the Urban Artist Group presents...Sounds from the City Earth Underground

Recent developments in my writing career...

2009-03-01T22:58:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, I was hired at the Philadelphia Examiner as their "Indie Music Journalist." This first link is to my first article published by them. It was on a local band, Da Comrade!, whose post-punk, jazzcore, and experimental/progressive rock sound has taken the Philly Underground by storm.

http://www.examiner.com/x-4339-Philadelphia-Indie-Music-Examiner~y2009m2d26-The-Best-of-the-Underground-Set-Da-Comrade

(NOTE: In the weeks to come, I will be adding a lot more of these sorts of links, especially for the Phila Examiner.)

This next link is to the Urban Artist Group Magazine's "Sounds from the City Earth Underground" segment, for which I am both chief editor and head writer:

http://www.theurbanartistgroup.com/

A few different publications featured my poetry this month in their Issues. All of them great publications. And I am honored to be featured by them. They are: Saint Vitus Press & Poetry Review, Young American Poets, and Gutter Eloquence. And I also have a number of other poems and short stories coming out in different publications next month, as well as an article/essay on the Beat Generation.

http://www.saintvituspress.com/Page3.html

http://www.youngamericanpoets.blogspot.com/

http://www.guttereloquence.com/issue2/jgcarlson2.html

And that should be it for now. Be sure to check out all the above links, especially the Examiner site, as every time a different person logs on to my specific article I get a little bit of money for increasing their website's traffic, etc. So...I could use as many people linking to my articles as possible...that is, if they're so inclined.

Let me know what you think by sending your words to my e-mail:

theurbanartistgroup@yahoo.com

Incidentally, I will soon be posting articles on the following bands and singer/songwriters to both the Urban Artist Group's "Sounds..." segment and here at the Blog Page: the Riot Before, Pete & the Tar Gang, Northern Liberties, Mischief Brew, Dandelion Junk Queens, A Collective of Dirt, Country Bob & the Bloodfarmers, and others.

Take care.

-James

Yeller Bellies: boys will be boys

2008-11-28T22:13:00.000-08:00

Yeller Bellies

I like the nostalgia of the mystery of the unexplored West. Songs that told stories of lost souls, murder, loss and revenge.

