Joe McPhee
Route 84 Quarantine Blues

Joe McPhee’s response to the challenge of making a new CD of solo music during COVID was to go at it head on, to address the present in its starkest aspects, to reach for comfort in the music of great composers, and to speak directly to the virus in no uncertain terms. The result is unlike any other of McPhee’s many records, a variety show of improvisations, favorite compositions, field recording, multi-tracking, incantation and recitation. After searching for the right studio-like setting with an ideal sound, but hampered by the restrictions of quarantine, he abandoned such hope and dug out a clothes closet in his Poughkeepsie house, where he could approach the task with an unconventional intimacy. In the dead of night, McPhee played luscious versions of compositions by Carla Bley and Charles Mingus

1. A Reflection On Ida Lupino
2.A Self Portrait in Three Colors
3. Route 84 Quarantine Blues
4. Cuernavaca '79
5. Goodbye Porky Pig Hat
6. Be Gone Damn Bug
7. Forget Paris
8. Do You Still Love Me?
9. Improvision For The End Of COVID
10. Im-Pro-Vi-Sation
11. Tzedek, Tzedek (For RBG)