Tortilla Moon

Left Hand Smoke

Back in 1999, while Prepaid Friends was germinating in Portland, Left Hand Smoke began building a buzz in Seattle. The timing of their rise in the Seattle scene mirrored much of what was happening in Portland with Purusa, the scale was bigger for LHS but much of their success ran concurrently with what we were doing down south. I knew of the band, but we didn’t really cross paths back then. Sometime after we shut things down in 2004, I picked up a copy of their Shine on Everything CD and became a huge fan of the title track. Fast forward to 2020 and I had seen they were still active and I was working on a Portland show with Bart Ferguson and Purusa and offered it to them. They joined and everything was set, until covid hit. This was the first show of many that got cancelled that year.

Once the world re-opened it took a while before I could get them booked again, but I put one together at The Central in January of 2023. There have been several since and at one of them I brought up the topic of my compilation, prompted by the playing of several new, unreleased songs. I was thrilled that they were not only open to including one on my compilation, but somewhat enthusiastic about it. We settled on “Tortilla Moon”. It’s a bit of a neo-pop soul tune, driven by a mid-tempo piano rhythm. It’s got a great melody and an excellent dual vocal performance. It serves as a great bridge between Haymaker and JJ Braves. It’s also just a great honor to shepherd a brand new Left Hand Smoke into the world!