My record collection
#128: Jule Brown - Smoke and Mirrors (CD)

Dean very rarely puts on the producer hat but did for this rather cool Jule Brown album. Jule Brown is the alter-ego and/or band of Mark Holland formerly of Jennyanykind. Dean is credited as the producer alongside Rick Miller, and for rhythm and lead guitar.

Jule Brown - Smoke and Mirrors (CD)

I first heard about this when I emailed Dean about something unrelated (news of Galaxie 500’s Peel Sessions release) and he replied…

I'm down in North Carolina at the moment, producing a record for a band called Jule Brown. We're doing it at a studio called Kudzu Ranch, which is owned and operated by Rick Miller of Southern Culture on the Skids. He's very entertaining...

Dean Wareham - email 5th September 2005

This was followed by some Googling on my part at which point I turned it into a tiny news item for this site…

Dean is currently in North Carolina producing an album for Jule Brown which is Mark Holland of Jennyanykind’s side project. More details at the official and frighteningly ugly Jule Brown [website] and the thankfully much prettier Sonicbids EPK site.

Dean Wareham puts on his producers hat - 8th September 2005

A while later Mark Holland came across my post and its rather brutal analysis of his Jule Brown website:

Dean and I laughed (actually Dean laughed at first and then me later) when he told me about the comment regarding my website (which is now gone and has relocated to www.myspace.com/julebrown)... we both agreed with you.

Mark Holland comment on AHFoW - 27th July 2008

… although, in retrospect, I think I was a bit harsh - not really frighteningly ugly but rather… old fashioned for 2005, and now looking rather quaint! I suspect it was the ‘letter-spacing: -1pt;’ rule on the link hover that bothered me most. I must admit that I hate the idea that my idle opinion pushed Mark into the arms of MySpace (although back then that’s where everyone was headed).

I like the album much more than I liked that website back in 2005.

It was nice coming across Mark’s comment (it was in my email … and in the Wayback Machine - I do miss website commenting.

• Catalogue Number: AHFOW 10/140
• Artist: Jule Brown
• Title: Smoke and Mirrors
• Notes: Dean co-produced and plays guitar
• Packaging: Jewel case
• Format: CD
• I can’t remember where or when I bought this, it does have a punch hole through the barcode, which suggests it was a promo?
• Sadly not available on Bandcamp, can be found on Spotify though. Back in 2011 Mark did put out a digital release of (and called) Rough Cuts that has Dean on guitar.

Previously in my record collection:

• #060: Pee Shy - Yellow Race Car