PRE-ORDER: Crooked Fingers "Dignity and Shame" 2xLP

Out-of-print on vinyl since 2005, this remastered 2-LP set comes complete with two vi nyl-exclusive bonus tracks in a gatefold jacket with expanded artwork, treatment befitting an album that has, in the quarter century since its release, been recognized as one of the brightest jewels in Bachmann’s considerable catalog.

After 2003’s Red Devil Dawn, Bachmann had successfully established a sonic signature for Crooked Fingers that was entirely different from Archers of Loaf, becoming a raconteur of forlorn, desperate lives spelled out in pained, exacting detail. While the collaborators who made that sound possible returned to make Dignity and Shame, the sound itself changed, embracing the bright, cinematic sweep of the American southwest, a sprawling vista Bachmann and his band eagerly galloped across. The soaring, joyful abandon of this album signaled a change, not just for Crooked Fingers, but for Bachmann, who today views Dignity and Shame as part of a broader attempt at moving past bad habits.

Bachmann’s therapist had told him to leave Atlanta, where he was drinking and smoking himself ragged, and head to a place where he could build new habits—to “get out of a community where I was just going to keep partying,” he says today, and “go to a good community” with a tight support network. In Seattle he joined his long-time lawyer, manager, and friend Shawn Nolan, as well as his friend and musician Barton Carroll, who became a part of Crooked Fingers in 2002. It was in Seattle where Bachmann wrote most of Dignity and Shame, and where he recorded it with Martin Feveyear at Jupiter Studios.

Dignity and Shame, like most Crooked Fingers records, is an album about stories, of loves lost and kept, forgotten and lingered on. It’s mistakenly been called a “concept album” about doomed real-life lovers Manolete and Lupe Sino, a Spanish bullfighter and an actress who had a tragic relationship in the ‘40s; Bachmann clarifies that only two songs and the album artwork are directly inspired by their story, but it resonated with Bachmann in the first place because it echoes what he had long been writing about. Love can’t overcome our fundamental weakness, but on Dignity and Shame he comes around to thinking they can maybe coexist, at least.

Bachmann has changed since he wrote these songs, and he’d probably say he’s become a better man. He quit hard drugs and smoking in Seattle two decades ago, and is now a husband and a father. A massive heart attack on Halloween 2025 almost ended his life, but his heart had naturally developed its own bypasses, which kept him alive. Moving to Seattle almost 25 years ago, and getting himself to a healthier place and more supportive community, put him on this path; it also gave us Dignity and Shame. “That was the smartest thing I did, getting those folks around me,” Bachmann reflects today. “That was a good decision, and I hear that when I hear the record.”