Tucker Zimmerman - Over Here In Europe (LIMITED BLACK VINYL)
*LIMITED 100 COPIES ONLY!!*
Released 18th August 2023
The first ever vinyl reissue of Tucker Zimmerman's 1974 sonically groundbreaking gem is just the kind of record we LOVE here at Union. Following on from the brilliant Emmett Finley release, those cool kids at Big Potato Records have unearthed another absolute gem!
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A self-described ‘songpoet’, Zimmerman’s long and storied life as an American ‘exile’ in Europe has so far produced nine studio albums and many hundreds of poems. And more recently, led to his current collaborations with Big Thief. Running through it all is a sustained, singular will to create beautiful low key, low ego art on the biggest, most timeless themes.
As Tucker says of this recording -
“After years of writing and filling a box with over 500 song sheets I had finally found my path, my originality, my voice. It had become clear to me in the previous year that songs of only one kind were worth spending time on: those which had a positive message and a peaceful vibration. I still feel that these are the only kind of songs worth writing... No anger. No politics. No teaching. Just poetry. Little hums that perhaps might lift us all above our daily worries and fears, little hums that try to make the world a better place to live in.”
What Tucker doesn’t mention is the glorious ambition of the arrangements and production. His experimental use of keyboards, synthesisers and that rarest of birds - the Ondes Martenot (a kind of theremin hybrid beloved of Johnny Greenwood among others). Electronica as a shifting palette to lift songs with a classic singer/songwriter feel into something new. Perhaps only the early 70’s Beach Boys were onto the same idea, albeit with slightly different budgets.
The album’s themes are influenced by a wandering searcher’s life that led Tucker and his wife Marie Claire to find a fulfilling home in (very) rural Belgium. Where friends like Maggie Holland, Ian Anderson, Dave Evans or Wizz Jones would drop in (Claire & I). He would build his own studio & then move on to poetry and prose in the 80’s, also finding himself coaching his son’s baseball team - there was no Belgian baseball league before Tucker Zimmerman!
As with his two-track ‘Black Album’, Tucker produced this LP himself. Cutting his production teeth with another life friend Tony Visconti in London, experimenting with tapes and electronic sounds while working on many albums including Marsha Hunt, Paul Butterfield & his own debut (one of Bowie’s favourite records).
Mr Zimmerman is the real deal and ‘Over Here In Europe’ a new direction which would end seven years later with the excellent ‘Word Games’ whereupon he pauses from the creation of albums in this form. We feel very proud & fortunate to know Tucker & present his first book of short verse ‘When In Flows The Sea” & this record to the world again