-Rob “Yeller” Bell

Las Vegas, Nevada. Some call it Sin City, while others refer to it as Lost Wages. There are no doubt a number of other fitting nicknames for it that I am not familiar with, but one thing is for certain: many of them share the same commonalities. That is to say, many of them are based on the fact that Las Vegas is a city of vices, a gambler’s paradise, and a 24-hour machine whose gears turn sleeplessly all night long.
From a distance, once the desert landscape opens up and allows you to observe it on a larger scale, Las Vegas is quite a spectacle---a massive, glowing metropolis surrounded by what seems like an infinity of desolate nothingness. Adorned with millions of artificial lights and a number of monstrous architectural structures on both sides of the Boulevard, Las Vegas is a thriving, bustling piece of modern civilization in the middle of the harsh wastelands that are the Nevada desert. And the lights never go out.
To be sure, Las Vegas has all of what’s expected of a Southwestern town, as well the climate of a desert community, and yet it also possesses all the charmless corruption of a cigar-chewing pawnbroker’s office, all the pretentious glitz and glam of a battalion of runway models, all the practiced swagger of an Elvis Presley impersonator, all the shiny apparatuses and flashing lights of a traveling carnival, and all the untold secrets left behind in the dim rooms of old whorehouses. For those of us who have traveled the States extensively, we know that Las Vegas has many of the characteristics for which other major cities are well known, like the sweaty, booze-soaked sexual energy of New Orleans, Louisiana’s French Quarter during Mardi Gras, for example, just as it has the steady decline and artificiality of Los Angeles, California. In some ways, Vegas possesses the gloomy desperation, depravity, and bottom-of-the-barrel, chance-taking atmosphere of Atlantic City, New Jersey, just as it has the sunny amusement park and novelty stand environment of Orlando, Florida. Of course, there are elements of other places in the world, though decidedly too many to point out in a single article.
Dubbed the Entertainment Capital of the World by the mainstream press and other such forms of mass communication, this desert city is home to a variety of entertainers, including comedians, magicians, and bands and singer/songwriters. It is also a frequented destination for outside entertainers to perform. Such things mostly take place in the tourist areas, however, around the Strip, where the casinos are always at full swing, where crowds clog the walkways and corridors like so many blocked arteries, where the cards are dealt in a seemingly neverending cycle, and where the smell of alcohol and cigarettes are heavy throughout the local establishments. In that part of the city, you will also find a rather sizeable homeless population, who are drawn to the tourist areas to panhandle, to do odd jobs at the casinos for a few measly bucks a day, to rummage through the treasure troves of garbage in the local dumpsters and trashcans, and to take midday siestas on bus stop benches along the Boulevard. That’s the dichotomous nature of the city’s residents and tourists, though. Some are rags, while others are riches. Of course there’s a notable percentage of the population represented by the middle class bourgeoisie, who seem quite comfortable stuck in between the two social extremes. And then there are those who go to Las Vegas as riches and leave as rags. In fact, it’s a sad, pathetic story as old as the city itself, for as long as there have been casinos, there have been poor saps sinking their life savings into the slot machines and card tables and roulette wheels and so on. All of this is to say, obviously, that Las Vegas is a melting pot of a city, in which every walk of life, every ethnicity, every culture and subculture, and every level of the social hierarchy is represented to a certain degree by both its inhabitants and visitors alike.
Las Vegas is also home to the Yeller Bellies, a remarkably talented group of musicians and singer/songwriters whose sound is a combination of Rockabilly, Blues, Americana, and Roots Rock, among other things. When I first heard the Yeller Bellies’ music I was more than a little impressed, admittedly, as there was an undeniable chemistry between the band members, a sort of intuitive bond which seemed to permit one to anticipate the other’s next move…or, in their particular case, the next note, the next chord, the next boom and crash and tap of the drums, and the next line of lyrics wailed forth. In addition to that, they created a tight-as-hell and yet completely wild sound, brilliantly composed and yet as feral as an alley cat, a sound that would be enthusiastically applauded by the legends, both living and dead alike, such as Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Link Wray, and Mike Ness, as well as the old Blues Masters, like Mississippi Fred McDowell, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and Robert Johnson. What’s more, there, in the layers of the Yeller Bellies’ sound, something unmistakably Countryesque revealed itself as a component part of the whole, a Deep South Blues Rock and Country Riot sound, which was undoubtedly the kind to compel others to drink, dance, fight, fuck, and drive fast cars down the starlit backroads just outside the city limits and on from the bruise-colored horizons of the midnight world to the golden sunrises of the approaching dawn.
Truly, it is powerful stuff, this music, and I would dare say they are probably one of the best bands in all of Las Vegas, if not one of the best bands in the West.
It's whiskey and cigarettes music at its finest!
The Yeller Bellies are a four-piece band, with Rob Bell (Rob Yeller) on vocals and mandolin, Joel Hillhouse on guitar, Mitch Potter on upright bass, and Jimmy Krah on drums. They are all excellent musicians with loads of experience not just with their instruments of choice, but in the band scene as well. And it was during our interview in mid 2008 that I was able to get the story on each of them.
Rob "Yeller" Bell is a Vegas native. Geographically Vegas made sense to Rob’s mother, since his father was serving in the Vietnam War, and his grandparents were already dug-in there as professional musicians. Rob’s mother, who raised him, gave birth to him when she was very young, eighteen years old, and she needed all the help she could get. Not unlike much of America’s youth, Rob was a latchkey kid from a young age and remained so throughout his school years. He didn’t go to college directly after graduation, but it wasn’t something he was willing to live his entire life without doing, so he eventually got his Associates in General Studies. Though he now works a day job as a Construction Inspector, music is evidently Rob’s passion. His passions don’t end there, though, as he has been married for eleven years and is also the happy father of two wonderful little girls, Bijou Blue and Piper Rose. Rob loves the outdoors, but he loathes the desert, and he plans to relocate one day to Ft. Collins, Colorado, where he owns some real-estate. He is also a self-admitted live music junkie, with a ridiculous collection of over 3,000 cd’s and 1,400 cassettes of bootleg shows. The Yeller Bellies band is not Rob Bell’s first experience in the live music circuit, as he has quite a history of playing in Bluegrass outfits and such. Now, I haven’t heard any of Rob’s previous bands, but I can attest to it being true what they say about his overall performance in the Yeller Bellies: Playing the mandolin like he’s beating a dead, miniature pony, he howls through his songs like a fire and brimstone preacher. Come to think of it, in our interview, Rob even mentioned his vocal and mandolin styles in detail. “I’ve played mandolin for a few years now,” he said, “doing hard time in a Bluegrass outfit called the Pickadillos. By playing, I mean beating it until my fingers bleed. I’m not a picker. My strong suit is songwriting. I’m also a fan of experimental music (anything from Waits---post Brennan to Throbbing Gristle). Although this first release may not reflect all that, we shall grow and incorporate more as time goes on. Live, I like to scream like a banshee, bang on skillets with a claw hammer, beat the mandolin, and croon with the rest of ‘em. I like to work lyrics in rhythmic patters, really concentrating on meter and syllables. I also like to piss people off. More of a subversive than an anarchist, I like strong statements. I mean what I say, and I don’t participate in something I don’t believe in. I use pointed language and imagery to get my songs across. As an artist, I want people to love (or hate) our work, but not to treat it with a shrug.”
When I asked Joel Hillhouse about himself, he jokingly stated that he was born the son of a poor sharecropper. Then, on a more serious note, he went on to explain that he was actually born in Springfield, Missouri, and that he had grown up around music in the Ozarks. In fact, his father was one of those musical presences he grew up around, and of Joel’s fondest remembrances of his youth he counts listening to his father play Jimmy Rodgers, Hank Sr., Bluegrass standards and old revival meeting songs on his guitar, and how he used to play just for the joy of playing. Tragically, Joel’s father passed away when Joel was ten, at which time, for reasons he never quite understood, his mother moved them from the green, green hills and hollers out to the wide open, dusty desert in Vegas. Back then, Vegas was a much different place than it is today, and it definitely took some adapting to. After some time, Joel’s mother remarried. And Joel ended up spending the next few years around the Punk scene in Vegas, going to desert shows and whatnot. Currently, as is stated in an online description of his skills, Joel’s playing for the Yeller Bellies sounds like: the buzz saws from the hills he hails from.
Having arrived in Las Vegas from California at the tender age of eight, Mitch Potter grew up as a desert rat, developing tastes for things like motorcycles, hunting, fishing, shooting, hiking, and anything having to do with nature. This man of few words has confessed to me in our interview that his two favorite pastimes are raising reptiles (he used to be a snake rancher, with over three-hundred snakes at one time) and driving his wife nuts…in addition to playing the bass guitar, of course. The Yeller Bellies band isn’t Mitch’s first experience in the live music circuit either, and he has been involved in bands ranging in sound and style. But as the bassist for the Yeller Bellies, Mitch has been described as: a tub-thumpin’, slappin’ monster, still fighting the restraining order filed against him from his first upright.
In the 70’s and 80’s Jimmy Krah resided in Buffalo, New York, which, as he described it, was “a rust-belt, dying industrial town with no sense of humor, as you might imagine. At night you drank and you bowled. If you didn’t bowl, you went to local clubs to see bands, and then, if you were lucky, you formed a band of your own. The scene was different then, and it was better. The local acts were as good as the national acts, and the top of the local talent would work two day jobs and get a loan on the house to buy $20,000.00 worth of lights and sound, and they brought that level of equipment several nights a week to the big local clubs. Production values of live shows were much higher back then, too. I used to go see the local band Talas, for example, with bassist Billy Sheehan, playing McVan’s crummy bar on Niagara Street for thirty people with a four-dollar cover. Burgeoning acts like Motorhead and Metallica would play the Sky Room on Seneca Street for a hundred people in 1983, six blocks from my house. 'Local dive bars' as a matter of vogue and trend and marketing concept did not exist then. A bar was either crummy or it wasn’t, and you played there because that’s where the crowd was, and that’s where the gig was. The crowds were blue-collar people with shitty attitudes in general, and you had better be a good band or else. There was neither credit given nor glory taken in “trying.” You were expected to succeed and to impress, and if you didn’t, those crowds simply wouldn’t waste their time on you. And they had no problem letting you know you sucked, if you were stupid enough to suck.”
