Mossy Kilcher - Northwind Calling (1976)

Tompkins Square have announced the digital release of Mossy Kilcher’s 1977 Private Press Double-LP ‘Northwind Calling’. A hunt around the internet reveals this album isn’t by any means easy to come by, or cheap, but this digital release looks set to place Northwind Calling alongside those unearthed folk records by lost sirens that have made their way beyond hardcore collectors into the collective consciousness of the indie music-buying public: Vashti Bunyan, Linda Perhacs, Sibylle Baier, Tia Blake, Connie Converse, to name a few.
The double LP was issued in 1977 under her name at the time – Mossy Davidson – mainly for her family (which included 7 sisters and brothers) and friends. Besides being a beautiful album that has the potential to resonate with listeners today, it is from a time and a place very far removed from the norm, based around and a pioneer lifestyle that has already caught press attention.
The album is also a love letter to the land outside of Homer where Mossy lives to this day and where she clearly still feels the ‘enchantment of the North Country’ – she owns a farm and songbird sanctuary called Seaside situated close by to the unspoiled shores of Kachemak Bay. Her parents, Yule and Ruth Kilcher, set up a homestead on land outside of Homer in the late 1930s after arriving from Switzerland. They were a focus of a reality show, ‘Alaska: The Last Frontier,’ which premiered on Discovery Channel in December 2011. A musical family, the Kilchers also produced Alaska’s most successful recording artist of all time, Mossy’s niece, Jewel. Jewel lived with Mossy at Seaside Farm in Homer as a teenager. “Jewel would be my horse-riding sidekick, helping me out on the farm,” Mossy said. The two performed together on a televised Christmas special filmed in Nashville in 2016.
Musically, ‘Northwind Calling’ is fascinating all on its own, even without the backstory. The gentle accompaniment of 12 and 6-string guitar, harmonica, banjo, flute and piano is so sympathetic and exquisitely placed. Mossy’s reedy woodwind of a voice is full of feeling and seemingly untainted by and firmly outside the era’s commercial singer-songwriter machinery or conventions. A tinge of unintended psychedelia and natural sound effects take it all over the top.

1.01 - Mossy Kilcher - So Long !! (3:41)
1.02 - Mossy Kilcher - Fox Sparrow (2:19)
1.03 - Mossy Kilcher - Sea Man (2:45)
1.04 - Mossy Kilcher - Day Dream Land (2:31)
1.05 - Mossy Kilcher - Northwind Calling (3:37)
1.06 - Mossy Kilcher - Coyote's Cry (2:29)
1.07 - Mossy Kilcher - Going to Blow (3:50)
1.08 - Mossy Kilcher - What Is That Light (3:38)
1.09 - Mossy Kilcher - Eagle, Goodbye ! (2:10)
1.10 - Mossy Kilcher - Little Brown Violins (3:14)
1.11 - Mossy Kilcher - Cloudy Day (3:59)
1.12 - Mossy Kilcher - It's Harder to Be Left Behind (2:46)
1.13 - Mossy Kilcher - Alone Too Long (3:12)
1.14 - Mossy Kilcher - Where Does This River Flow (3:46)
1.15 - Mossy Kilcher - Flag of Green Lands Flying (3:32)
1.16 - Mossy Kilcher - Rainfall (2:13)
1.17 - Mossy Kilcher - Mother's Song (3:06)
1.18 - Mossy Kilcher - Changes, Changes (2:41)
1.19 - Mossy Kilcher - Birds of Passage (3:37)
1.20 - Mossy Kilcher - Come Back, Come Back (4:05)