Trapper's Attic Records

11/15/2024

Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) – 1870

The earliest picture of the Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) village at Spaulding, Idaho in 1870.

📷: Skip Myers/Idaho History 1800 to Present

#1870

11/07/2024

TONIGHT 🔥 Connor Jay Liess: Live at the Night Owl in Salmon, ID. 8-10 p.m.

11/06/2024

Grand Forks, ID – Early 1900s

Grand Forks was one of the short-term railroad construction camp “towns” along the route of the Milwaukee Road between the Taft Tunnel and the town of Avery, possibly towards the lower end of Loop Creek.

Its main claims to fame, compared to countless similar towns, was the the National Forests had just been established, and men like Pinchot and Roosevelt were incensed that such vice existed within what they thought of as their National Forests. Taft itself—a comparable, but larger temporary town on the Montana side of the mountains—also had the misfortune of being visited by a reporter from back east who described it memorably as “the wickedest city in America”, without detailing how he arrived at that measurement.

Being the last transcontinental railroad built, the Milwaukee Road also got the most media coverage—or rather, the most skeptical media coverage. With the earlier projects, the news men were mainly interested in the railroad itself and the challenges and benefits of building it. By the time the Milwaukee came around, they needed a new angle. One new angle was the railroads’ damage to the environment, but a much more interesting angle was the vice that existed in the construction camps.

📷: Mike Fritz Collection
📝: David Sherman

11/05/2024

Burke, ID – 1893

Pictured here, a group of miners posing in front of the Poorman Mine in 1893.

📷:

#1893

11/04/2024

⛏ Have you picked up a copy of "A Miner's Guide to Hills and Depression" yet?

CDs are available at trappersattic.com and include a 36-page illustrated lyric booklet. Orders ship 2-3 business days.

11/02/2024

A look at every place referenced in "A Miner's Guide to Hills and Depression."

The album is a collective story of the pyschological highs and lows of life in Idaho's early mining and frontier towns.

11/01/2024

Folks, I’m proud to announce the new album is finally out there. It’s my proudest achievement as an artist, and represents the album I have always sought to produce with my intermediate skills as a music engineer. Everything you hear was recorded and engineered right here in my Boise, Idaho home, and features the incredible musicianship of local Boise artists, without whom this album never would be possible.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for supporting me and my music and for putting an ear to A Miner’s Guide to Hills and Depression.

11/01/2024

⛏ OUT NOW: "A Miner's Guide to Hills and Depression" is available now on all streaming platforms.

Order CDs and new merch at www.trappersattic.com.

11/01/2024

Tomorrow morning, my new album goes live. So I wanted to share why this album has meant so much to me.

The allure of the West has captured the hearts and minds of Americans for close to a century. Mountain men heading deep into unmapped Rocky Mountain wilderness in search of beaver hides; homesteaders rolling over the prairies in search of a better life in Oregon; and cowboys and gold prospectors, pilfering little flakes of gold from the West’s rivers and streams, simply to become wealthy.

We are spoon-fed these tales in countless books, songs, and films, and come to worship these frontier men and women as deities who lived much more meaningful lives than we do now. Like everything we romanticize, we typically focus only on the good and rarely on the bad or the ugly, when in reality, the West as we now know it, was rampant with grief and darkness.

In my fourth album, A Miner’s Guide to Hills and Depression, I’m yet again heading back in time to tell the stories of Idaho’s first miners, their highs, and more importantly, their lows.

I’ll be the first to admit that it’s easy to fall in love with the West. People back then had a much closer relationship with the natural world, mostly because it would quite honestly kill them if they messed up. That’s a spiritual lifeline I think a lot of people, myself included, seek to reconnect these days. There is something rewarding about being at the mercy of nature, getting your food from the land, and living in utter solitude up in the mountains. But, that ain’t the whole story. A lot of it’s just fantasy.

And nowhere is this fantasy more distorted than in the West’s first mining camps.

When we think about 19th century miners and the towns that sprang up around them, the first thoughts are of some grizzled old man, hunched over a creek with a pan full of gold, or at worst, gold dust. He lopes into a bustling town on his mule or horse, then trades his daily wages for a shot of whiskey or a romp with a pr******te. Or, if he’s lucky, both.

But that’s the PG film version. The true stories that flowed from those mining camps were typically much more sorrowful.

I just hit 31 years. The older I get, the more I find myself struggling with the darkness in the world. And for some weird reason, learning about — and to some extent, romanticizing — the West answers a lot of these questions I have. Men and women back then were lucky if they lived to be 50. A lot of the stories I read in Idaho’s earliest newspapers told countless stories of men and women experiencing tragic deaths much sooner than that.

A Miner’s Guide to Hills and Depression is my attempt at trying to understand my own problems with mental health and depression. The older I get, the more I find myself battling it. And I know some people that struggle with it that choose to not address it. It’s an important topic these days, and it ain’t hard to find cause.

