In 2000, Johnathon Ford was living in Chicago and began to piece together a touring version of his Unwed Sailor. The band took the road, playing several dates with friends Pedro the Lion and headlining several Midwestern shows. Ford enlisted the live guitarist, Nic Tse, and drummer Matt Johnson (Roadside Monument) to record the debut Unwed Sailor full-length, The Faithful Anchor, with Daniel Burton (Early Day Miners, Ativin) in Bloomington, IN. Unwed Sailor had captured the hearts of its audience through Ford's very melodic, energetic instrumental songs with interweaving, delicate guitar melodies carried by a trademark bass sound. Burton captured that live energy, mixing in
Eno-esque ambience and just a hint of experimentalism. The resulting album is an instrumental classic.

As a cd, The Faithful Anchor has been in print since its release in the summer of 2001. An initial pressing of LPs sold out quickly and these have not been available for over four years. Now, the audio has been re-mastered to lacquers and this vinyl edition is on audiophile 180g virgin vinyl. Burnt Toast Vinyl is happy to preserve The Faithful Anchor in this deluxe format.

Born in Seattle in 1998 at the tender age of intent, Unwed Sailor is helmed by Oklahoma-born songwriter Johnathon Ford. The basis for the instrumental project came into being while Ford was still writing with Seattle luminaries Roadside Monument; pulling toward a bass guitar-oriented sound, the songs he’d begun to craft did not wholly feel right for Roadside Monument, thus the unbeknownst predestined forming of Unwed Sailor. Not aiming for Unwed Sailor to fall into the regular confines of a typical band, Ford’s ever-evolving cast and crew has been tirelessly composed over the years of good friends and company, as the band has since been relocated and based out of cities across the United States including Chicago, New York, Jackson, MS, Little Rock, AR, and back now to Seattle.

With over 15 U.S. tours and 4 in Europe, the band has traveled almost as much as it’s evolved. Since their 1998 debut release Firecracker, the band has continued to endeavor side-door studies into the pictures behind sound, opening myriad avenues of instrumental excavation on their first full-length The Faithful Anchor to short-film soundtracks for filmmaker Chris Bennett, resulting in Stateless (a full-band collaboration with Early Day Miners) and the music to For Johnathan alongside bands like The Album Leaf and Tarantel. In 2003, the shape of Unwed Sailor changed dramatically as the sound ensued less a standard suite of songs, becoming more like a growing creature, cinematically operated and tell-tale both in its sonic and packaged presentation. The resulting album was recorded and released as The Marionette and the Music Box; music set to tell the painted story of a lonely little marionette in search of a cherished, lost music box. Describing the picturesque rushes and swells of a rather unique orchestra, Ford has become a maestro in his own rite, leading his band through pieces as suited for concert halls as they are the hot, impassioned stages of dark nightclubs from city to city. And as a live performance, the music is only more chaotic in its finely tuned restraints; here audiences are treated to a powerful performance, played out as though on the screen, and walking away from the shows as though from a theater, excited and curious about the world again. On stage, Unwed Sailor as people melt away, becoming nobody and everybody at the same time; a two-hearted octopus with every arm working twice as hard.

A Seattle based Unwed Sailor has toured twice during 2006 already with a month-long stint through the South and Midwest in early summer, with many dates accompanying me without you, and a two week romp up the west coast this August. The band is set for a solid month in Europe with 30+ dates in Germany, Holland, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, and the UK during September and October. They'll be back in the US to tour in support of the formal release of The White Ox, carrying on down the lonesome, always stretching road.