kind of empathy for those that have (and we all will eventually). It's one of the absolute best creative works I've seen all year, in any field, and it probably won't sell more than a few hundred copies. Sometimes there is no accounting for how life is. (Continued...)
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