In the 1860s through the 1890s, anyone who struggled with their mental health, or godforbid escaped it through su***de, did so in a fit of what many papers called “momentary insanity.” Very few understood it. And anyone who denies its importance now is just as ignorant of the issue.

I’m not brave or clever enough to write about depression and mental health as well as most people, so I chose to weave it into a narrative that resonates with me. My goal is not to lay down a blanket statement that everything will be alright, because there’s times where it’s not.

What I am saying is this: Our personal stories are just as glamorized as some of the stories we get from the West. We cast the most attractive versions of ourselves, highlight the successes, bury the failures, and rarely talk about loneliness. It’s unfair to tell an apocryphal story of ourselves, especially if it’s covering up issues that can be remedied.

I have been sitting on this album for a very long time. I’d like it to be dedicated to my dad, without whom I never would have experienced the West.

My dad gave me the greatest gift anyone ever could—he took me to old mining towns, taught me about Western traditions, and showed me a world that would ultimately become a sort of sanctuary from our modern world and its issues.

Western mining history, specifically, runs in my blood as it does his. Seeing remnants of mining operations from the 19th century and the mounds of ore tailings burped from the mouth of an extinct mineshaft are still my favorite places on Earth to see just as they were when I was an annoying little kid. They have always bewildered me—cool yet haunting. Necessary, yet destructive. Fleeting, yet permanent. Exciting, yet sad.

Folks, I’m so excited to release this album into the world. It’ll be my proudest achievement as an artist, and represents the album I have always sought to produce with my intermediate skills as a music engineer. Everything you hear was recorded and engineered right here in my Boise, Idaho home, and features the incredible musicianship of local Boise artists, without whom this album never would be possible.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for supporting me and my music and for putting an ear to A Miner’s Guide to Hills and Depression.

CJL

10/31/2024

Pocatello, ID – 1892

📷: Skip Myers/Idaho History 1800 to Present

#1892

10/30/2024

10/29/2024

Pearl, ID – 1899

Pictured here, miners standing near the headframe at a mine near Pearl in Gem County. Note the miners’ candlesticks and candles in some of their hands. Candles were used for lighting underground before the invention of the carbide light.

📷:
📝: Skip Myers/Idaho History 1800 to Present

#1899

10/28/2024

NEW SINGLE: “La Llorona” is out now!

Pre-order ‘A Miner’s Guide to Hills and Depression’: https://www.trappersattic.com/aminersguide.
OUT THIS FRIDAY.

⛏️

10/23/2024

Murray, ID – 1884

In this 1884 photo, loaves of bread are delivered by horseback to miners in the vicinity of Murray, Idaho. The gold rush here started in 1883 and peaked in 1884, when more than 5,000 miners and prospectors flocked to the area’s rich placer gold mines.

📷📝:

#1884

10/23/2024

Hot off the presses! ⛏️ 📀

Pre-order at www.trappersattic.com. Out Nov. 1.

10/22/2024

Thunder Mountain Mine, ID – 1902

Pictured here, a miner and his horse most likely in the mining town of Roosevelt, roughly 30 miles east of Yellow Pine. The rush to Thunder Mountain in early 1902 was one of the most significant events in Idaho mining history.

📷:

#1902

10/19/2024

TONIGHT 👀 A very special, one-night strummathon down at my all-time favorite brewery . It’s been a Saskatoon second since I picked the pickaxe and warbled some originals about the mountains and Idaho. Tonight’s show will be 7-9, downtown and free of charge. Come down, say hello, tell Korban he’s handsome, and tip the other bartenders. Gonna be a ball.

10/18/2024

Arrowrock Dam – 1915

Arrowrock Dam, completed in 1915. At the time it was the highest in the world and was a template for how the Hoover Dam would be built.

“On October 4, 1915, the Arrowrock Dam was finally dedicated. As stated above, it was the tallest dam in the world for nine years, until the completion of the Schräh dam in Switzerland in 1924, with a height of 111.6 m (366 ft). In addition, engineers pioneered the use of dam instrumentation with the placement of ten thermometers embedded deep within the structure’s concrete. Along with innovative contraction joints, the Reclamation Service was able to control the temperature of the setting concrete, ensuring the dams strength. It is 225 feet (69 m) thick at the base and 15 feet (4.6 m) thick at the crest. It is serviced by 25 outlets some of which are designed to regulate themselves, another first in engineering. Ten outlets were built for an eventual power plant, but they have yet to be used.

“In total, the dam contains 585,160 cubic yards (447,390 m3) of concrete and the reservoir holds over 286,000 acre-feet (353,000,000 m3) of irrigation water. Within the first week of operation, an estimated 12,000 visitors braved the canyon ride to see the dam.”

📷: Alicia Ellen
📝: Wikipedia

#1915