Ovid in Exile is Wesley Stace’s vinyl-only limited edition release for Record Store Day 2014. Subtitled “The Songs behind Self-Titled”, it contains 12 of the solo acoustic demos recorded in Portland on 11/10/11 and bears the simple legend: “Produced by Scott McCaughey. Recorded by Tucker Martine. Played by Wesley Stace.”
Wes performed 45 songs in that four hour session later called “Songs in the Lydian Mode”. 21 of these were subsequently recorded for Self-Titled, of which 16 made the finished album. This epic session included 12 songs co-written with Eleanor Friedberger, many of which were subsequently recorded for her much-praised “Personal Record”.
Ovid in Exile contains the original acoustic versions of six songs that ended up on Self-Titled. Side one features five of these (and an otherwise unreleased song, Carmen et Error) re-sequenced into the “Ovid in Exile” suite. The second side, “Five Songs and a Mistake”, includes The Buzz, later recorded with The English UK for the Making Love To Bob Dylan 12″, and Old Man and the Bird, recorded by Megain Reilly on her album The Well.
The cover shows Ovid’s statue in Constanta on the Black Sea where the poet was exiled in 8 AD for “a song and a mistake”. The vinyl is gold, the package is opulent, and the release is limited to 500 copies.
