The Band - ‘Music from Big Pink’ + The Revolver
Ingredients: 2 ounces bourbon whiskey (a rye-heavey bourbon like Bulleit or Buffalo Trace), 1/2 ounce coffee liqueur, 2 dashes orange bitters, orange peel for garnish.
Mixing Instructions: Combine bourbon, coffee liqueur, and orange bitters in a mixing glass with ice. Stir until well-chilled and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Twist orange peel to release oils over drink, flame the orange peel and drop into drink as garnish.
Notes: Music from Big Pink is the first album from a group of guys that got their start by performing as a back-up band, eventually becoming “The" back-up band for Bob Dylan in the Sixties. It might explain why their music stylings are so polished for their first album… they figured themselves out as musicians by touring heavily before their own debut release. The value of Music from Big Pink is almost palpable; “Big Pink” refers to the house that members of The Band were occupying in upstate New York when they originally composed the tracks that would end up on this album and where The Basement Tapes would eventually be recorded by Bob Dylan and crew. Whenever I think I have a pulse for the music, I imagine what it might have been like to be a fly on the wall in that house when this earliest music was being created in a place now so significant and I start it over from the beginning.