Jimmy had been playing drums for quite a few years when the new wave of British Heavy Metal happened. To him, it was a great thing, as there was a whole series of bands fighting their way out of shitty English neighborhoods, and they were willing to go over the top to breakout of Great Britain’s version of Buffalo, New York. It was even more difficult for those bands because they knew they had to measure up to acts like Zeppelin and Sabbath, which, let’s be honest, are not easy shoes to fill. Basically, Jimmy came up listening to and trying to emulate early Accept, Diamondhead, Motorhead, Iron Maiden, Raven, and Trust.
For six years Jimmy was a very dedicated drummer, until he ended up selling all of his gear to one of his drum students so that he could make his car payments. That was in 1984. At that point he stopped playing altogether. And the years between ‘84 and the early 90’s saw him go through many occupations---stockbroker, life insurance salesman, auto parts salesman, and a body shop worker---before enrolling in law school in 1993. In 1996, having graduated from law school and earned his blackbelt in Tae Kwon Do, it was time to break free from Buffalo for good. Then, in 1997, Jimmy made his way to Las Vegas in order to begin his career as an attorney. It was a fresh start. Certainly an entirely different world than Buffalo. Some years later, he began his own law practice, the same practice that is now funding his re-entry into music. Finally, in 2007, he was recruited by the Yeller Bellies as their newest member. And that journey is just beginning, it seems.
From what I gathered in the interview I did with the band, it would seem that Rob Bell, vocalist and mandolin player, hatched the very idea of the band from his love for Roots music. In fact, to quote an online source, Rob “Yeller” Bell heads this menagerie of miscreants. He is the ringleader, weaving tales of the wronged and wretched into haunting melodies. “I really just wanted to incorporate the sounds and instruments of the music I love," he explained, "write tunes that reflect that, and then collect individuals with multi-colored backgrounds to take that sound to a different level. I think this project reflects what we all bring to it collectively.”
“I had no real preconceived notion of what this band was going to be,” said Mitch Potter on the band’s beginnings. “As a matter of fact, I auditioned on a five-string electric bass. After a couple rehearsals, I felt the style and flavor of what we were doing would sound better on an upright bass. So I sold the five-string I had been playing for the last ten years and bought an upright. Prior to coming into the Yeller Bellies, I had been playing mostly Country and Blues with Bobby Kingston. Before that, I had been in several bands that ran the gamut from Hardcore Blues to Alternative Rock. I think one of the things that really helps the Yeller Bellies is the fact that Joel and I had been in bands together off and on since 1987. We have a great feel for each other and can read each other very well musically.”
“In 2007,” said Jimmy Krah, “still excited about getting my chops back in shape and really wanting to play live music again, I started a Rock band in Las Vegas, cut another demo cd, and shared a few gigs with the Yeller Bellies. Their drummer at the time, Scott, was a neat guy, a songwriter and guitarist who was able to teach himself the drums well enough to do gigs with them as a new band. The Yeller Bellies simply needed a more experienced and technically proficient drummer, and they asked me to join after seeing me play a few gigs with my Rock band. My hat will always be off to Scott for being able to handle the drums while the Yeller Bellies were getting off the ground.
“I learned the Yeller Bellies material well enough to start gigging after a few quick months of rehearsal,” continued Jimmy. “I think my first gig with them was in November of 2007. We continue to rehearse in my living room, with no complaints from my neighbors. Within three months we were in the studio recording our first album, Boys Will Be Boys. We recorded it at the same studio where I did the Blues demo and my Rock band demo. In fact, the studio is owned by my friend Lez Warner, former drummer for the Cult. Basically, it’s a converted garage, and there’s just barely enough room to set up the gear there. I recommended we use that particular studio based on my previous experience there. We recorded the bass and drum tracks together, live, over scratch guitars and vocals, with generally no more than three takes of each song. Mitch and I did the bass and drum tracks you hear on the album in two days, in two sessions, with no tricks or gizmos. We just hammered those tracks right out. Then Joel and Rob did guitars and mandolin and vocals to replace their scratch tracks. The album came together very quickly because we really wanted to record this band, and we were getting tired of not having cd’s for fans. It’s a testament to the skill of the players and a real credit to Dave Hornbeck, who recorded, engineered and mastered the cd in Lez’s studio, that it could be done so quickly and sound as good as it does. My favorite memory of recording the album is when Joel laid down the entire slide guitar track for the song 'Haunted' in one shot, on the first take. He nailed it like nobody’s business, and there was just no need to do a second take.”
For those of us who have heard the song “Haunted,” we know exactly what Jimmy Krah means. Truth be told, “Haunted” is hands down my favorite song on the record, with the cool, slow drumbeat which starts off the song, the phenomenal slide guitar part which flows hauntingly over the collective instrumentation, Mitch’s subtle but effective basslines, and Rob’s Bluesy vocals accompanied by a female presence with an unbelievably beautiful singing voice. Altogether, “Haunted” is an indisputable masterpiece of a song. Indeed, it is one of the best modern Blues songs I’ve heard in a long time, next to the songs of Pete Yorko, Two Gallants, and Timber Timbre. And when I asked Rob about the woman who contributed the guest vocals on the song, he said…
“That woman was my wife, Danielle Bell, a professional singer from the hotel circuit. Not only does she have a great voice, she works cheap. She came in and laid the vocals down in one take, and then layered harmonies over her original track (in Touched and Siren Song).”
As far as the meaning of the lyrics behind “Haunted,” Rob explained…
“It’s classic love and loss. Drinking to forget, drinking to honor, the pain still fresh. The song is a single narration, but I thought it would be fun to do as a duet.”
Of course, “Haunted” is not the only great song on the album. There are other gems, like the first track, a Rockabilly instrumental titled “Bullets, Booze, and Sombreros.” “Gutter dog,” the second song, is one of the harder hitting songs on the record, with a mandolin intro coupled with a steady beat on the kick drum, which soon breaks into a full-on Rock tune with a rising and falling distorted guitar riff wavering over it all, and the punctuation of each line with the notes of Mitch’s upright, while Rob howls the lyrics in fits of passionate vocal delivery. “Vegas is nationally known as one of the worst towns for the homeless,” said Rob, explaining the meaning behind “Gutter Dog.” “Entire areas of shanty shelters are razed, and parks are closed to the public in attempts to put the homeless out of sight. This is what would happen if the homeless banded together and revolted.” Later in the record comes “Siren Song,” a Countryesque number, the meaning behind which Rob describes as: "A sailor marries a siren, but suspects her of cheating with the boss, Davy Jones." And it all comes to an end with the title track, “Boys Will Be Boys,” a darker, more Rock ’n’ Roll piece, with a very involved guitar part, at least for the verses, while the chorus picks it up into an almost Punk sort of frenzy, with echoing backup vocals. Broken down into its simplest explanation, “Boys Will Be Boys” is a social commentary on how people raise their children, as well as a statement on how children grow up and make their own decisions.
Since the Yeller Bellies began their aural assault on Vegas, they have shared the stage with such bands and singer/songwriters as the Koffin Kats, Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers, Jesse Dayton, Pine Hill Haints (with whom they once played a show at the bottom of an empty pool), Detroit Cobras, and the Chop Tops. All of them very notable bands and singer/songwriters. It is my guess that the Yeller Bellies can hold their own at such shows. And if they’re playing with these types of bands and singer/songwriters already, I can’t wait to see what the next few years will bring for them.
As far as the individuality and specific characteristics of each band member, there’s definitely no shortage; which is to say, there’s Rob, with his outlaw appearance, wailing his lyrics at the top of his lungs, and rockin’ savagely on his mandolin (of all things!). Then there’s Mitch, with his cowboy hat and wolfman beard, holdin’ his upright like his best lady, and yet thumpin’ and slappin’ it as if it were his worst enemy. In fact, in our interview, Mitch remarked on his cowboy hat, saying, “I wear my cowboy hat most of the time unless I’m indoors and it’s hotter than hell; then the kilt comes out!” Jimmy is a good-humored guy with a look that suggests he was born a bit too late, sporting an awesome, perfectly groomed pompadour and big ol’ chop-style sideburns, while he pounds his drum kit like a man possessed. We even discussed Jimmy’s hair in our interview, at which time he said, “I decided to let the sideburns do their thing probably back in 2004 as a silent protest about what I thought were people’s values and expectations, and also as a commentary about my own values and expectations. They were already there by the time I bought my first set of drums in Las Vegas. I had been watching the box set of the police drama “Crime Story” from the 80’s, which is set in the 60’s. In a flash of inspiration I walked in to my barber with the box set in hand and told him I wanted to do my hair like Ray Luca, the bad guy mobster in “Crime Story.” We worked for about a year to train him to give me the right haircut, and now I get it cut on schedule every three weeks. If it gets to long, it curls and won’t stand up. It takes about ten minutes to style it for gigs and photos. Towel dry, two globs of mousse, and a blowdryer. Then I hammer it down with a serious hairspray---so much that it looks the same after a gig. It boils down to the right cut, the right natural body, and a few minutes with a blowdryer. And after four years I can whack it together in just a few minutes. It’s now morphed from Ray Luca to Dirty Hairy to Wolverine and back to Dirty Hairy. It has it’s moods. People expect to see my hair that way, and they seem to like it, so it probably won’t change any time soon.”
Music has been good to these madmen of the dusty West, so much so that they are even acting in films and doing soundtracks. On this experience, Rob said, “The first film, which we have just completed filming for, is entitled Killer Biker Chicks, and was written by Regan Redding. The film is a throwback to 70’s exploitation films and Russ Meyer. Low budget, murder, gratuitous nudity, etc. We all play bikers named after California prisons. I contacted Regan about doing a song for his film, and things went from there. We have written and recorded two songs for the film, and I will be on hand for the making of the soundtrack. The second film is called RUJOKIN, a comedy about a farmer and his ties to the mob. We have been approached by this project and have signed on, but we have yet to be involved.”
Truly, it’s amazing what these lads have accomplished in such a short time. It’s like they were meant to happen, that the Yeller Bellies were destined to form and make the music they’re making. And, in the opinion of this writer, I see nothing but rapid progression and good things for this wild bunch of outlaw sinners from the Left Coast. For these cats, as Rob once told me, “Recording is secondary to writing, and writing is secondary to playing live.” So support this band, as it exists solely to make you, their listeners, move, think, feel, and walk away inspired and better off for having listened to them.

http://www.myspace.com/yellerbellies

Naomi Hates Humans & the Insufferable Fucks: "Well, you know I don't write love songs."

