Music is like dust in so many ways, coming and going from all directions, accumulating in out of the way places, often unwanted but seemingly indestructible.

Documentation of my own music shows up randomly, a factor I have learned to make use of and enjoy.

“I thought it was a Roger Miller song but realized suddenly it was a Captain Beefheart cover! This could only happen at a Eugene Chadbourne concert !”--audience member, Oakland 2020..

That is one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me regarding one of my performances. This particular Beefheart song is one of the first I cross-translated into an Appalachian banjo tune and has remained in my sets ever since it first showed up in sets by the Jack and Jim Show.

Jack and Jim material from a BBC broadcast showed up a few months ago, the version of the Dust Blows Forward and the Dust Blows Back from 1997 is one of the bookends in this new pair of CDs; the version that inspired the Oakland comment is at the other.

Along the way a few other things I really liked with the Doc Chad Contemporary Rock Band and an ad hoc Vancouver island band became part of the program.

THE DUST BLOWS BACK

1. The Dust Blows Forward and the Dust Blows Back

2. Take Up they Stethoscope and Walk

3. One More Road to Cross

4. I’m Not Like Everybody Else

5. Waterfalls

6. Harder than Your Husband

7. He Stopped Loving Her Today

8. Shattered Image

9. This Will be our Year

10. Time of No Reply

11. To be

12. Reverend King

13. Willie the Pimp

14 Happy New Year

1, 6, 13 with Jimmy Carl Black, vocals and trashcan

3, 7,8 with Daniel Masiel, electric guitar and tamboura

5 with Scott Henderson, bass; Garth Johnson, drums; Tolan McNeil, lap steel

all other tracks solo from Oakland, Ojai, Firenze