Astronautalis – The Very Unfortunate Affairs Of Mary & Earl

Re-release of an EP that originally dropped in 2006 via Germany’s offbeaters / subversiv*rec as a split vinyl release with Babelfishh.

The story of this album starts back in the 1560’s when a young man named James Hepburn met a young woman named Mary Stuart. What followed this meeting was a tumultuous love affair of epic proportions. Starting with an explosion, and a murder, which lead to a kidnapping, and a wedding, then an imprisonment, a prison break, and a race across the sea to mount an army for war. Which then lead to ANOTHER imprisonment, in another country, for another crime, and all of it ending in suicide and heartbreak. The ingenue of this tragic love story? Mary Queen of Scots. And her star-crossed lover, James Hepburn, was the Lord High Admiral of Scotland, the 4th Earl Bothwell, and one of my earliest ancestors.

James Hepburn is a divisive figure in European history, a devout Scottish patriot, a notorious womanizer, a possible practitioner of black magic, and, depending on who you ask, either Mary’s kidnapper OR her one true love. This album, written and recorded in my bedroom in Jacksonville Beach, FL, released on only vinyl in Germany, after “The Mighty Ocean…” was my first exploration into the realm of historical fiction, an important experiment leading up to “Pomegranate” and, in my opinion, one of the best records i have ever made.

If you would like to know more about this insane piece of history, i encourage you to check this out:
www.lordbothwell.co.uk/bothwellindex.html

– Astronautalis