2008-11-16T14:26:00.000-08:00

Naomi Hates Humans

With her acoustic guitar and a gravelly, smoky voice somewhat akin to that of the late, great Janis Joplin, or perhaps a female version of Tom Waits, Naomi Scott, who writes and plays her songs under the moniker Naomi Hates Humans, comes to us from London, England to introduce us to her brilliant sound, which is the offspring of an unlikely union between “blues,” “antifolk” and “punk.” Never had I experienced a sound quite like Naomi’s…that is, not until, searching the internet one day, I just happened upon a few of her songs. Instantly I recognized them as the type of songs that grab one firmly by the collar, pull one dangerously close, and command the whole of one’s attention. I mean, I almost get the same feeling from Naomi’s songs that I get from listening to Nina Simone. That’s saying a lot, too, because I am a huge fan of Nina’s music. Coincidentally, Naomi is also very much into Nina Simone, which I discovered in our interview not all that long ago, and she and I actually share a favorite song of hers as well---“Blues for Mama.” A fantastic song, to be sure. And next to “I Shall Be Released” and “Go to Hell,” it may very well by my favorite Nina song. But…favorite songs aside, I must admit that Naomi seems to possess some of those things that made Nina such an important figure in the world of “jazz,” such as passion and intensity, talent and confidence, as well as just being a cool character with an attractive personality and a strong femininity.
I’m probably getting a bit ahead of myself here, though.
Naomi Scott, along with her two bandmates, Sagar Patel (drums) and Lewis Young (bass), who are otherwise referred to, at least when it comes to the Naomi Hates Humans endeavor, as “the Insufferable Fucks,” have released a phenomenal debut album titled “Pipe Dreams & Lullabies” on Better Weird Than Dead Records. “Pipe Dreams & Lullabies” is an eleven song record covering such topics, lyrically and thematically, as socio-political discontent, the hardships and confusions of growing up, moving from the country to the big city, the sad loss of a wonderful grandmother and the remembrances which surround that particular experience, and romantic relationships that didn’t quite work out in the end. Naomi wrote the songs for the album over a period of about two years. When it came time for both she and the Insufferable Fucks to go into the studio, however, it took a total of about twenty-two hours, give or take, to record and mix the songs…and yet the album doesn’t come across hastily done. Nor does it seem to have a lesser quality than those recordings that take weeks or even months to finish.
Well, you know I don’t write love songs, Naomi tells us on the fifth track of the album, which is the shortest song of the eleven. Perhaps that confident, unapologetic, from-the-gut manner of conveyance is one of the many reasons her songs appeal to so many of us---because they are honest and down to earth, and they communicate her thoughts, feelings, and experiences in a very personal and human way. That is, there’s more raw truth and personal openness than there is poetry in the collection of songs featured on “Pipe Dreams & Lullabies,” but that is just another characteristic of her style that makes it all the more genuine. There’s also a very real life feel to Naomi’s songs, as well as that diary-like lyrical content which only a handful of singer/songwriters can truly pull off and pull off well, which is perfectly carried forth on Naomi’s inimitable voice. Her voice is smoky, yes, slightly gravelly, true, but also quite feminine, with something else that is neither too rough nor too polished. In fact, I think it would be fair to say that Naomi’s vocals are just as much a combination of “blues” and “folk punk” as the instrumentation itself, if not more so. In other reviews, Naomi's vocals have been compared to K.T. Tunstall (which I can only hear to a small degree, to be honest), PJ Harvey (which, again, I can only somewhat hear). One thing is for certain, however, and that is that Naomi, although vocally comparable to a female version of Tom Waits or Peter Reid (Pete and the Tar Gang), she definitely doesn’t look anything like either one of them. Nor does she look anything like Janis Joplin, to whom her vocals have also been likened. The truth is that she is much easier on the eyes than all of them. So…not only does she have a unique and attractive sound, she has the look to go with it.
With a driving bassline and a marching band-type drumbeat, the opening track of the record, “Consensus Counts For Nothing,” goes round and round in a somewhat repetitive fashion, insisting in the chorus, They heard us, they saw us, they knew our cause was true…consensus counts for nothing…they don’t agree with you…They heard us, they saw us, they knew our cause was true…consensus counts for nothing, when it’s just them or you. Of course, the first track on “Pipe Dreams” is not the only anarchistic protest song of the bunch, for Naomi seems to have some pretty solid and fiery views and beliefs in terms of social and political issues, as well as a well developed awareness of the current state of affairs in the world. In the opinion of this writer, such things only serve to make Naomi’s music that much more important, meaningful and worthwhile.
As far as the lyrics on the album go, one of my favorite lines comes from the second track, “Better Things,” which goes: And I’m too young to hate my job, so let’s get fired. We’ve got better things to do with our time. In “Better Things” Naomi sets up the verse structure by going over the individual notes of well chosen chord patterns, one after the other, in a fluid picking fashion, the bass hitting on the corresponding note and ringing out until the next, while percussion keeps a 1-2-3-4 beat primarily with kick drum and hi-hat…that is, until the chorus comes in. The chorus is where the song picks up a bit, with full-on chords, a busy bassline, and more involved drum accompaniment.
“Chin Up, Guard Down,” the third track, is a song about life in the big city. Definitely one of the songs that has gone towards earning Naomi the whole blues-punk and antifolk categorization attached to her music in the press, “Chin Up, Guard Down” is an downhill song, gaining momentum as it goes, beginning with background instrumentation and strong vocals, and eventually passing into chords and drumrolls and hard-hitting bass bits.
To describe every song on the record in such a manner would be rather excessive. But I will say that there are some other gems on “Pipe Dreams & Lullabies,” especially: “Heads Down,” “Death to Kaplinsky,” and, of course, the title track, “Pipe Dreams & Lullabies.”
If I am recalling it correctly, it took two or three e-mails to convince Naomi to take part in the Urban Artist Group’s Sounds from the City Earth Underground segment. Eventually we somehow won her over, and only a few short weeks later we received her press package, including her “Pipe Dreams & Lullabies” record. And after listening to it in its entirety a couple times, I was more than a little glad that I had employed such persistence in bringing her aboard this vessel of ours, as music isn’t so much our journalistic focus as it is our way of life…and I personally live for discovering such remarkable bands and singer/songwriters, or at least it’s one of the many wonderful and rewarding things I live for. And for me, the only place to find such extraordinary and talented artists is deep within the City Earth Underground, whether in the gray ghetto metropolises of the Northeast (especially Philadelphia and New York City) or in the snow-blanketed wildernesses of Canada; in the Nebraskan farmlands or the dusty desert roadside junk towns of desolate New Mexico and Nevada; the hilly terrain of the magnificent cityscape that is San Francisco or the backwoods bayou places in deep south Louisiana; the shotgun shacks and clapboard homes and ramshackle trailers of Alabama or the attractive little beach towns of the Jersey coast (where one is invariably met with those deliciously salty ocean breezes and the echoing calls of countless swooping gulls); and the cool and mysterious places I’ve never been, like Australia and Europe. Yes, there’s extraordinarily phenomenal music to be found all over the world. And like Los Angeles musician and filmmaker, Eric Beetner, says: Anyone who says there is no good music today is just not looking hard enough. It may have gone deeper underground but it is there. Take some time and find it. Truly, I couldn’t agree with him more. Music is as it ever was in terms of great music being written and performed. In fact, in the opinion of this writer, music is actually becoming more diverse and challenging. There are less lines being drawn between genre and other such categorization, less limitation to one style of music, and more open-mindedness, artistic vision, and expressive bravery. To make my point, I give you Naomi Hates Humans, a band that was born right on time, a band that is more of a response to today’s climate than a product of it.
But who is Naomi Scott? And what kind of life must she have lived up until now to have created such an endeavor as Naomi Hates Humans? When I asked her that same question, she responded by saying, Hmm. Ok. I’ve never been particularly good at quantifying my place in existence. Essentially, I’ve just turned twenty-six (which feels all kinds of old). I live in London, where I have lived for the past four years. Before I moved to London, I had always lived on the South Coast of England. It took a while to get used to not being near the sea, not that I ever swim in it, but I like looking at it. These days I love London and couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.
I make websites for a living during the day, which I find wholly unsatisfying as a pastime, but it pays quite well and is, at least notionally, creative. When I’m not doing that, I play music, draw stuff, and kickbox. I’m also a big fan of getting drunk and dancing like a goon (which is basically the national pastime in the UK), but I cannot and will not dance when I’m sober.
In terms of the music side of things, I suppose I was always a musical child, but not one of those terrifyingly talented genius types. I just enjoyed it. I started playing the piano when I was about eight, I think…mainly because we inherited one from my great uncle. I also took up the clarinet when I was about eleven and used to play in school bands and things. Strangely, I was never very good at improvising on either instrument and never really wrote much stuff for them. That was probably more of a confidence thing, I guess. I went to university when I was nineteen, and both instruments kind of fell by the wayside. Having got to quite high standards on both, I can now only really get by on them.
I took up the guitar when I went to university. I had a few lessons in my first year, and then I started a band. The other two in the band were both incredibly good musicians, so I kind of got away with not being too great on the guitar. I had no inclination to sit down and learn the guitar in any great depth; I just wanted to start writing and playing. So I learned the basics and everything else I just made up. Sometimes I’d watch people play guitar on tv and copy the shapes of their hands. Not the most conventional way of learning, but it worked.
Singing-wise, I was in the church choir when I was a child (but mainly just because we got paid!!). I grew up in a very tiny village (full of eccentrics and legends---exactly the kind of place I imagine Americans think of when they think of the English). The church was kind of the social centre of the village. I think it has changed there now, though. Less of a community spirit. I’m not sure I was ever a great believer in religion. It (the church) was just a place to go and sing songs and things. Anyway, I digress. I didn’t really think I could sing back then. I used to hide at the back and not sing very loud. At some point in my teens, I started singing at the piano when no one was at home (mainly Bon Jovi songs, of all things!!). At some point, I got the courage to start a band with boys from the village, and it progressed from there. The growly aspect only started to emerge during my university band. I think it was a combination of trying to convey the vitriolic nature of the lyrics with trying to hear myself over a very very loud band, not to mention the sheer quantity of Jack Daniels I was consuming at the time.
So yeah, I guess that’s the origins of my sound for the most part.
It is true that names can be misleading, and for Naomi Scott’s Naomi Hates Humans that is doubly so. Such a moniker has no doubt had countless reviewers and interviewers of music and arts to ask the same general question: “Naomi, do you really hate all humans?!” And while I am not entirely blameless in that particular line of inquiry, I am naturally curious as to the meanings and origins of certain monikers, while at the same time, in this case, I was trying not to take it too literally, trying to look past what seemed to be the obvious statement of it. So…with a head full of ideas and guesses, I asked Naomi its meaning, as well as where it came from. To which she replied…
Ha. Yeah, I get this question a lot. First the origin. My band at university was called Morbo Hates Humans (Morbo being the newsreader in the animated show Futurama). We were together for three years, and in certain circles I was known as Naomi Hates Humans as a consequence (there was also a Ben Hates Humans, who is now in “Tea With The Queen,” and a Dave Hates Humans, who is now drumming for “Ice, Sea, Dead People”). I went solo a year or so after we split up, and in the absence of a better name I went with Naomi Hates Humans. I thought it quite funny and memorable, and it also conveyed a little of what my lyrics were about. To be honest, it’s been both a blessing and curse, and I have considered changing it before, as it makes things all too easy for lazy reviewers. It often gets used to justify the idea that all of my songs are depressing and angsty. Whilst I’d be the first to admit that I don’t write party tunes, I think there’s a sense of hope in all of my songs, if you look for it. Most importantly, I don’t hate humans at all. That would make life very difficult. I find humans en masse a very frustrating species. We seem determined to be our own undoing. Mostly, if anything, humans disappoint me, and I include myself in this. We could all do better.
Somewhere along the line in our interview I asked Naomi about her bandmates, the Insufferable Fucks, Sagar Patel (drums) and Lewis Young (bass), as well as what it was like working with them, musically, artistically, and personally?
Sagar and Lewis are both very good friends of mine, she said, and they have been for quite some time. In fact, Sagar is also my flatmate, so he was an obvious choice when I wanted to get a band together for the album. Sagar is a terrifyingly talented drummer (although he is too self-deprecating to accept it), and Lewis is one of those ridiculously talented multi-instrumentalist types. Lewis usually plays either drums or guitar, but I twisted his arm to take up bass for the album. They are used to playing together, as they are both in the band “Tea With The Queen” (http://www.myspace.com/twiththequeen). It took me a few practices to get used to playing with a band again after such a long time, but it all worked out really well. We’ve played a few gigs together as well, which have gone done really well with the audiences, and it’s been really fun.
When I play on my own, I used to always sit down, not drink before I played, and take things very seriously. Having other people on stage with you takes the pressure off. The full band gigs are just all about having fun. This has kind of transferred over to my more recent solo shows. I now play standing up all the time, for a start.
“The Insufferable Fucks” was something Lewis came up with, and we all though it was hilarious, so we went with it. Not much more thought than that went into it, I’m afraid.
While Naomi doesn’t necessarily consider herself part of the female musical movement that is increasing all the time these days, it is almost indisputable that she has played a part in it, consciously or not, intentionally or not. Over the course of the past five years or so, there has been a perceptible rise in the number of people, men and women alike, joining the “antifolk,” “folk punk,” “anarcho folk,” “troubacore,” and “acousticore” communities of the underground music set. Young women are especially finding their musical niche as singer/songwriters with the emersion of such a scene, like Kimya Dawson, Rachel Jacobs, Jennifer O’ Conner, Brenna Sahatjian, Shannon Murray, and the like. Of course, this is nothing new. It’s simply that there’s more of a feminine awareness in recent years. And more and more the gender boundaries are dissolving.
To date, Naomi has released her debut album, “Pipe Dreams & Lullabies,” a split album with Tim Holehouse, “Naomi Scott vs. Tim Holehouse,” and she has also contributed vocals to one of the songs on Tim Holehouse’s most recent record, “…From the Dawn Chorus.” She has also played a number of live shows, though she seems to prefer the house shows over the larger venues, which makes perfect sense, as they are undoubtedly more casual and personal settings in comparison to the bars and clubs. Nevertheless, I admittedly can’t imagine a crowd, house show or larger venue, that Naomi wouldn’t be able to win over with her songs.
In recent months I’ve heard two songs from Naomi there weren’t on the album--- “Heroes Like Us” and “Some Things Are Worth Getting Your Heart Broken For”---as well as a live webcast performance during which she played a handful of great songs, including songs from her album, a couple newer songs, and a terrific cover Tom Waits' "Way Down In A Hole."
This London-based songstress with her half whiskey and cigarettes voice and bluesy “folk punk” songs is among those singer/songwriters who breathe life back into the underground music communities, and whose sound is one that won’t be soon forgotten by those who have experienced it.
Hopefully, Naomi will be providing us with such musical contributions for a long time to come. I for one will be looking forward to whatever comes next from her.

