Ed Askew

Ed Askew was an American outsider artist who made songs that were raw, mysterious, and as full of joy as often as they were emotionally crushing. He released a self-titled album (sometimes also known as Ask the Unicorn) that was among the earlier documents of acid folk with the mostly free jazz label ESP-Disk in 1968, but he wouldn’t widely share more music until more than 30 years later with the 2002 release of Little Eyes, a long-shelved album originally recorded in 1970. From there, Askew’s second act began, and he regularly released new material while artists like Steve Gunn, Sharon Van Etten, and Bill Callahan became vocal supporters and collaborators. By the time of his death in 2025, Askew had released dozens of albums, and Drag City posthumously released the record he had finished just before passing, The Final Painting, in July of 2026.