"Everybody Wants to Know How I Die"

Uncle Sinner is back with a new album. It's been a while. In fact, it's been five years since the release of his latest album "Trouble of This World". What can we expect? In an e-mail Uncle Sinner reveals the following: "There are 13 songs on the album. There's one full original, three or four what you could call covers though I revised them, and the rest use traditional songs as the jumping off point at least. I play more electric guitar for a somewhat heavier sound on many, though there are also fretless banjo (with percussion) tracks and a few acoustic tracks. Much of it is blues-based, or at least based in the roots of blues, though it's not a blues album exactly. It's set up as a church service, so it begins and ends with Uncle Sinner hymns though there is an epilogue. The actual service is, of course, not religious and sometimes veers into the irreligious or deeply secular. Nor are the hymns really face-value hymns. The themes center on death as well as relationships (particulary though not exclusively sibling relationships). In short, it's a standard sort of Uncle Sinner album. The cover image is from a photo of "God and the Devil" by Armand Lemiez, a homesteader in the interlake (Sinterlake) near Grahamdale, Manitoba. He's dead but his concrete sculptures remain on the property. I waited till it was dark out and my son photographed it, using light from a torch I held, made out of a broomstick, a cotton rag and some kerosene. There's another sculpture photo on the back." The upcoming album cover image is really stunning. I followed up with a question about the omnious title "Everybody Wants to Know How I Die". Uncle Sinner replied: "It’s the title of one of the songs — a traditional song I expanded on. That’s the original title so I kept the original verb tense even though they would have meant “died”. I like the present tense because I like the notion that death might be something that happens to us regularly in our lives (“I’ve died a thousand times I could die a thousand more” were words I added to Trouble of This World). The cycle of creation and destruction, re-invention. I also like the notion that heaven and hell are not places but states we can exist in during our lifetime. With the title, it’s like people are envious of the way I can regularly die. The lyrics I was building off are sung from the point of view of the more literally deceased, whose point of view is “where were all these people when I was on my sickbed? Where were you when I was struggling?” Maybe that’s more information than you wanted, but that’s why it’s the title and that’s what it means to me." There's no such thing as too much information for a dedicated website. I have no further questions. The album will be released on December 11, 2025. There will be a few cds available for sale, but no pre-order. For my part, I know what to do next.