http://www.myspace.com/naomihateshumans

http://www.naomihateshumans.co.uk/

www.myspace.com/betterweirdthandead

Tim Holehouse: "Good Morning, Mr. Vampire."

2008-11-02T21:03:00.000-08:00

Tim Holehouse

When it comes to the modern singer/songwriters of this vast City Earth, Tim Holehouse, UK songsmith and sound-artist, is unquestionably one of the rarest and most interesting of the lot. With little more than an acoustic guitar and his voice, Tim Holehouse creates a dark and haunting soundscape of lo-fi blues and antifolk…that is, if a name can be attached to it at all. But names are decidedly less important than the songs themselves and what lies behind the songs. So in an attempt to get to the heart of the songs, as well as to what lies behind them, I asked Tim if he wanted to be featured in our little art rag here in the States. It wasn’t long before he replied, enthusiastically accepting my offer. And it wasn’t long after he and I discussed the basics of the article that I received an overseas press package in the mail. Enclosed was a pre-release copy of Tim’s latest solo endeavor: “From the Dawn Chorus…”
After listening to the record a handful of times, and having developed both an artistic and personal relationship with each of the ten songs on it, I felt it was time to take the next step and do an interview with Tim. Throughout an entire night of drinking strong convenience store coffee and chain-smoking generic brand cigarettes this past winter, I sat at my computer typing in an inspired frenzy to complete, one after another, the questions that served as my part of our online interview. In the early hours of the following morning, exhausted both mentally and physically, with the night’s cold, lingering darkness still pressing against the windows, and with my writing room awash in the soft blue glow from the computer monitor, which made my eyelids even heavier, I copied the interview questions, transferred them to e-mail format, and sent them to Tim.
Tim was very quick to send back the completed interview material. And, after reading his answers, it was rather evident that he had put a lot of thought and effort into them, as well as a much appreciated degree of openness and honesty.
Being that I knew very little about Tim Holehouse other than that he was a very talented and highly original singer/songwriter from the UK, I wanted to use the first question of the interview as a sort of introductory piece, with which to ask him: “Who is Tim Holehouse, not just as a singer/songwriter, but as a human being of this crazy City Earth in which we live?” And he replied…
Well, I guess I’m a guy who was brought up in Portsmouth, the naval flagship city of the United Kingdom. From there I lived for a while in Exeter, London, and briefly in Edinburgh. I’ve been in bands since I was 14. I have played everything but drums (although that changed recently when I jammed with a band on drums).
These days I’m a one man show under two different guises: Tim Holehouse the folk/country/blues acoustic guy, and Timothy “Drone” musician and lord and master of harsh noise.
I am now a traveling musician living on the road (although that’s going to change soon…but I’ll talk more about that later). And I guess it’s fair to say I’m a lover, not a fighter.
Occasionally, when it comes to music, one happens upon an entirely new breed of animal---a singer/songwriter whose sound is nearly incomparable to that of his or her fellow artists---and Tim Holehouse is just such an animal. Of course, one could simply insert him into the folky blues categories where singer/songwriters like M. Ward, Taylor Kirk (Timber Timbre), Pete Yorko, Naomi Scott (Naomi Hates Humans), and Angelo Spencer reside, but even they wouldn’t sum up his overall sound quite right. On the other hand, one could also place him beside the likes of: Strand of Oaks, the Mountain Goats, Octoberman, and Frontier Ruckus. You see, there’s a notable beauty and eclecticism in Tim Holehouse’s music that is largely absent in contemporary alternative and indie circles, and which strays well beyond the borders of blues and folk into other musical and artistic realms, some of which I haven’t any names for. And that’s one of the reasons his music appeals to me so much: there’s nothing commonplace about it.
Aesthetically, Tim’s songs have a rather wide range, though many of them tend to have a dark and brooding quality. And while that is so, it is also true that his songs don’t hold true to any particular pattern and go from one to the next like the drastically changing seasons here in the northeast. The shifting temperaments are at times subtle, while at others much more noticeable, but never too extreme. And the various components of each song seem to revolve around the elements of not only Tim’s surface character, but his innermost self as well, rising up from his center in bursts of artistic and personal expression, from the album’s second track, “Good Morning, Mr. Vampire” (a somber soundscape of intelligent and moving note-play, instrumental echoes, and oddly timed percussion, with soft, trembling vocals), to the fourth track, “Everyday, You” (a slow-moving vessel of a song, dark and airy, with effective note bends and the sound of fingers sliding down the fret board to create a bluesy, country-esque atmosphere, and vocals that harmonize off and on with the corresponding instrumentation), to the seventh track, “Tree on the Hill” (a darkly beautiful song with brilliant layers of acoustic guitar and duet vocals between Tim and Naomi Scott of Naomi Hates Humans), to the ninth track, “Searching For” (a piano-driven piece with strong, almost spoken word vocals), and so on. (Note: I only mention a few songs in the above paragraph because to mention them all in descriptive terms would be overdoing it a bit. And besides, the listener of the record should come up with his or her own ideas on the material he or she is experiencing.)
Just as I’ve already mentioned in the opening line of this article, when it comes to the modern singer/songwriters of this vast City Earth, Tim Holehouse, UK songsmith and sound-artist, is unquestionably one of the rarest and most interesting of the lot. Music isn’t just an art form for Tim Holehouse; it’s a lifestyle. Even more than that, it’s a religion. It’s a movement. It’s something absolutely necessary. Something vital to his existence.
When I first heard Tim’s music, I was quite naturally taken in by it, and I told him as much. In fact, I told him that I thought his songs were brilliant, that his music was unlike so much of the music out there in the world today, and that he obviously didn’t fashion his sound after the music of other musicians and singer/songwriters…or at least if he did, it didn’t show. Frankly, I was curious about his history as a musician and singer/songwriter. And I was more than a little surprised, though only at first, to find out that his beginnings were not as the lo-fi blues and antifolk artist as so many know him now, but as something else entirely. He explained it like this…
Well, the story of me becoming a solo artist is a weird one. Basically, I have been in many different bands over the years, from progressive rock bands to full-on metal bands. In fact, I spent the last 7 or 8 years around the DIY hardcore and punk scenes, playing in several different bands, the main two being: Soon the Darkness (a melodic hardcore band) and Among the Missing (a sludge metal band). The truth is that I came into doing solo stuff purely by accident. I had also been experimenting with electronic trip-hop stuff, kinda like Portishead, Tricky, and Massive Attack, etc, for a while, and we did the odd live gig as a sort of duo. But then I started writing some songs just for myself, really…songs that never quite worked for the project or bands I was in at the time. My first few shows came about as accidents as well, one being when my band couldn’t do a show together, and others at friends’ houses. It was all very casual for a few years, just something I did occasionally. Then, somewhere around the summer of 2005, when I was participating in about five different bands, I went to see a band called Funeral Diner, and I played one of my earliest, if not my first solo show with them (I can’t remember exactly which). The singer Seth had said, “Oh, I’ll put your solo album out!” To be honest, I thought he was just being nice. In my mind, I was a band guy, basically. But at another show, about two years later, Seth comes up to me and asks, “Where’s that album? You promised me you were going to record all of you songs.” He assured me that he had been serious, and that he still was. So I told him I would do it. A couple of weeks later a guy called Jim (Millipeed Records), having seen me play at one of his friend’s houses, asked me to play a place called the Homestead in Southampton. After the show, which was the first time I was on the bill under my own name (I think), he asked if he could put out my record in the UK. So I guessed it was time to record my songs.
Luckily, my parents live out in the middle of nowhere. So I took my four-track (if was good enough for Bruce Springsteen to have recorded his Nebraska album on one of them…!) to their place one weekend while they were away, and I recorded 7 of my favorite (or rather, the 7 that worked best together). Soon after I went back and re-recorded a couple of songs, as they needed drums, so we spent 3 hours in a practice space and recorded the songs with my friend, Mark Braby, who’s an amazing drummer. In the end, the recording ended up costing a total of about 30 pounds (and that was for the practice space). The album was titled: “Found Dead at the Shoreline.” And the themes for that record were love, death, and the sea. All of the songs were deeply personal, but the way I write is very coded and one wouldn’t know they about certain people even if one knew them oneself. Musically, I guess I took a lot of inspiration from stuff like Low, Codeine, and Galaxy 500 on that particular record. It was all very quiet…dark and brooding, with a lot of held chords. Part of the reason for the long held chords was because I struggled to sing and play guitar at the same time (if I were to be honest about it). I had been a guitar player in bands, and I had been a singer, but never had I done them simultaneously. It was a lot to do with confidence, too. I still think, for what it’s worth, “Found Dead at the Shoreline” is a very nice record, mainly because it’s just an incredibly honest one.
After that I got better at playing and singing at the same time…and I learned, and I’m still learning new tricks, musically. Thematically the songs are still fairly personal, but sometimes still run with a different kind of theme. One of the tracks on the new record, for example, is about Spike Milligan, one of my favorite comedians ever. Over Christmas I watched a program about his struggle with mental illness and depression, so as a subject very close to my heart, and he being an idol of mine, I wrote a song about. Lately, other themes have been very rural based, film based, and…well, I also seem to be writing a lot of traveling blues songs. These days, musically, I guess I mix doom metal spacings with blues scales and tuning (I play in d-g-d-g-b-b almost exclusively these days), much of which is accompanied by traditional folk melodies. I always feel like I’m learning things from other writers. And I know that I still have a long way to go on my journey.
On Tim’s new record, “From the Dawn Chorus…,” he admittedly stepped into a more experimental realm of songwriting, and I was more than a little curious as to what caused that shift in his process. Not only that, but I was also curious as to which style he thought represented him better as an artist…unless, of course, he felt that both represented him equally and were simply two separate facets of his artistic self. When I brought these thoughts to his attention, he said…
Well, “From the Dawn Chorus…” is a strange record…certainly the most ambitious thing I’ve ever attempted. Visualizing the songs with strings and then actually strings and full band arrangements and such was a big undertaking.
I suppose it’s kind of experimental in that in some ways I made up my own rules for way I approached the writing and arrangements. It’s also the first record to feature what has currently become my preferred tuning (d-g-d-g-b-b), although I did some of the material in standard tunings. Most of the songs were written for the album, though I did end up taking some of the older songs that I had never been quite happy with, at least not happy enough with them to record them, re-worked them a bit, and ultimately I felt they fit thematically with the rest of it. While it took maybe about two months to write the whole album, putting it together and recording it took nearly a year and a half. Even then there were still bits I would have loved to have re-done.
Yes, I guess it’s pretty bleak, like a lot of my other material. I don’t know it it’s quite as bleak as “Found Dead at the Shoreline,” though some of it is definitely a bit more euphoric. It’s true, I don’t do many upbeat numbers. I guess I have a pretty deep and sad voice. And I was also going through a rather dark period when I wrote the songs for this record. A lot of personal change took place while recording the album, too, which may have affected the overall sound. “From the Dawn Chorus…” was me writing and recording a full solo album as a solo artist for the first time, and I think was very conscious of that fact. And I ended up thinking to myself, “Well, if I ever make another solo record, at least this one turned out pretty much how I imagined it would.”
Having gotten to know Tim through our extensive correspondence, I am very much intrigued by him, and I can say without a moment’s pause that he is undoubtedly the kind of artist I admire and respect above most others. I mean, this bearded, shaggy-haired young man, looking like some sort of Euro-poet, casual artist, Undergrounder and meditative bodhisattva wanderer of the great highway world, lists his favorite bands and singer/songwriters in an order which ranges from Godspeed You Black Emperor to John Coltrane, from Tom Waits and Nick Cave to Neurosis and Murder City Devils and Ink and Dagger, and so on. As far as his own music is concerned, he doesn’t see the point in writing and recording songs he never intends to play live. He is a restless soul of the traveling world, going place to place to share his extraordinary and wonderful songs. And what’s more, he lives his life by Bill Hick’s words: “Play from your fucking heart!”

