Earl Pickens - Country Music Jukebox (2005)

By 2005 Earl Pickens and the Black Mountain Marauders had become defunct. The major cause being that Earl (and Billy Kelly) moved to Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Being new to the area, Earl did not have a band. I believe this is the reason he decided to record a totally stripped down album – mostly guitar and vocals.

As Earl was getting close to finishing the songs he called me and asked if I would design the album artwork. I was honored and accepted. He then sent me a bunch of rough mixes for inspiration. Between the sparseness of the music and the weather outside getting colder, I kept visualizing familiar album covers from the '60s and '70s, depicting the artists in winter gear. I figured we'll keep that tradition going.

Earl had some business to take care of in NYC so he stopped by my apartment for the photo shoot. I didn't like the coat he was sporting so I lent him my old brown corduroy. I was imagining grass and trees in the shot so we went up to Central Park. The leaves had turned colors and already begun falling so it was quite picturesque. I decided to shoot with my old Polaroid camera because you just can't replicate that warm and fuzzy feeling you get from Polaroid film.

Here's a few of my favorite shots…

As you can see we went with a severely cropped version of that last shot for the cover.


[DOWNLOAD] Earl Pickens - Country Music Jukebox (2005)

01- Come On Up and Haunt Me Tonight
02- Love Is A Spell
03- Moon, You Know Why
04- If I Could Sing Like That
05- lorrainetherain
06- I'm Not Tired (I'm So Tired)
07- It's Only Your Heart
08- She's Been Starting To Notice That Everything Slowly Changes
09- Another Saturday Night
10- Moll
11- You Can Always Try Cryin'
12- Country Music Jukebox
13- One More Line (bonus track)
14- Love Her More (bonus track)