As someone who rarely consumes music from some genres, I don’t feel justified in making a “top” list for 2011. The “favorite” appellation should give me latitude to feature those albums that I liked best, free from any obligation to consider music from genres that I don’t enjoy as much. My listening habits have skewed more folk in the last year or two, though I don’t think I’m pigeonholed just yet.

2011 was an interesting year, musically. Reflecting on the albums that came out, there were a few disappointments. Among others, Radiohead, Sallie Ford & the Sound Outside, tUnE-yArDs and Wilco released albums that weren’t nearly as gripping as their previous work. On the plus side, I got to see more live music than ever, including most musicians on this list. Here are my eight favorite albums. Enjoy!

1. Frank Fairfield – Out on the Open West (Poor Old Lance)
2. Tristen – Charlatans at the Garden Gate (Matchstick Murder)
3. Bon Iver – Bon Iver (Minnesota, WI)
4. Gillian Welch & Dave Rawlings – The Harrow & The Harvest (Down Along the Dixie Line)
5. Adele – 21 (Someone Like You)
6. Beirut – The Rip Tide (Payne’s Bay)
7. Tom Waits – Bad as Me (New Years’ Eve)
8. Jolie Holland – Pint of Blood (Little Birds)

I’ve created a minimalist portfolio of my design work to keep those projects distinct from the more varied and editorial content that appears on this site. I call it “Folk Taxonomy”, which is any sort of vernacular naming system (see Wikipedia). Some items I’m particularly excited to share are:

• A project in which I redesigned the crest of each i-League team.
• Beautiful macro photos of the Hartford Museum Passport, courtesy of Gareth Weston.
• A collection of logos I’ve created, some of which were previously unreleased.

Enjoy!

I don’t often write at Cooksails.com, but when I do, I write about food. Most recently, I wrote about Thanksgiving in Antigua, seven years ago.

This year, P and I took advantage of her west coast work trip to catch Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, a free music festival in the heart of San Francisco. We stayed with her college friend, Joe, and got to see some great performers, eat some tasty food, meet some new folks, unexpectedly run into old folks and walk a lot.

The lineup was great for any festival, let alone a free one, though the price of easy access was a massive crowd of people who seemed to prefer altering their minds with drugs rather than music. Not that I’m opposed to honoring a soulful rendition of “If the River Was Whiskey”, but I do prefer attentive listening. Due to crowds and transport logistics, we didn’t quite get to see everyone we wanted; Jolie Holland, AA Bondy, Bela Fleck and Abigail Washburn were a few victims of circumstance. We did get to see M Ward (good), Robert Plant (not so good), Robert Earl Keen (pretty good), The Felice Brothers (quite good) and Gillian Welch & Dave Rawlings (very good). The clear standout, though, was Frank Fairfield.

A cynic might suggest that Fairfield’s style and personality is an affectation or a schtick. The man looks and talks as if he stepped into the outhouse beside his southern Appalachian cabin in 1870 and stepped out 140 years later. From his clothes to his humility, there’s very little that seems modern about him. Seeing him live, it’s clear that he’s genuinely a man out of time.

We were running late and were thrilled to discover him playing the smallest stage of the festival. Despite a decent crowd, we walked right up to the front row and got to watch him from about 20 feet away. He played with vigor and feeling, and the instant he stopped, he was bashful, awkward, almost autistic. He was also the most consummate musician I’ve ever seen, starting with the fiddle, then moving to the banjo, then to the guitar, then back to the banjo, then to the fiddle again. The speed of his banjo playing seemed supernatural, and he played with the fiddle so ardently that he barely had any horsehair left on his bow by the end of his song. When he was done, he took a couple of quick bows, picked up his three instruments and walked off the stage to really good applause. It was great to see people lined up to buy his newest album, Out on the Open West, from his wife, who P tried to convince to come to DC.

As a treat just for you, here’s “Chilly Winds”, with a little background chatter, recorded from Frank Fairfield’s set:
Frank Fairfield – Chilly Winds (Live at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2011)

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved thrift stores. Browsing through aisles of unique items, their mysterious origins and oft-inscrutable purposes, I envisioned a workshop stuffed with gadgets that I could endlessly disembowel and reconstitute after my own fancy. This resulted in my acquiring a collection of near-useless items (potato mallet), faux classics (Lee Iacocca’s autobiography) and atrocious clothing (that red mesh singlet).

Thankfully, I’ve managed to shed my desire to own these products, I remain fascinated by gadgetry and do not hesitate to recommend as gifts products that strike me as “cool”. I thought I’d try my hand at this for the Christmas 2011 shopping season, and so I’ve made a website called Christmas 2011 Gadgets. Whether you’re looking for a ball launcher dog toy, joystick for iPad 2 or any number of cooking gadgets for Christmas 2011, you can find my favorites there. And if you’re making some sort of gadget for Christmas 2011 and want my to try it out, feel free to contact me. I might just feature it.