Milk Carton Kids Prologue 10 Year Anniversary 3LP Box Set

In North Hollywood in April of 2011, on a 5-day break in a 2-month tour, The Milk Carton Kids recorded Prologue - their first studio album. They used four microphones, two guitars, and their two voices. After its release on July 19th, the band would go on to play thousands of shows, dozens of festivals and television appearances, and garner three Grammy nominations. Ten years on, The Milk Carton Kids have become stalwarts of the global folk scene even as the world has changed around them.

The Prologue 10-Year Anniversary Deluxe Box Set pulls the curtain back on this seminal album, featuring original iPhone writing demos, early live versions, rehearsals, photos and other ephemera from the band's formative days.

According to Joey Ryan: "We wanted to commemorate this milestone for anyone who has loved Prologue, of course, but also for ourselves. Those early days were such a blur, but we kept so much of it in iPhone recordings, posters, ticket stubs, tour laminates. Putting it all together got pretty emotional. This was the album that changed our lives."

This anniversary edition is accompanied by an original essay from author and music critic Kim Ruehl describing the state of folk music in 2010 when TMCK came on the scene, as well as their contribution to it.

"Considering all that was happening in the recording industry during the demise of MySpace and the rise of Twitter - an atmosphere in which literally anyone could record at home on GarageBand or ProTools and throw their music up for an audience to find - Ryan and Pattengale made a different impression. Though they were clearly a couple of guys in costumes on a stage, they may as well be sitting in the living room, speaking in clear, poetic strokes about how they worry for the future and can't let go of the past - two themes that have rooted folk music for the past few centuries." - Kim Ruehl, excerpted from "Prologue Forward: A Decade On"

The 10th anniversary re-release of The Milk Carton Kids' debut looks back to those frenzied days when the California folk duo had first joined forces and spent their first years together on stage and on the road. Inside the booklet that accompanies this three-LP set is a US map that tracks their movement from one side of the country to the other in 2011 and 2012 - hundreds of shows. And the bonus discs of demos and live tracks that join a lovely remaster of the original album reveal the effort that the pair put into songwriting, harmonizing and winning over a suspicious audience. Their efforts clearly paid off. The duo's songwriting were so well-considered and their vocal parts so well-honed from the jump. They've only gotten better since but if they slipped from the scene after this one LP, we'd still be feeling the impact from Prologue a decade later.