The gates are finally open! “Eden Ahbez’s Dharmaland,” arranged and performed by Ixtahuele, is available through Subliminal Sounds Records in all media platforms, from vinyl double-LP to CD to digital download to streaming. Click here to get your copy. For those unaware, Ahbez wrote the music on “Dharmaland” in the immediate aftermath of his lone…
It’s official. “As the Wind: The Enchanted Life of Eden Ahbez” has launched a crowdsourcing campaign and we need your help. The link is here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/as-the-wind-the-enchanted-life-of-eden-ahbez#/ For those fans who are unaware, long-time Ahbez historian Brian Chidester teamed up with filmmaker John Winer in 2017, and the pair have been working on a feature-length documentary…
Follow the progress of the Eden Ahbez documentary, As the Wind, with this behind the scenes series. Part one of three is linked here: Vimeo link:
If you’ve bid recently at eBay on an original 1960 Del-Fi pressing of Eden’s Island, then you probably noticed its final price-tag hovering right around two-hundred bucks. And if that’s too rich for your blood, then here’s some good news: Captain High Records just reissued it to 180 gram vinyl. One of the nice things about this…
It’s been a little dry for news around here lately… So I am happy to announce a new book—titled Bohemian Highways: Art & Culture Abide Then Divide Along the California Coast (Guardian Stewardship Editions)—which features a 20-page chapter penned yours truly (Brian Chidester) on Eden Ahbez’s lost sheet music. The book will be available through…
I first spoke to Craig Chereek after he posted this short blog about Eden Ahbez in 2010: https://chereek.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/eden-ahbez-lives/ We’ve talked over the phone several times in the ensuing years and, this past winter, Craig agreed to let me interview him for the Ahbez biography I’m currently working on. (He calls him “ahbe” throughout.) The interview was…
It’s been a few months since poet Rod McKuen (1933-2015) passed away and it seems only fitting that the Eden’s Island Blog pay tribute to his influence on the world of spoken word recordings, of which Eden Ahbez also partook. A few days ago, I typed in a search box the words “rod mckuen” and “eden ahbez,” and…
Has anyone else noticed a recent up-tick in interest for Eden Ahbez’s work? Fittingly, “Nature Boy” continues to generate any number of covers, from the David Bowie/Massive Attack version for the Moulin Rouge film soundtrack of 2001, to the new Lady Gaga/Tony Bennett cover of last fall, to acapella renditions performed by collegiate choirs at Yale…
Anna Ahbez (née Annette Jacobson) was, to her songwriter husband, a lover, a mother to his only child, and a fellow nature enthusiast. From 1946-68, Eden Ahbez commemorated Anna in more than a dozen songs, most of them still unreleased. But who was this mysterious woman that stood side-by-side with her nature boy husband at…
Larry “Chief” Boutillette owns Sunset Ranch in upstate New York. It was formerly owned by Cowboy Jack Patton—performer, Western radio personality and long-time friend of Eden Ahbez. Patton took credit for many of the good things that happened to Ahbez with “Nature Boy,” though it’s been hard to verify all of his claims as yet.…
EDEN’S ISLAND 