Lake Champions

Collection Contents

#		Title	Length
1		Drunk As Can Be	6:01	Play
2		Ten Page Letter	2:41	Play
3		Isn't That Right?	3:34	Play
4		The Offer of 1000 Shields	3:40	Play
5		Same Mistake	2:48	Play
6		Not Enough	6:23	Play
7		I Didn't Buy It	4:25	Play
8		Take This As I Mean It	4:23	Play
9		Gold	2:25	Play
10		Wooden Arms	3:26	Play
11		G-d's Song	6:11	Play
12		Robinson Crusoe	4:52	Play
13		Standard Time Chop	2:53	Play
14		Next to You	3:36	Play
15		Boyfriend Song	4:07	Play
16		Try With Another	4:20	Play

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Description	Amount
Bitmunk Marketplace Service	USD $0.98
CD Baby Artist Royalty	USD $5.97
CD Baby 9% Digital Distribution Cost	USD $0.54
Bitmunk Download Service	USD $0.71
Bitmunk MicroPayment Service	USD $0.01
Total	USD $8.19

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Description

"Lake Champions" (1999) - This eclectic record has just about everything: torch songs, ballads, and tales; hope, love, and despair. The songs are performed in a subtle and easy manner, with Randy accompanying himself on acoustic guitar and harmonica only. In "Drunk As Can Be" a southern boozer tries to extricate himself from an addictive relationship. In "I Didn't Buy It", a sympathetic cad second-guesses himself and his dearly disposed. The narrator of "Gold" enjoys requited and true love while in "Robinson Crusoe" a man with a strong sense of entitlement tries to lay down the rules for a lopsided affair. In "Next To You" a woman makes her lover feel like Humbert Humbert and Jack the Ripper. A man visits the seedy bars of his old neighborhood in "Standard Time Chop" and, repulsed, is filled with domestic yearnings. In "G-d's song" a gentle, forthright, practical, and insecure God revises his commandments - eliminating circumcision, easing the strictures on sexuality, condoning drug use, and admitting that even He isn't quite sure of what's going on. "Lake Champions" is a personal and intimate album that touches on all the trademark Kaplan subjects.

Randy Kaplan has the uncanny ability to see his world and ours from almost any angle. These perspectives come together in a poetry of contradictions and complexities that are exposed through his hypnotic melodies and profoundly intimate lyrics. His songs capture ambivalence and investigate the inner lives of human beings in the tradition of Leonard Cohen or Stephen Sondheim. Kaplan has criss-crossed the country many times, building his reputation as a live performer. As the Mattress in Olympia, Washington reported, "(Kaplan's) songs display keen psychological insight ... his emotional range is broad, running the gamut from uplifting to bleak." The Perdido Pelican in Pensacola, Florida pronounced: "Whether he's singing about despair or ecstasy, Kaplan's songs are bittersweet, romantic, and sometimes nostalgic. And his point of view is always original and often startling." Lake Champions was recorded at z'gwon,th studios in Lawrence, Kansas in 1999. During two breaks from the Reborn As Bees sessions Randy sat down with his acoustic guitar & his harmonica and played these 16 songs, never intending them to be released. Associate producer, Scott Bernstein, excited by the raw authenticity of the recordings, urged Randy to release the songs as is. The album, consequently, has the intimacy of a live performance.