Tony Furtado Thirteen CD

' Recorded to 16-track, two-inch analog tape during the summer of 2006 at Tucson's Wavelab Studios (a favorite venue for Calexico, Neko Case, M. Ward, Iron & Wine and other cult heroes), the album features an all-star cast including keyboardists Sean Slade (whose production credits include Uncle Tupelo and Radiohead) and Jim Dickinson (producer of the seminal Ry Cooder albums that inspired Furtado to take up the slide guitar), bassist Dusty Wakeman (whose resume includes three previous Furtado LPs, Dwight Yoakam and Lucinda Williams), drummer Winston Watson (who has played with Dylan and Giant Sand) and Wavelab's own Craig Schumacher (Calexico, Case, Iron & Wine), who produced and engineered. Furtado admits the gathering of heavyweights gave him pause going in. 'At first I was worried that it might be a clash of the titans,' he admits. 'But after we got together and started talking about the material, hanging out and playing, my fears quickly dissipated. Plus, that studio is packed with old instruments, and all the guitars hanging on the walls create a sonic aura. There are some bizarre instruments there that I threw on the tracks.

' On this project, Furtado's playing and the considerable acumen of his all-star studio band was fully focused on the 10 Furtado originals and three well-chosen covers that comprise Thirteen. The dreamlike 'California Flood,' which is 'wrapped around old memories of weekends on a boat in the Sacramento Delta,' deals in vividly metaphorical detail with a child's struggles to understand the mysterious workings of the adult world. For 'Another Man,' a bitter breakup song he confesses was based on personal experience, Furtado references the blues epic 'When the Levee Breaks' (famously rendered by Led Zeppelin), in effect splitting the distance between emotional tumult and self-mocking irony. Furtado started the faux-confessional 'The Alcohol' while living in L.A. and reading a lot of Charles Bukowski. 'It's like a love song to drinking, almost,' he jokes. 'I noticed I was drinking more when I was reading Bukowski. And one night, after I came home from a drinking session on Ventura Blvd.

, I wrote a couple verses and a chorus. Months later, after I moved to Portland, I hammered out the rest of it with [acclaimed Nashville-based singer/songwriter] Amelia White.

'The album's title song and centerpiece is far more solemn. 'Thirteen Below' recounts the January 2006 Sago mine disaster, which trapped 13 men, only one of whom survived. 'I've heard so many mining songs in my folk history, and I've sung so many topical songs in the past, that writing and singing it felt natural to me,' Furtado notes. By giving the song the textures, cadence and language of Appalachian traditional music, the artist places the Sago disasteDirty Linen (p.75) - "Tony Furtado has been honing his chops as a singer and songwriter of late. Here the eclectic player puts them to work in a set with a 1970s rock bent..."

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