Rick Deitrick Gentle Wilderness

Tompkins Square is proud to release two solo acoustic guitar albums by Rick Deitrick. Gentle Wilderness was released as a private press LP in 1978. River Sun River Moon consists of previously unreleased recordings from the same time period. Rick pressed 500 copies of his tranquil solo guitar record, Gentle Wilderness, in 1978 on Niodrara Records, and sold many at performances and directly to music shops who would pay for them. He gave copies to various libraries and left a few albums in the middle of the wilderness, next to trails, “so people would find them.” Rick sought inspiration in nature and in particular the various rivers scattered around the Western United States, often composing songs seated beside them—and even occasionally perched on boulders in them. He never played the songs the same way twice and did two passes on each composition in studio. Rick would sometimes literally come straight out of the mountains and rush to the studio to record the ideas he’d gathered. Rick currently resides in Los Angeles, “still strumming, waiting for the other shoe to drop.”