Various Artists

Emmanuel Rehearsals – Newport, RI

PSY043 • Released: October 29, 2024

Other Editions

Limited Edition Cassette Tape$12 View

Liner Notes

In 2022, the Newport Folk Festival invited Psychic Hotline to put together a collective set that showcased the label’s spirit of community, togetherness, and reciprocal fandom. The band of friends, some old and some new, set up for three days at Emmanuel Church in Newport, RI amidst a heatwave to rehearse for the festival. This collective ensemble took immense care in learning and performing each other’s songs, or selected covers, with everyone taking turns in both lead as support roles throughout the process, always serving a collective vision. These performances, recorded at rehearsal in Emmanuel Church, exist nowhere else except the memory of the fans who experienced it with them. Knowing that this ensemble would likely never again perform this repertoire in this configuration is what cements these recordings as a celebration of a moment, committed to tape.

Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards… “The time we spent at Emmanuel was truly sacred, and it wasn’t just the being-in-a-church part! You can hear my baby crying in some of the tracks; it was one of the first performances we did since we’d become parents, and our first festival since COVID. To have our family held in this nest of friends, in this web of musicians, moved me to tears regularly. I will forever cherish every single second of being in that sweaty, love-filled church with the Psychic Hotline family.”

All proceeds from this Bandcamp only release go to Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.

As a way to honor the culture of trading tapes and capturing the fleeting nature of making music, Psychic Hotline is pleased to present a new Bootleg series. As a counterpoint of sorts to the Singles Series, this is the first of many, intentionally intermittent releases.