Future Kings of Nowhere: songs written on paper napkins

2008-10-31T18:06:00.000-07:00

Future Kings of Nowhere

With their base instruments and a strong repertoire of acoustic “pop punk” songs, the three members who make up the foundation of the Future Kings of Nowhere have come to us from Durham, North Carolina to claim the throne to the kingdom of the City Earth Underground. It is not a position easily won, granted, though they are faring remarkably well. Well enough, that is, to be quickly emerging from the initial level of obscurity with which every band and singer/songwriter is faced in the beginning. After a single listen to their self-titled 2007 debut album, one can clearly see that these lads are destined to go much further than nowhere. And if there is such a thing as royalty of the Underground, these three are undoubtedly it.
To get a better idea of the band’s humble beginnings, I asked Shayne O’Neill
about it in our interview. To which he replied…
This band has a bit of a scattered history. In 2003 I started playing solo shows under my own name, but I didn’t get serious about playing out until 2005 or so. By the end of that year, I was starting to feel like there was something missing, so I recruited a couple friends to join me on stage, which was when the Future Kings of Nowhere officially began.
My original desire behind the band was to play fast, catchy, acoustic songs that would sound good no matter how much or how little instrumentation was available. That approach has allowed the line-up of the band to be relatively fluid, with people coming and going over the past few years. Each new personality and instrument brings a different feel to the music, which I think is fantastic and ensures that the sound is always changing and growing as we go along. Recently, a core group (drums, bass, and guitar) has formed that are all willing and able to be permanent members, with horns and other auxiliary instrumentation coming and going as they please.
The sound is close to how I had originally envisioned it, but the path to where we are now has been---how did you put it, James?---“a blunder of human trial and error.”
In order to give you, my readers, a clearer and more complete picture of the royal inventor of this mad project, Mr. Shayne O’Neill, I suggest picturing a tall, slender, clean cut young man, most of the time sporting his eyeglasses (which suit him quite well actually), whose overall appearance isn’t exactly something easily inserted into the countless categories and subcategories of human existence. Otherwise, he is more or less a part of the jeans-and-t shirt masses of the Suicide Generation. But later, it becomes evident that he is another breed of animal entirely…and there’s definitely more to him than meets the eye.
Shayne’s bandmates fall into a similar category of style, which is quite refreshing, for there’s really not much that’s overly deliberate or cultivated in their styles, and they obviously haven’t the need to conform to some widely accepted set of genre fashions or to whatever countercultural stereotypes that may be attached to the scenes by the corporate branches which profit from infiltrating and exploiting artistic movements and such. (But that’s another topic altogether.)
Wanting to get a better understanding of the Future Kings, not just as musicians and singer/songwriters, but also as individuals, I asked Shayne during our interview about his bandmates and what each of them brought to the table.
Mike Hacker (drums), explained Shayne, provides the driving energy of the band, both in the music and in life. He winds up being the motivational speaker, the one who says, “Okay, here’s what needs to get done to make this happen.” He keeps things fast and heavy.
Jon Kornicki (bass), Shayne continued, is the newest member. He’s quieter than the rest of us, which allows him to be more peaceful than the rest of us. While everyone else is vying for the limelight, Jon seems happy to be playing a bit more of a supportive role, holding down the low end and keeping things positive.
Shayne O’Neill (guitar/vocals), he said of himself, plays guitar and sings. Neither of them terribly well.
Kym Register, Catherine Edgerton, Colin Booy, etc, said Shayne, (trumpet, sax, trombone, saw, accordion, vocals, etc) bring the fun. They’re not around all the time, but when they are, things are chaotic and awesome.
Having come to know their sound rather well, I can say with the utmost certainty that the kingly trio and their court of royal subjects have succeeded in doing exactly what Shayne had first set out to do, for the music of the Future Kings of Nowhere is indeed fast, catchy, acoustic music that is pretty amazing despite the number of instruments being used. In some of the songs, however, the auxiliary instrumentation transforms them from basic bodies of sound to many-layered compositions with all the elements of intricate “acousti-punk”/“antifolk” masterpieces. Of course I realize that the word “intricate” isn’t typically used in the same sentence as “acousti-punk” or “antifolk,” and you must understand that I am not using “intricate” in the John Zorn or Sufjan Stevens sense, nor in the Charlie Parker or Coltrane sense, but rather in the sense that the Future Kings’ song structures are like so many buildings in the immediate cityscape, all surrounded by scaffolding, level upon level of iron crossbars and ladders and planks, from which engineers work arduously at creating a more beautiful and interesting vision of urban architecture…the kind which cause passersby to pause and gaze at length, appreciatively and absorbedly. In other words, the auxiliary instrumentation fills in the gaps, further adorns the unusual décor of their musical abode, and weaves its way through the many apertures in the fabric of sound that the base instruments create.
Most of the songs on the Future Kings of Nowhere record, although sincere and from the heart, also possess intelligence and a razor-sharp wit, an undeniable energy coupled with…well, with something akin to the wings of a hummingbird, which move so incredibly fast that they almost appear to be standing still, nearly motionless, like the way I remember them hovering at the nectar-filled feeders on a friend’s front porch in Birmingham, Alabama. That is to say, despite all of the band’s frantic energy and fast-paced songs, there’s an undeniable clarity to them. Some of their songs are light and fun, while others are full of heartache and longing. Some are full of metaphors and irony, while others are cathartic and regretful. And like any great band or singer/songwriter of the City Earth Underground, the Future Kings’ music is just as emotional as it is intellectual. Not only is the music emotional and intellectual, it is equally soulful, though on a very human level (meaning that their songs, although cerebral and visceral in turns, every once in a while simultaneously, are cerebral and visceral in ways that most people can understand and relate to. There are things scattered throughout their catalogue of songs for almost every walk of life here in this vast and crazy City Earth.
Speaking of intellect and emotion and soulfulness, a lesson I learned early as an artist was the holy trinity of art, which is evident in any important, meaningful and worthwhile piece, to be sure. Quite simply, if the work of art evokes a series of inner responses from the one experiencing it---if it makes one think and feel, and also touches upon that unnamable thing at one’s center (which we will call the soul, for lack of a better word)---it possesses the holy trinity of art: intelligence, emotion, and soulfulness. Of course that’s a tall order for any artist. But it is also what draws a very obvious line between a great piece of art and that which is merely good. It separates the extraordinary from that which is simply ordinary, and the utterly remarkable from that which is unremarkable.
Some go by the old Shakespearian question of: “What’s in a name?” While for others, such as myself, it’s not quite that simple, and we are tempted to answer that there’s much in a name. Take the subject of this very article, the band, and their clever moniker, the Future Kings of Nowhere. Now, when I first saw the name of the band, I thought it to be a smart socio-political statement of sorts, a reference to the times in which we presently live, a way of saying, “The world has gone to shit, and there’s nothing left for our generation but nothing and nowhere.” And to a degree I still think I was partly correct on that one. Not only that, but I think it’s a pretty accurate appraisal of the current state of affairs. All assumptions and speculation aside, I simply had to ask Shayne about the unusual moniker. To which he replied…
It (the name) comes from a song I wrote a long time ago that had lines like: “Some day I’ll close my eyes and be the king of everything I see.” That sort of bitter, self-effacing humor describes who we are pretty well. There’s also a bit of anti-authoritarian flavor in it that suits our outlook on life. I also picture a little kid with a towel for a cape and a stick for a sword; or two brothers in rural Appalachia who never made it to college but have figured out how to make their car run on sunlight and garbage. Dreamers, to put it generally.
Ok. Now that we’ve covered the introductory segment, the band’s history, the band members, and the moniker, I think it would be a good time to go into the style of music that the Future Kings of Nowhere play. The reviews I’ve read so far have mostly used the term “acousticore” to categorize the band. And while that’s a decent description of their overall sound, it doesn’t do them complete justice. So I approached Shayne with the following…
“Over the past few years, there has been a decidedly considerable increase in the distorted, screaming masses picking up acoustic guitars and attempting to add a sort of clarity and meaningfulness to their music, only without sacrificing their punk rock edge. And for the most part, that artistic movement / musical revolution has been---whatever you’d like to call it---has been remarkably successful. And now you come along, the Future Kings of Nowhere, with a whole new formula for the “folk punk” equation, which isn’t so much “folk punk” as it is the term coined by the existence of your project: “acousticore.” Now, I’m not one to get overly hungup on categories and genres and so forth. Music is music, I know. And it is mostly my belief that there are two types of music: Superior and Inferior. But, all the same, I would like to ask if you think the term “acousticore” suits your style and sound as well as, or better than the others associated with similar bands and singer/songwriters?”
“Acousticore” might not be the best name for what we do, Shayne answered, but it’s a lot easier than saying “catchy, lyrical, front porch music played at top speed on an acoustic guitar, with bass, drums, and other instruments that make you want to bounce around and sing.” How are we different from “folk punk”? I’m not sure. We at least touch that genre on the edges. Maybe “folk pop-punk,” since our songs are mostly about relationships and our own neuroses, and only occasionally about the political topics that a lot of the “folk punk” genre focuses on. Mostly I wanted to be able to play fun, high energy, “pop-punk” songs, but I wanted to write about more introspective things than usually get touched on in “pop-punk,” and I wanted to be able to play an occasional slow song, and I wanted folks to be able to hear the words (hence the acoustic). Our music is the result of greedily trying to achieve all that at once.
According to Mike Frame’s review in Razorcake Magazine, the Future Kings of Nowhere’s record…Sounds like a cross between Against Me! and the first Violent Femmes record. To an extent, I agree with that comparison…the newer Against Me! material notwithstanding, of course, while almost all of the Femmes’ songs were great and are therefore relevant to the subject at hand. What’s more, I can also place the Future Kings beside such bands as: Fistful of Dynamite and Billy Liar, among a few others of the "acousti-punk" underground. For the most part, however, the Future Kings’ musical hybrid of “antifolk” and “pop-punk” stands on its own.
There are two tracks on their album that especially stick out among the rest, mainly because they are so very different from the others. The first of which, “Downpour,” goes in a rather peculiar direction next to the other songs on the record...which is to say, the song’s trunk is a tricky structure of O’Neill’s acoustic guitar and Kornicki’s bass wound tightly around one another. Hacker’s drums keep a steady, up-tempo beat and act almost like a powerful adhesive bonding all the components of the song together, including the brilliant horn parts which branch out from the trunk in a very deliberate pattern. In fact, the horn parts remind me, in this particular piece, of a vehicle going over hilly terrain, smoothly speeding along, up and over, while a scenery of impossibly green grass and trees like the wonderful crayon drawings of children go rushing by on either side under azure skies and golden shafts of sunlight.
The second song, “10 Simple Murders” is a disturbing narrative over a “country-esque,” “acoustibilly folk” sound with pronounced basslines, slightly twangy strumming patterns, and a continuously skittering roll of a drumbeat. At times, in “10 Simple Murders,” the union of horns and drums, bass and acoustic guitar seems almost reminiscent of a couple notable Spanish styles of music combined, such as “corridos” (originating from 18th Century Mexico, the “corridos” is a narrative and somewhat poetic style of song, almost akin to a ballad), as observed by Jo-Ann Greene (All Music Guide review) and the “ranchera” (a more traditional variation of the Mexican mariachi sound, the “ranchera” typically includes acoustic guitar, other stringed instruments, trumpet, accordion, and drums). There are a lot of ingredients that go into this pot o’ musical stew, though…certainly more than I can point out. All in all, it’s a brilliant song.
When I mentioned those two songs in our interview, Shayne said, We here at FKoN Industries are fans of the old “form follows function” adage. Hopefully the songs sound like what they are talking about. “10 Simple Murders” is a country-esque song because it’s about a cowboy-outlaw type figure. “Downpour,” a song about Bush’s pitiful response to global warming, has a lot of 7th chords (the jazzy sound you mentioned) because 7th chords have an unresolved, expectant feel to them. There is also a falling horn line that mimics rainfall to some degree, and that, in the words of Dan Kinney---FKoN’s old drummer---"sounds like a little kid worrying about the weather." Relationships like that are rarely intentional, usually occurring as happy accidents of the process in which the song and what the song is about get created at the same time, feeding back on one another. We’re trying to walk a line between keeping the music fresh (not letting every song be made up of just power chords) and keeping it accessible (not getting too far from songs made up of power chords).
Many of the Future Kings’ songs seem to be composed around similar subject matter, true, such as relationship worries and woes, failed romances, unrequited love, and all the late-night musings of such things…like in the songs “Never” and “C is for Heartache” and “Like a Staring Contest,” etc. Though their music conveys an undeniable intelligence, it also possesses an equally noticeable emotionality, and I found myself trying to figure out if was more visceral or cerebral, or if there was a good balance between the two (if such a thing is ever really possible). And when I confessed those thoughts to Shayne, he said…
I like the idea of balance, although I often find it a difficult thing to achieve in life. Most songs start with that visceral emotion, but in order to convey it to someone else you have to translate it into a more or less cerebral format (unless you just get on stage and shout “bluuuaaarrrggghhhaaaooommmp!”…which only fans of death metal seem to properly understand). I try to find the right analogy or descriptive moment to properly connect the words with the underlying feeling. I can also rely on the music to keep the song rooted in a particular feeling, since our songs are not ever terribly complex, musically speaking.
With the obvious exception of “10 Simple Murders” and “Downpour,” the Future Kings of Nowhere record could almost pass as a concept album. And I’m quite sure I’m not alone in wondering what their next contribution to the world of independent music will consist of.
Towards the end of our interview, Shayne shared his views on music as art, which he articulately expressed by saying…
The best thing that music can do is bring people together, either by dancing or sharing a love for a song, or just sharing an emotion of some sort. I hope that our music can make the world a better, happier place and that if we’re lucky we can inspire some other people to do awesome things, like fight sexism or build communities. I’m not sure if that really covers the subject very well, but it’s how we see music’s place in the world.
According to Shayne, the Future Kings are currently trying to make their endeavor a full-time gig, and they’re touring as far as their little van can take them. They recently completed a short northeast tour, and this fall they’re planning to take a Midwest trip. They’re also hoping on making it out to the West Coast next year. For information on this royal trio of the Southern City Earth, keep checking their myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/thefuturekings.

Tin Tree Factory: one for the revolution

2008-09-23T22:35:00.000-07:00

Tin Tree Factory

by

James G. Carlson

When you sent me that first piece of mail, I was leaving for tour. Now I’m back. It was two weeks on the road. We called it the “Too Dork to Punk Tour.” We, the four of us---Stef, Marc, Opal, and I---went from Seattle clockwise through the Western U.S., through the Rockies, down as far as Tucson, and then up the Coast. On the way back to Seattle, we were already talking about ways that we could tour next time and how we could get out to the East Coast. We don’t know when, but we really want to make it out that way. In fact, Marc, Stef, and Opal are all from that part of the world. And I’m from St. Louis originally. We all really love the Northeast.

