A bit more uptempo and aggressive than previous tracks.

The Glass Harmonica

Upbeat beat minor track with a slightly glitchy drumbeat. Makes me remember the spate of hacker films with cheesball graphics. You can't make someone working on a computer look interesting, no matter how many cascading numbers float down the screens.

A Forgotten 1990s Computer Hacker Film

The first song in my musical tour through a more inclusive, honest historical look at the Homestead Act. We begin with the idealism of this song but will go through the harrowing experiences of White and Black farmers and of course it's massive, tragic motivation of dispossessing Native people of millions of acres of land.

Hutchinson Family Singers- Uncle Sam's Farm (Cover)

This is a cover of "Run Indian Run" by Buddy Red Bow, sung by me, Johnny Lofenstein, a non-Native songwriter. Jarring no doubt as the person singing the song inevitably changes it meaning. I made the questionable decision of singing it from the original perspective of a Native person, as its written and not changing it to the colonizer's perspective. Purposefully fraught and a bit awkward to show another side of homesteading history. We cannot deny that our identity often shapes how we view history. Therefore, why hope for one all-knowing objectivist account? Instead, we need to amass diverse voice and perspectives and sort out the truth from these varied accounts.

Buddy Red Bow- Run Indian Run(Cover)

I had almost forgotten about this amazing Johnny Cash song until I stumbled upon the cover version by Floyd Red Crow Westerman, an indigenous singer, songwriter and actor. I will add one of his songs on here later. I appreciate the sweep of the song from the boarding schools to the stolen land. If I remember right, Johnny Cash believe he had Native ancestry when he created the album that featured this song. Though it didn't turn out to be the case, the deep empathy he infuses this song with is amazing. The cultural genocide described here hangs deeply to the idea of empty West that the government could "give away to homesteaders.

Johnny Cash-Drums (Cover)

The Dust Bowl was a disaster of the future--a calamitous combination of the rapid destruction of the prairie ecosystem that had survived droughts. High wheat prices stimulated greed to plow up the most marginal soils, shortly after the land runs had ripped the land from Native control. Yet, an epic drought made these greedy, irresponsible farming practices deadly. Folks fled Oklahoma and Texas, starving. Straight out of Grapes of Wrath, the experience xenophobia as they fled the Dust Bowl for jobs in California. The rhetoric of their arrival mimics today's bigotry towards today's Latin migrant farm workers. If you can see any positivity in this story, farmer practices did improve, the government restored some prairie, made The Plow that Broke the Plains and had Woody Guthrie to chronicle this event.

Woody Guthrie-Dust Bowl Blues(Cover)

The song title comes from Oglala Lakota author and activist Vine Deloria Jr.'s book,  Custer Died For Your Sins, which was published the same years as the Native American occupation of Alcatraz Island, before it became a NPS sites and prison tourist spectacle. 
Much like the Plains of Nebrasky-O, this song makes the history of the Homestead Act and settler colonial relevant to today. Custer's death and defeat at Little Bighorn by the Lakota and other Native people. It offers a kind of alternate history. The fact that we still think of this battle shows its relevance. What we forget is that the U.S. had dedicated soldiers whose only job was to hunt down Native people. At the same time, settler colonists homesteaders occupied land and exhausted resources that Native people depended on. Yet, despite this double invasion, Native people persisted. The U.S. did not achieve though boarding schools its "Kill the Indian to Save the Man" policy. Vine Deloria Jr. and Floyd Red Crow Westerman remained as dissenting voices to remind all of the history of Little Bighorn and the consistent fight by Native people for land, resources and cultural sovereignty.

Floyd Red Crow Westerman - Custer Died For Your Sins (Cover)

What an Amazing Speech as MLK expanded his vision to call out white privilege inherent in the colonization of the west. While some Black folks did claim land through the Homestead Act in both the south and the west, in many states they claimed less than a few percent with whites gaining all the intergenerational wealth from land. The Homestead Act did not deny African Americans land, but demanded that people who just gain freedom after generations of bondage to have the capital to start a farm. White people had the capital ready. As MLK notes they constantly subsidized predominantly white farmers. Politicians named this "settlement" and not colonization or the building of existing income inequality. Only class action lawsuits proved that local governmental agencies had made racist decisions to favor white farmers.

Martin Luther King Jr --How White People Got Their Land and Wealth (Remix)

Sounds like I just found a bunch of random loops and stuck them together, but in fact as always I played all the instruments. More like an experimental blend of styles all tied together in the key of C. Probably happened over multiple days and instead of focusing on one or two of the best parts, I decided to not let anything on the cutting room floor.

Making a Collage Off His Meds

An echoing guitar bounces me back to my hometown many years ago and a small diner where my friends would smoke cigarettes and I would eat butter burgers and spin records on their old jukebox.

I Can Still Taste Their Butter Burgers

Finally the spring is set to arrive. The first shoots emerge from the melting snow. Soon it will be stinging nettle season, when this otherwise wicked plant because harvestable. A gift of a wild green that much like all that remains truly seasonal, something to appreciate while it lasts.

Stinging Nettle Season

The outcome of lots of early morning lounging around listening to dancehall playlists. Have a lot of work to get getting the vibe as well as playing around with heavy effects on the mix.

North Fork of the Candy River

Heard You From a Mile Away

Had all kind of riffs that as per usual, I couldn't edit out. First experiment with a toy foldable digital drum set that I got in the mail yesterday. Just like the track itself, the title is pure excess.

Posthemous Player of Pre-Impressionist Portraiture

A long jam like many of the Jan Fonk track, complied out of a lot of idea by these pure rascals. Lots of time for guitar solos and different flavors of the rockitude that had them banned in many a Lewis County township.

Please, Just Point Me to the Exit

Jan Fonk and the Lewis County Loverboys doing what they do best, playing Croc Roc. Lots of room for solos and guitar leads while never trying to lose the grove that keeps the feet tapping on a Saturday night in Chehalis.

Please, Just Help Me Find the Exit

The final track to the Jan Fonk and the Lewis County Loverboys Play Croc Roc album. As with any good Croc Roc sound adventure there is a lot of guitar soloing, without losing the beat and vibe that keeps thise Crocs tapping

Please, Just Point Me to the Exits

All over the map here for Jan Fonk and the Lewis County Loverboys, going on the kind of explorations of varying dynamics and instrumentation that the dive bars of 1970s Chehalis never imagined.

Why You Can't Ever Find a Good Pineapple

Johnny's Loaf & Stein was a restaurant in the mall in the town where I grew up. It always seemed to attract a cast of real characters. I imagine these songs playing as background music there. 
Having moved recently from the Great Plains to the Cascades and now to Lower Michigan, I try to release a track every few weeks of my own brand of instrumental music that mixes a hefty dose of 60's pop and rock with accents of blues, jazz and classical music.
I hope listeners will indulge me and take the attitude towards my music as listening to a crazed radio that will randomly change stations and never linger too long a single musical style.
I don't use samples or premade loops. I figure if it doesn't come from me it's not really my song.
Contact me at johnnylofenstein@gmail.com.
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