Acid King - Busse Woods (1999, 2019 reissue)

I grew up in the northwest suburbs 30 miles outside of Chicago back in a time before social media and mobile phones existed, back in a time when space invaders was the biggest video game and back in time where if you wanted to meet up with your friends you had to get in your car and go find them. The daily routine after school was to cruise around looking to meet up with friends to find a party or a place to hang out. One of those places was Busse Woods, a forest preserve that was a regular destination where we would meet up, open our trunks, crank Sabbath, roll joints, drop acid and play Frisbee.

Fast forward several years and several bands later, I discovered a book called Say You Love Satan – a true crime story about a suburban teenager from upstate New York who hung out at Aztakea woods named Ricky Kasso a.k.a. “The Acid King” and I knew then that would be the name of my next band. Inspiration was drawn from both of these stories and set the tone for the 1999 release titled Busse Woods.

My band mates and I at the time, Joey Osbourne and Brian hill, jammed out five originals, Electric Machine, Silent Circle, Drive Fast, Take Chances, Carve the 5, and Busse Woods and recorded a cover of 39 Lashes from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar. It was an unusual cover song but I was really influenced by the heaviness of the guitar riffs and had this on heavy rotation.

Everything came together and we called in our friend and engineer Billy Anderson to record at the long closed Division hi-Fi Studio in San Francisco. Bay Area artist Frank Kozik initially released the CD on his now defunct label, Man's Ruin.

Then, everything fell apart……

As life would have it, personal and professional relationships got in the way as the release came out and the music of Busse Woods was barely played live, but a funny thing happened many years later, and Busse Woods came back to life. Its songs generated the highest amount of streams out of all our recordings. People started requesting songs from the release at live shows and it became our most critically acclaimed release to date. The stars aligned.

Twenty years later, it’s time to give Busse Woods the proper release it deserves.

Happy 20th Anniversary, Busse Woods!

Love and Distortion

Lori S.