-letter from Johnny D of Tin Tree Factory to James of the Urban Artist Group

A cold slanting drizzle began falling as the Greyhound bus pulled into its spot at the station in Allentown, Pennsylvania. It was a small station which closed early in the evening, and having arrived in the middle of the night, I was forced to wait on the corner of 4th & Hamilton for a friend to pick me up. Luckily there was an overhanging section of roof which partly shielded me from the inclement weather, though I ended up covered in a film of chilly mist despite my efforts to stay dry. I stood bathed in the sickly yellow glow of a nearby streetlight, waiting. By the time my ride pulled up curbside on 4th Street, the drizzle had turned into a downpour, fat raindrops crashing at my feet and soaking through to my socks. Tiny liquid beads hung from the strands of hair that had fallen across my brow, and then dripped down my face in slow rivulets to be absorbed by the fabric at the neck of my shirt. For having just returned from two years in the Deep South, I had very little luggage. I did have my lucky backpack, however, which was stuffed to bursting with a few sentimental items I’d gotten along the way, a photo album, my journals, and a portfolio case filled with manuscripts and poems. It was the same backpack that I had carried through numerous cities and several states, most of the time slung loosely over my right shoulder, or securely on both shoulders when I was walking long distances, and it was always the one thing I managed to hold on to, even when I had lost everything else…which had actually happened a few times.
From the sidewalk, the only thing I could see in the dark interior of the car was a hand reaching to unlock the door. After quickly stowing my few pieces of luggage in the hatchback of the car, I tossed my backpack on the rear seats, opened the front passenger side door and sat down heavily. I think I may have even let out a sigh of relief. After all, I was soaking wet and freezing. I was road-weary and in need of a hot shower.
After unzipping my jacket and wiggling out of it, which was rather difficult in the cramped car space, I looked over, smiled, and said, “Hello there.”
“Well, hello yourself,” she replied. And she was as beautiful as ever, with long black tresses like that of a gypsy princess, dark Mediterranean skin, and mocha-colored eyes. Indeed, she was even more beautiful than when I had left for the road and whatever destination awaited me, which had turned into a few destinations over the course of just over two years: New Orleans, Louisiana…Bessemer, Alabama…and Birmingham, Alabama, finally, where I resided for almost a full year. Since the age of about nineteen, it was rare for me to stay anywhere for more than three or four months at a time, so it was sort of nice while it lasted. But I became homesick for the north, especially my hometown---Philadelphia. It wasn’t only that, though. I found myself missing her more and more, despite the whiskey and narcotic comfort in which I often indulged, and despite the temporary lovers that sometimes shared my bed. I missed February. So I packed up, went to the station and bought a ticket to Pennsylvania, boarded a bus, and in doing so left behind the life I had built for myself there in the South.
And it was around that time, about a year ago, give or take, that I made the acquaintance of one Johnny Druelinger---the driver of the vehicle that is the Tin Tree Factory…an experimental “indie folk” endeavor out of Seattle, Washington, the northernmost corner of the great American West. Upon hearing Tin Tree Factory for the first time, one is almost compelled to label them “folk punk,” which they are to a degree, granted, as there are evident traces of “punk” in their sound, as well as a subtle “anarcho” message spread evenly throughout. For the most part, the Tin Tree Factory is a pretty fun and clever contribution to the Independent music community. I mean, in what other “indie folk” or “folk punk” band can one hear French horns and toy keyboards purchased from Thrift Store bargain bins? The answer is probably, “None.” Well, until now anyway. And those aren’t the only things unique to the Tin Tree Factory experience; which is to say that Johnny’s vocals, though they have characteristics somewhat comparable to those of Paul Baribeau, Kylewilliam Campol (imadethismistake), and Chris Johnston (Ghost Mice), are indisputably something all his own.
In our interview, when I asked Johnny about the Tin Tree Factory sound, being that it considered it wonderfully peculiar, very unique and original, and yet seemingly practiced and cultivated…did it come about deliberately and very specific, or was it a general idea that took shape in one of those inspired frenzies of artistic creation (?), he replied…
Hmmm. Good question. Well, I suppose it’s not totally deliberate. I find that little I do actually is. I have basic concepts, and I let those concepts wander off in their own directions. For instance, the instrumentation involved is limited to the instruments I have happened across, mixed with what instruments it just so happens my friends play. Right now those are: a French horn, glockenspiel, snare, thrift store children’s keyboard, and guitar. I like working within limitations, and then pushing those limits as far as I can. For example: we have a French horn, but I wasn’t imagining one being used in the songs. “What sounds can we make with it that fit,” we asked ourselves, “even (or especially) if they are not traditional French horn parts?”
It is all too common these days for people, especially those involved in modern press outfits, to make the outrageous claim that there is nothing original left in the world. They tend to suggest that everything is a carbon copy of an original, or a copy of a carbon copy, and so forth. And while I agree that too many great works of art are imitated by unscrupulous pseudo-artists of lesser talent and thereby cheapened and corrupted in the process, I would never go as far as to say that there is nothing original left in the world. And while I agree that certain pieces of art, particularly in music, are cloned in large numbers by the corporate machines and injected directly into the mainstream of Big Business America, where they are neatly packaged and given to the “supply and demand” factor of consumerism, I must also point out that it is not that way in the Underground of the City Earth. It is not that way for the Independents. There are still original projects rising up from the underground all the time, and Tin Tree Factory is undoubtedly one of them.
But this endeavor, although Johnny’s brainchild, does not belong solely to him, as there are other participants, other components of the machine that is the Tin Tree Factory. According to Johnny in our interview…
I think we all bring a unique thoughtfulness to the music, each in his and her own way. We’re all activists, collective-minded, for-the-good-of-the-whole type people. It’s hard answering for my bandmates, though.
On our last tour I was on guitar and vocals, Marc (Bookworm) as percussionist and keyboardist, Stef on French horn and accordion, and Opal on trumpet and glock. Each of us brings his and her own previous musical experience. Each has been involved in radical marching bands. Opal’s done punk and mariachi. Marc has done punk and indie. And Stef has done marching band. All of them understand music notation and theory, which is something I haven’t learned.
Johnny and I were corresponding, trying to setup his involvement in the Sounds from the City Earth Underground segment of the Urban Artist Group (maga)zine. At that time he was in the northeast, crashing at someone’s pad in New York City for a while. I was very much impressed with his music, and he was quite excited to be traveling the country and coming across new and interesting people with new and interesting ideas, artists with crazy talents and visionary masterpieces, and underground communities for fiery-hearted, restless-soulled, and free-thinking individuals of the Suicide Generation. And it was very cool when he wrote to me, telling me how thrilled he was with what I was doing with the (maga)zine---supporting and showcasing the work of the independent artists of the City Earth Underground. We even made plans to meet when he drove up to Allentown to go to Vegan Treats with a friend of his. Unfortunately, we he finally made the trip, I was bedridden with the flu. Needless to say, I was quite disappointed that had missed him. And I promised myself that if another opportunity presented itself, I would go ahead and take it.
It was around that time that I received a package in the mail from Johnny. It was a copy of his latest recording: “Dream Warriors.” I listened to it right away. And there was no question, it was an absolute masterpiece.
Being that I am very much into the music and message of the Riot Folk Collective---Adhamh Roland, Ryan Harvey, Brenna Sahatjian, Even Greer, Tom Frampton, and others---I frequent their website for news, updates, show listings, record releases, and so forth. And it was on just such a visit to their site that I first discovered the existence of Johnny D and his Tin Tree Factory project. Now, Johnny is not really part of the Riot Folk Collective, though he is good friends with some of them, especially the ones with whom he has collaborated and toured. In fact, it was around that time that Johnny had released a collaborative record with Brenna Sahatjian. The “Dream Warriors” album.
In our interview, Johnny shared on that particular subject, saying: No, we are not part of the Riot Folk Collective. I get asked that a lot. I think because I’m so close to many of the members. About half of the Collective are some of my best friends, and the other half I’ve barely even met. Adhamh Roland is a friend of mine from way back. We went on our first tour together, before Riot Folk even existed.
Working with Brenna on the album was awesome. Previously we hadn’t known each other too terribly well. We just noticed that we both fit what we thought of as similar styles. We’re both political folk musicians, but not traditional folk, or even traditional politics. We’re musicians first, who just happen to write about the things we think about. And what we think about just happens to be considered political. We don’t really fall into the Gutherie school of music; more the Ani [DiFranco] school.
The process of recording [“Dream Warriors”] was fun and collaborative. We both tried to come up with parts for each other’s songs using a variety of instruments: cello, bass, drums, shakers, trash, scrap wood, keyboard…whatever was around. We would play the base---guitar and vocals---track over and over on the speakers while we banged away at things until we came up with something we liked. Basically, we did that for about two weeks straight, and then I spent about the same amount of time mixing it until it was all done. Through the recording and touring process, Brenna and I have become great friends. It’s been wonderful getting to know her, both musically and personally, which I suppose is almost the same thing…but that’s another topic entirely.
Admittedly, I feel somewhat compelled to share the fact that Johnny’s music reminds me of my friend Gabriel. Gabriel, the great junk artist of the Suicide Generation, who used to be seen rummaging through dumpsters and garbage cans for materials around New York City at any hour of day or night, his long, greasy black hair unkempt and knotted and hanging in fantastic strands across his face, mad in his creative frenzies. And his face…I remember his face. It was an unforgettable countenance, to be sure, with eyes so dark as to seem otherworldly at times, a perpetual five o’ clock shadow peppering his jaw, and a mysterious, purple-colored scar which ran down his left temple and upper cheek (the only point of distraction to mark the otherwise flawless complexion of his somewhat handsome face). Eccentric would be one word to describe Gabriel, as would the words: talented, intelligent, soulful, huge-hearted, subversive, unique, and unconventional. He was also an individual of immense depth. That last---depth---I use in terms of both his character and the potential he had as an artist, the untapped creativity and imagination, the countless ideas in his brilliant head, the evolution of his art and the inner evolution of him as a human being. At all hours, Gabriel would cut designs out of sheets of salvaged metals with his tin-snips and then bend them with his Van-Mark “brake,” weld bits and pieces together, fasten things to the main bodies of work, and add junk scraps. In his workshop, there were life-size figures and distinct shapes made out of nuts and bolts, out of car parts, out of doorknobs and plumbing accessories and discarded aluminum cans. Later, in the sculpture-like pieces he began making towards his paranoid end, he would break every mold into unrecognizable shards after pouring the liquid plaster into them and letting them harden to the desired shapes…
The point being that Johnny reminds me of Gabriel in his originality and artistic vision, in his rare and far-reaching spirit which touches the people with whom he comes in contact along the way. I mean, I only know Johnny in the most basic sense that one can know someone, and still I can recognize him as a very interesting and worthwhile individual, a talented and artistic individual with important ideas.
Also in my interview with Johnny, I asked him the question that many of you have already no doubt asked yourselves: “What does Tin Tree Factory mean? And how did he come up with that particular name for his band?” Quite simply, he answered…
It’s kinda silly. I just sat around one day, probably about five years ago or so, just writing out combinations of words on a sheet of paper to see which ones I liked. I was watching the Simpsons---the one where Lisa sees into the future, and she goes to college. On the college campus there was a tree hologram that sort of fizzles out and some kid kicks it until it works again. On the plaque of the tree it read, “In Memory of a Real Tree.” It’s funny, but also, when you think about it, devastatingly sad, because it seems possible in this world, in a sci-fi sort of way. So I was thinking about all that and about how dominant culture in the US has this way of selling people artificially reproduced things that would reproduce on their own if we’d just leave them alone. Well, the same goes for music. I’d love to see the music industry collapse. And I feel like it’s coming close. We’re at a point now that people who make music in their bedrooms and play shows in people’s living rooms are challenging mainstream TV and radio. That’s incredibly exciting to me, because I believe in music that you can touch and feel in your home, real music made by real people, and to have it happen right there in front of you is so much more profound and life-changing than what they can churn out at the industry level. I guess that’s the long answer as to the origins of the name.
Ok. So with that, we can all get a better feel for Johnny as an artistic, radical and free-thinking individual of the City Earth Underground. And he is definitely one of those artists for whom the underground is inexpressibly important and necessary, to such a degree that I can see him spending the rest of his artistic and musical days as a dedicated Undergrounder. And some of the things that I admire and respect above so much else are also things that Johnny seems to stand for---the refusal to sellout to Big Business, to be conditioned by societal standards, to allow oneself to be swayed by the corporate and political propaganda of our times, and to be guided by the desire for status and greed. Rather than becoming a component part of the machine, Johnny has disengaged as an independent, an individual…and really, other than love, what can be more important than Freedom and Individuality. And besides, the machine will keep on grinding and turning and thundering on without us, through the days and nights, the weeks and months and years. As such, we seek to govern ourselves, rather than having a central governing body dictating what we do and think and feel. And many times, these thoughts and feelings show in our art, like in Johnny’s Tin Tree Factory songs. But art also suffers at the hands of mainstream corporate America, at the hands of capitalism, at the hands of consumerism and the supply and demand factor, and so on in the way that things are in the present state of things. In fact, it was on just such a subject that Johnny spoke at our interview, saying…
I believe we live in a time where capitalism has a hard, far-reaching, deep, and historical impact on art (and especially music). I believe that the way people express themselves has been seriously wounded by the buying and selling of art. Another way to say this is…I hate when people say, “I can’t sing.” That is a perfect, real-life example of it. I’m sure you or someone you know says it regularly. But when people say it, all I hear is, “My singing voice is not deemed ‘sellable’ by our market standards. But people can sing, whether they know it or not. Since we are surrounded by a world where art is a commodity, and where the most “commodified” is often associated with “best,” people are made to believe that their singing voices, or their way of drawing or painting, or their poetry is all bad, because it does not sell. And I am not saying that all art is good; I’m saying that expression is good. And I am also saying, sadly, that incorporating expression into all the parts of our lives and accepting others’ art as real and valid is becoming lost on us as a culture. I think that music has especially been affected by this. And thanks to technology’s ability to level that playing field a little, we are beginning to battle back to a world where everyone creates, and that creating is normal, and that singing and playing music everyday is also normal, and real.
As an afterthought to that, Johnny added…
Creation is infectious. Life is better with mutual support. And…if you show me yours, I’ll show you mine.
Indeed, this is one young man whose outlook on life and the world in general is undoubtedly a positive one. He is not afraid to be himself, to speak out, to have fun, to strum his guitar and shout out his lyrics. Nor is he afraid to get serious and speak about what he believes in, to share about his life…his fears and hopes, his experiences and observations, triumphs and failures, genius and folly, loves and losses, likes and dislikes hardship and ease, sanity and madness, just like the handful of other extraordinary independent artists of the City Earth Underground.
In our interview Johnny also said, The things I sometimes try to convey are something like: the world is complex and scary, but out of that complexity and scariness you can find really beautiful things that make everything worth it. Having said that, I suppose I try to take a realist’s optimism into each thought.
Truth be told, I have heard both Johnny’s latest release, his collaboration with Brenna Sahatjian, “Dream Warriors,” as well as his earlier material, the only collaboration on which being that which went on between the members of Tin Tree Factory (Johnny, Stef, and Marc…and Opal, when she’s around), and his earlier material is unquestionably a bit different from what he did with the “Dream Warriors” record. That is to say, Johnny’s songs prior to “Dream Warriors” had a different kind of experimentation going on, and that different kind of experimentation was perhaps a bit more subtle, together with a more straight forward “indie folk” sound, and something else which, though I cannot name it right now, is something that also belonged to a few other acoustic bands and singer/songwriters of the Suicide Generation’s predescessors. In other words, Johnny’s other material prior to his collaboration with Brenna---the “Rejoice in How We Fail” album, for instance---has a more “emo folk”/”indie folk” sound than that which he exhibited in “Dream Warriors.” It seems to me that he ended up really stumbling upon his true musical voice as a singer/songwriter with the “Dream Warriors” album. And I for one certainly hope that we can expect more of the same from Johnny D. and the rest of the Tin Tree Factory crew in the near future, and for a long time to come.

