So the news is basically this, there will be a Black Psalms website soon and you’ll get to hear some new material that’ll be vastly unlike what a lot of you have heard from me but also very much like it in some ways. There will be CD’s and a download option. If support is big enough, I may even consider a vinyl version. Josh Darling of SIMPLY DARLING FILMS has agreed to work on not just live performance footage but actual music videos, in-between his primary projects of course.

There’s other stuff I can’t say. I will imply that I have distribution and this distribution is the result of the work I’ve done on Guilty Sunrise and the wildfire rate at which it spread (humbled, again). That’s as much as I’ll say without stepping on toes.

There are a few musicians lined up to work on this. I can’t give a definitive “roster” yet, aside from Daniel Speaks who has been pivotal in finishing up the track I spoke of a while back (Dying in Memphis). He is of the infamous musical project Lobotomy Baby, http://www.myspace.com/lobotomybaby1 .

This project is turning out to be a lot more “professional” than past endeavors in so far as there’s much professionalism surrounding it. People who aren’t flakes, pretenders and ego-maniacal assholes.

Sincerely,

Josie Gallows

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Some days, I’m a beetle in an ant mound. My rugged shell battling the colonists. Hundreds of colonists. I march down and down as my eyes become a snack, my legs chip away and snap and my body is consumed. My armor useless, my diligence for nothing, the colony the victor. I just thought there might be some shit at the bottom of this hole I could enjoy.

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May all of your caviar wishes turn into more delectable fishes!

Mankind, you may now use this as your new “goodbye!” or your new “Sincerely, (blank)”.

This is my epic contribution to the world of poetry for I am brilliant.

Godspeed,

Josie Gallows

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The American is being sold-out by his own country. Because Americans have come to expect certain pay and certain rights, because his culture evolved towards certain more advanced sensibilities, his opportunities and his resources have been stripped of him and sent to foreign lands where clear and apparent exploitation and slave wages are the rule. This can no longer be allowed to continue and it is now time we demand immediate cessation of American trade with oppressive regimes in the middle-east or Asia.

We, as a people, must demand embargo on trade with China. We must demand it with no negotiation, no compromise and no sympathy. We must demand an immediate end to all trade which allows more goods that we use to be manufactured or harvested in another land than in our own land. If we are to thrive as a people, we must do so with our own labor and with our own resources.

We shall not, as a people, ignore the shortcomings of another nation for the sake of allowing a small percentage of our own people to profit enormously. If we are to import goods, we should only allow imports from nations that actually share our values and we must do so in small amounts with higher regard to the productivity of the American worker than towards the productivity of the foreign laborer.

We will no longer allow the continual pouring of American resources into foreign lands and neither shall we sacrifice the opportunities of our American people to a foreign people, immigrant or otherwise. Enemy or ally, our stance on trade should be American victory and welfare first and foremost.

This state of affairs is no surprise as large governments have always treated their citizenry as a peasantry that should be exploited and expended as the aristocracy sees fit. Because of this, the people have always eventually revolted and while certain things have never changed we have had a series of improvements because of revolution.

It is time for a revolt. Our country is now more Chinese than American, more middle-eastern than northern or southern, more criminal than just. Gather your axes and pitch forks, your torches and your bravery and fight back as a sovereign people should. You, the American people, do not have much longer to do so until your entire way of life is outsourced by your supposed leaders and turned into an abomination by a foreign power that neither cares for or respects you.

You know in your heart of hearts what you should be doing. Do it. Fight tooth and claw to do it. Make your voices louder than that of any peoples revolt ever heard. Disavow any institution that does not agree that it’s time for an American Nationalism; do not buy their goods and do not support their endeavors.

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This is why it’s more important than ever to buy independent. If people don’t do this there will be no more funding for the musical world beyond material that has no heart, no soul and is simply a corporate electric light show at your local amphitheater.

It isn’t just an ethic for kids that are so rad they won’t buy mainstream. Not anymore.

Those that buy independent release are going to be the only funding for musical arts in the future. Shelling out five to ten dollars a couple of times a year isn’t a major investment.

I’m not even saying buy my art.

I’m saying, buy someones art – even if you can get it for free.

Would you feel like an asshole for not tipping fantastic service at a restaurant? The same applies to the musicians that are serving up good music.

However, musicians are going to have to struggle with a new means of making their art worth paying for. People generally feel it’s a better investment to buy a material object than it is to donate for something they get for free.

This means a new approach to the material product as a piece of art all its own.

Later this year or early next year, I will be working on a method of turning canvas art or prints into art packaging for music. These pieces will actually be compatible with your computer in a way that I won’t divulge just yet, but it’s an example of creative approach to music distribution and giving people something that is actually relevant to how they listen to music these days.

