Tommy Mclain - Moving to Heaven (2024) [Hi-Res]

In 2003, Swamp Pop pioneer Tommy McLain self-released his album Moving to Heaven. An extremely rare piece of Louisiana music history, Moving to Heaven only existed as a CD that Tommy himself pressed 500 copies of more than two decades ago. Tommy sold the CDs at his shows on the bayou and that was the only place to purchase this mysterious album. Featuring extremely DIY production techniques and spooky synthesizer sounds, this was Tommy McLain at his most raw and spiritual.

Many years later, Elvis Costello found a CD of Moving to Heaven in a Louisiana record store and fell in love with the music. Costello was a fan of Tommy ever since hearing him back in the ‘70s on the compilation Another Saturday Night, but he knew that Moving to Heaven was something special. Costello and Tommy would eventually meet in 2010 at a Bobby Charles tribute concert where Costello professed his love of Moving to Heaven to Tommy in-person. “I would go to local, secondhand record shops looking for albums by people like Tommy McLain,” Costello told the New York Times in 2022.

2022 was a banner year for McLain who released his first commercial album in four decades, I Ran Down Every Dream, on Yep Roc Records. The campaign saw McLain headlining New Orleans JazzFest, performing on the Late Late Show with James Corden, and charting at Billboard for the first time since the 1960s. With a new worldwide audience paying attention to Tommy, a renewed interest in this long-lost 2003 album Moving to Heaven continues to grow. With the album being out-of-print for two decades with no way of listening to the album online, fans and music historians alike feared that Moving to Heaven was lost to time.

Yep Roc Records is excited to announce the first-ever digital release for Moving to Heaven. The album has been remastered l by Mike Westbrook at MW Audio. This rare artifact of the Swamp Pop genre is finally found and sounds better than ever. Even with extremely raw production techniques at play, Tommy McLain continues to showcase his "dusty voice that still sounds strong" (MOJO) and that "if red velvet had a sound, it would be Tommy McLain's voice" (NPR).

Tracklist:
1.01 - Tommy Mclain - Tommy McLain Testimony (3:01)
1.02 - Tommy Mclain - Moving to Heaven (3:08)
1.03 - Tommy Mclain - You'll Love This Heaven Too (3:24)
1.04 - Tommy Mclain - Miracles (4:13)
1.05 - Tommy Mclain - High Class Fool (King Herod) (4:17)
1.06 - Tommy Mclain - Love Hurt Hope (2:53)
1.07 - Tommy Mclain - You're Not Dancing to Wings on a Dove (2:23)
1.08 - Tommy Mclain - Cold in This House (2:47)
1.09 - Tommy Mclain - Looking for a Man Named Jesus (2:21)
1.10 - Tommy Mclain - In Prayer (2:57)
1.11 - Tommy Mclain - Radio Maria Theme Song (2:15)
1.12 - Tommy Mclain - Tommy McLain Bio (Carol Skaggs) (1:35)