Old Flames is a menagerie of Bloomington, Indiana musicians who came together in 2009 to play the songs from a record that is lucky to see the light of day.

LonPaul Ellrich (beloved Indianapolis musician and producer) and Chris Kupersmith started this record at Russian Recording, a sweet little A-frame next to a pleasant stream, in Nashville, Indiana during the spring of 2006. Kenny Childers played bass guitar, Tina Barbieri sang and played guitar, and some other friends peed on their corners of the sonic carpet. LonPaul and Chris spent the next two years adding tracks and tweaking them in myriad locations: a garage, a bedroom, an apartment, Queensize Recordings, you get the picture. Just as they were finishing the tracks, LonPaul passed away in May of 2008. (http://www.nuvo.net/music/article/lonpaul-ellrich-remembered). Not only did the world lose a scintillating earthwalker, but also Old Flames lost the tracks that were on LonPaul’s laptop. They just were not there, nor were they on any of LP’s dozen external hard drives that housed projects from all sorts of Indiana musicians.

Chris spent the next nine months seeking the tracks, a search (that ended exactly one year to the date of the final Old Flames session) in a garage in Bedford, Indiana with Pro Tools’ Midwest expert Michael Stucker, who found the errant files in a folder called Else, stuck inside of LonPaul’s last recording session: notorious drug addict and postmodern clown Evan Dando.

The story of the making of Lucky Epitaph, Old Flames’ record, ends at Echo Park Studios in Bloomington, Indiana. Vess Ruhtenberg (Zero Boys, Action Strasse, United States Three) and Kevin Loyal (awesome dude) mixed and produced the record.

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