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1. Working on the Black Psalms album, which will incorporate a lot of what I had planned for Guilty Sunrise Volume Two.

2. There will be a lot more new art available.

3. A section dedicated to the book I’m writing about Memphis, TN which will be informative, infuriating and funny.

4. Experimental comic strips

5. Video. Lots of video.

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David Allen Vernon July 8th 1957 - March 19th 2010

There are many people in your life that shape who you are whether you like it or not. My father was one of those people that helped shape me, but in ways that couldn’t be foreseen. He was a person that helped me to understand that despite how much you may disagree with something you still have to find those parts in everything that you can actually work with in life. This is an integral part of me, it’s how I view the world, it’s how I appease it and often offend it as well.

Trust me when I say I didn’t agree with a lot of things he said, thought or did. Especially the things he did. Our parents are almost never as heroic as we would like them to be. They’re generally just ordinary folk that managed to procreate at just the right time, usually on accident, in order to make you. In this sense it is good to evaluate the character of your parents from two different perspectives. The perspective of them as strangers whether negative or position because you’d have no concern if they hadn’t been your parents and the perspective of them as highly relevant to you because of the fact that’s where you come from. That always helps to put things in perspective.

When I divide things up and take the good out, I get an all-right set of things. I learned how to laugh, how to charm, how to sell. Not only did I learn how to laugh but I learned how to laugh in the darkest and most abysmal of times as a band-aid. I also learned how not to be through the folly of a fool.

I wrote something about being a Big Black Splotch earlier and I think it would be short-change to leave my words at that when it comes to this matter. So ultimately, what I want to say is thank you for being an anachronism, a talker, the type of guy that could appreciate ice cold water as much as fine wine, someone that knew how to work hard when he did work and someone that knew how to walk his talk and watch his own back despite getting himself into most of his own trouble.

Through finding these things in you I can find similar things in other unexpected and hard to find places. I can find the brilliance in something so awful that you wouldn’t otherwise think to find. For this, I’m thankful.

I’d say more, but that’s too sensitive for here.

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Josie Gallows is a writer, musician, artist and quasi-bohemian currently based in Memphis, TN, USA. He is also a student at the University of Memphis.

As a writer, Josie Gallows falls into two categories: cult fiction with an existentialist point of view and non-fiction on the subject of social dilemmas and possible alternative solutions for modern living. His background as a writer began as a hack, as most writing backgrounds do, publishing articles of varying quality on the international zinester circuit that eventually came to a screeching halt around the mid-2000′s CE. His works on alternative philosophy have been published in both English and German and have helped shape the modern notion of what it means to be a person who rejects the concept of abstinence as the primary solution to human suffering and will be expanding on these types of writings in the future. He is currently working on a book concerning the city of Memphis, TN, that will be relevant nationally.

In visual art, Josie Gallows works primarily with mixed media. Using his skills as a drawing artist to approach paint on surfaces that have been creatively altered with currency of various national sources and denominations. His work focuses on the role of money in human life, how it is abstract and how it damages us as a people when it is not properly regulated or even considered with much thought.

As a Musician, he works primarily in the genres of Folk and Industrial, combining the two for an effect that is almost uniquely his own. He works as both a singer and a spoken word artist in his music and is currently producing an album for his primary band Black Psalms. His release of an experimental noise album “Guilty Sunrise” garnered critical acclaim and for a release of its nature it was highly successful, garnering thousands of unique downloads of the entire album and is on Ipod playlists from Wisconsin to Timbuktu. His works place an emphasis on displaying the full spectrum of the human experience, particularly his own, and how that experience is impacted by holding an existentialist viewpoint. He is currently in preparation for a distribution deal with a small but effective company.

As a student, he currently attends the University of Memphis as a Foreign Languages major and is highly interested in the field of Linguistics, seeing it as a means to both work securely and work in a field that can be relevant to the arts.

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With this I am actually seeking out collaborative musicians. My mind is open at the moment.

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Added some more art to the art section. Still trying to get everything properly photographed and organized. This whole site is getting revamped soon with more color, more media and more pizazz.

Furthermore, I would like to thank those that have been using the donate button lately. It means a lot. These donations go directly into production costs for what is turning out to be an exhaustive process that’s requiring more than what I had on hand for the first release of GS which I believe I spelled out in various places (in short: old computer, karaoke mics, buckets).

I want you fine folks to know what your donations are going to:

http://amzn.com/w/22J7UJ9KE8NP1

The “wishlist” was the easiest way for me to set that up and help show the budget of what I’m trying to do. Primarily, I’m trying to get a new recording interface (the Korg D888) so I can get better sound quality and spend less time fidgeting with settings and more time writing.

Of course, I’m not relying on donations alone to accomplish this goal but they will be necessary so I thank you deeply.

Thanks!

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