photo by elisabeth parker (CC-NC-SA)

It’s been an emotional and hard couple of weeks here in Northampton. Our little music community lost a major figure with the passing of our friend, Jameson Lavo. Jamie’s band, Trials & Tribulations, represented many of the greatest characteristics of Jamie himself: full of friends -- and therefore love, full of passion, full of sadness. Jamie was in constant pursuit of the saddest song ever written.

When Trials played our Bookmill Residency series show in March we caught a rare performance from a band that was always in flux -- breaking up, making up, changing line ups, reassessing, re-recording, nothing ever good enough -- even though everything was always better than any of them could seem to realize. But the constant was always Jamie. We miss him immensely.

In tribute to his life, we are making the recording of his Bookmill performance available today. You can download it for free here. There’s also the option to pay what you want for this recording and any money raised will be sent to Jamie’s number one cause: the Occupy movement.