Emil Amos' Drifter's Sympathy

The British prog greats "T2" are a legendary footnote in the record collecting world... a tragedy-tinged, kind of 'what-if' band that still commands a small cult of fans. But lesser known are the various offshoots of their leader, Peter Dunton. This is a very special man with an odd, gnome-ish voice who created a uniquely holy atmosphere in his work. And while he's technically a "footnote" entity for most diggers, he remains an island of greatness with his own blueprint that seems to stand calmly within the storm of the 60's alone.

This episode could've easily been called "LONER LEGENDS", but its a great occasion to set up a new kind of series where we begin digging with no sense of where we'll end up. This is a celebration of history and the naive curiosity that we all begin with before we eventually know too much. Hopefully "A Digger's Life" will spawn many more of these spontaneous adventures to come...
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In a throwback to the very first Drifters season's atmosphere, this episode travels back to HIGHSCHOOL to unravel our subcultural origin story and sift through the clues of what made us the way we are. While recently on a sabbatical in Chicago to make the new Holy Sons record, Emil met up with his best friend from 1993, Jacob Ciocci, who's now become a professor of Computer Art and who'd initially drawn all of Emil's first solo show flyers back when they were kids.

Jacob was there in a very formative moment... when the Boston guru first arrived in town and Emil evaporated into a cloud of drugs. So to learn about what lies in our future, the two start by digging into the past.

The philosophical takeaway they eventually arrive at evolves into a concept about how we spend a great deal of our lives in the "2nd WORLD"... an imaginary place you begin to build as a child to escape the various brutalities of your immediate environment.🌷
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This episode of Loner Legends is one of the most important casts in this series because we get to bring a true punk god back from the dead, honor his complexities and raise him up to his rightful place in history. Adrian Borland sat side by side with Robert Smith in the mission to refine and define the landscape of post-punk... but one boy ended up changing the world and the other was locked away in a madhouse.

After creating the first home-recorded punk record in history with The Outsiders, Adrian forged the pioneering band The Sound and then made industrial/experimental history with Second Layer. Hopefully this cast gets more eyes on his singular, fiery spirit and hips people to one of the greatest, lesser-known artists of the 1980's.
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The third installment of the MOVING TO PORTLAND Trilogy bares the accidental creation of the band GRAILS, their first show and first recording... but the task of it brings some seedy characters into the mix. Emil begins recording a record called "I Want to Live a Peaceful Life" with his new friend Pat and things wobble forward into a very emotionally opaque horizon.

This episode is dedicated to Pat who eventually took his own life. We loved him. You can read about how many people were affected by him and how he was a huge part of helping bands out in Portland and Chicago from the nineties onward here :

https://chicagoreader.com/blogs/remembering-soundman-and-musician-patrick-kenneally-who-nurtured-scenes-in-chicago-and-portland/
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Drifter's Sympathy returns with the first episode of SEASON SEVEN called 'Lords of Selfish Music'!

While this episode could've easily been called "Casualties of Selfish Music", it avoids dwelling on their dark endings too much. This is an attempt to dig the classics back up and place them under a new lens of 'existential history' that unearths a more 3-dimensional view of our heroes.

Richard Manuel of The Band, Sandy Denny & Danny Kirwan of Fleetwood Mac are the central characters of this episode, being people who've had quite a bit of ink spilled on them that was often more cut & paste than the true deep dives they deserve. And while they don't appear to be overtly rebellious, each of these characters found themselves trapped between violent contradictions in their private biospheres, creating internal battles that bore some of the most gutting artwork of their time.
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