We're very happy to announce that we'll release the next album of Chris Eckman (The Walkabouts, Dirtmusic) this November!The album consists of 8 amazing songs and is named Harney County: I ventured to Harney County for the first time, 20 or more years ago, after I had read a memoir by the writer William Kittredge. The book is called Owning It All and for me it was a deeply affecting work. Throughout it Kittredge celebrates the hardscrabble, wide-screen landscape of this Southeastern Oregon desert county where he was raised, while at the same time he atones for and criticizes the devastation several generations of his ranching family unleashed upon that land. It is a tragic and cautionary tale that reminds us that the land we think we own can turn back on us, and that we are all more vulnerable and connected to the forces of nature than we care to admit. It is a book about failed dreams in a place of raw beauty. When I finished reading it I knew I had to see with my own eyes the country Kittredge had written about so unsparingly. It became a compulsion of sorts and since then I have traveled there many times... - Chris Eckman