* PREORDER * ED ASKEW - The Final Painting LP

* PREORDER * expected to arrive for 31st July release

Time stands stunningly still on The Final Painting, the dreamy, elegiac final album from legendary underground singer-songwriter/poet/ painter Ed Askew.

Ed started his singing career in 1968 with a self-titled LP release on NYC’s infamous free jazz/free-folk ESP-Disk' label. Known today as Ask the Unicorn, this album is wintry psych folk of the highest order, with Ed’s yearning lyrics and high-strung vocals fully emoting over the bright, mandolin-like strum of his chosen axe, the South American tiple. The record caused a flare of acclaim, but after a second album went unreleased, Ed went back home to Connecticut, where, quietly and locally, he taught art, painted (houses AND paintings) and made music.

Upon returning to New York in the early ‘80s, he began cir culating cassettes of his self-recorded new songs. This was a fascinating and unlikely new chapter in his music, but only a few noticed. It wasn’t until De Stijl’s 2002 release of Little Eyes, his lost second album, that his naïve songs and singing began to receive the respect they deserved. It was just enough visibility to dream a bit bigger.

The Final Painting reinvites For the World contributors Sharon Van Etten, Eve Searls, and Canaan Faulkner and new guests Bill Callahan, William Tyler, Ryan Jewell, Dustin Laurenzi, and Fulvio Sigurta. In their last conversation, just days before Ed passed in January 2025, he and Jerry agreed to: a) use the painting left on the easel of Ed's now-empty apartment and b) call the album The Final Painting. Profoundly resonant in the style of Frank Sinatra’s Watertown and David Bowie’s Blackstar, The Final Painting is faithful to the spirit of Ed Askew and his DIY nature and Modernist values, pursued for years and years throughout life, art and music, all the way to the very end.