http://www.myspace.com/tintreefactory

http://www.tintreefactory.com/

http://www.riotfolk.org

David Dondero: the outbound sound

2008-09-12T13:19:00.000-07:00

David Dondero

by:
James G. Carlson

When you spend so many years of your life traveling across this vast City Earth, through the dusty deserts of the southwest, the mountainous regions of the far north, small towns in the landlocked middle states, coastal beach communities overrun with tourists, the gray cities of the northeast, the sweaty and mysterious deep south, the numerous truck stops, rest areas, seedy bars and bad motels, all of those things become part of you somehow. The mind becomes like a photo album, retaining all of the significant images. All of the meaningful experiences and observations take up residence in the heart, while those of sadness and desperation lay heavy in the gut. And, in a sense, when you leave, you take with you all of the new and interesting and oftentimes wonderful individuals you come across along the way.
For me, specifically, it was the tremendous Golden Gate Bridge, which isn’t golden at all, but more of an orange vermillion, perhaps a shade or two apart from the traces of lipstick on a woman’s napkin or cigarette. It was Jackson Square in New Orleans, with all the street performers, fortunetellers, novelty merchants, beggars and drunkards, artists painting portraits of passersby, and jazzmen playing their horns for spare change. Also in the Crescent City, other than the exquisite marriage of French and Spanish architecture throughout the Quarter, there stood the magnificent Saint Louis Cathedral, its dark spires offsetting its bone-white base and stabbing at the Louisiana firmament, its cavernous interior lined with aisles of wooden pews, every side decorated with stained-glass windows and detailed statuary, while both ceiling and walls displayed baroque style murals and Renaissance-like frescoes. It was the 24-hour ashtray extravagance of the ever illuminated Las Vegas, with the wild overhead images flashing across Freemont Street’s electronic canopy, the frantic blur of movement up and down the Strip, and the nightmare ghettoes of North Town. It was the charming redbrick row homes and cobblestone streets (or Belgian Block streets, rather) of South Baltimore. It was the salty breeze blowing in off the ocean at the Atlantic City boardwalk, the string of lights at the shoreline and the moon above reflecting off of the dark water with its occasional white-capped swells rolling in toward the beach at high tide, smoky casino floors with the din of slot machine action, all-you-can-eat buffets, and good booze and bad women. It was the dark projects of North Philadelphia---home sweet home!---where one out of every ten in a line of homes, all in various stages of decline, was boarded up and posted as either “seized” or “condemned,” where the narrow streets were littered with broken glass and used hypos, where a steady flow of dope was sold anonymously through holes in walls and hinged mail slots and the rotting boards of old wooden fences, and where the rusted skeletal remains of stripped-down vehicles perched upon cinderblock pedestals in vacant lots. And it was the impossibly crowded sidewalks, gridlocked streets, monuments and rooftops crusted over with years of accumulated pigeon shit, and the incredibly tall buildings of midday Manhattan.
Those are just a few of the things that now take up space in my head. And there are so many feelings assigned to each of those memories that it becomes much more than just a cerebral thing, but a deeply visceral thing as well.
There are artists whose art is a direct result of having experienced and observed the world in such a way. And singer/songwriter David Dondero---a genuine troubadour of the City Earth---is definitely one of them.
David Dondero’s existence became known to me through a series of musical discoveries some years back. You see, I was just getting into the whole “indie folk” movement, as well as the many branches which grew from that particular trunk. Robert Sarazin Blake and Erik Petersen were just two of the singer/songwriters I was listening to at that time. And by researching their music and the combined “folk” and “punk” communities surrounding them, I was somehow exposed to David Dondero and his music.
There was something raw and worldly about David Dondero’s music, something altogether soulful and intelligent, honest and down-to-earth, romantic and subversive and poetic. His music was completely without the boundaries by which so many other bands and singer/songwriters were limited. In every chord, every note, every word sung, as well as the accompanying instrumentation, it was more and more evident that the songs weren’t being written and performed out of some ambition to please the general consuming public, but instead out a pure love for the song structure, out of having something real to say, and out of some inherent drive to satisfy each stage of what was ultimately a single personal and artistic goal…you know, that thing that we all have which sort of tugs at the fabric of souls, quickens the beating of our hearts, and causes our minds to overflow their banks. It’s that which guides his skillful fingers over the fret board of his guitar, that which pushes the words up from deep within him, up through his throat, over his tongue and past his lips in great trembling bursts of vocal delivery. And I found those things impossible to ignore. I found them impossible not to appreciate immensely.
But that was just the tip of the iceberg, as the saying goes. That is, those were only a few of the things that first attracted me to David’s music, as there was so much more to it than that. There is so much more to it than that.
It has always been easy for me to see why David’s music appeals widely to the “folk” and “punk” countercultures, for it utter defies the “pop” and “rock” conventions of mainstream America in every way. After all, his sound is the world as he knows it, and it shows him for the human being he truly is. The world as he know sit is one long highway, from the numerous exits of which he may find himself at any moment in a place that seems vaguely familiar, probably because he’s been there before in his travels, but also because he has a very close relationship to the world as only a drifter can, and no matter where he ends up there are always slight variations of the same smoky barrooms he has known in other towns and cities, the same cheap motels, beautiful women, neon lights, streetlights, all-night grease pot diners, shady pool halls, pawn shops, tattoo parlors, liquor stores, public parks, and networks of labyrinthine street and alleyways, the same boulevards and avenues and main drags. And when I told David that I can’t help but notice that his lyrics seem so much like personal topics, like real life circumstances, presumably resulting from his experiences and observations while existing in this mad City Earth and doing what he does as a singer/songwriter, he remarked: That’s pretty much it. I tend to respond to what all has gone on before my eyes. Lately I have been going further into somewhat of a fantasy world, though…like with Double Murder Ballad Suicide.
[Note: “Double Murder Ballad Suicide” is the last track on David’s most recent record, “Simple Love.”]
You must understand, David is first and foremost an artist; a true folk artist of the City Earth. He is a bard of the streets, of the sidewalks and alleys, the barrooms and twenty-five-dollar-a-night motel rooms, beat vehicles enduring the seemingly endless miles, and the views from a thousand different windows in a thousand different places. His lyrics, which are often poetic, very well could have earned him a crown of laurels had he chosen a more academic path…though he is more the type to sport a baseball cap around his shaggy brown locks, or no covering at all. And besides, David’s lyrics are poetic in the same way that…well, in the way that Allen Ginsberg, the brilliant and revolutionary Beatnik poet, recognized Bob Dylan’s lyrics as that of a true poet.
David is also a remarkable songsmith. A troubadour of the Suicide Generation. A wandering minstrel of the strange and wonderful highway world through which he travels like the vagabond characters in Kerouac novels, always heading down that long, long road from one brief destination to the next, leaving his mark, leaving indelible impressions on those with whom he spent his time before moving on.
Recently I had the opportunity to interview David Dondero for the first time, which undoubtedly qualified as one of those unforgettable experiences that lives on deep within one for the remainder of one’s life. After all, he is one of my favorite singer/songwriters, and it was certainly an honor and pleasure to interview him.
For the sake of introductions, as well as to serve as a sort of precursor to the m ore specific material to follow, I asked David, quite simply, “Who is David Dondero, not just as a singer/songwriter, but as a human being of this mad City Earth in which we all live?”
Well, he began, sometimes I’m not even sure. I get lost and then I see someone I know…a good friend…or I hear a song, or smell some smell. Then it all comes back: oh yeah, that’s who I am. I’m the steak and egg special at the Dixie Grill in Wilmington, North Carolina. Or I’m a shrimp burrito in the Mission. Sometimes I’m a McDonald’s dollar menu item, though. And sometimes I feel like sleeping forever.
I guess I’m just trying to figure out what it’s all about. Just trying to live and be content. I’m a restless person. I can’t seem to stay in one place too long. I’m not afraid of work. In fact, I enjoy manual labor at times. I’m not very interested in settling down or having kids, having a career, collecting things, or displaying all the books I’ve read on some shelf. I’d rather read them and hand them off, like a relay race to nowhere…just collecting tidbits of information for my grave.
It wasn’t difficult for me to grasp David’s words. Partly he was just associating himself with the things of the world with which he was most familiar, the things that had become part of him, and the things that pointed out his likes and dislikes, his appetites and repulsions, his beliefs and values, his thoughts and feelings, his experiences and personality. Whether he realized it or not, his words showed me that he is a sentimentalist and somewhat of a romantic. But, then again, most artists and travelers are. They also showed me his sarcastic wit and inner complexity. Most of all, they showed me that he is both a true artist and a very important presence in the Underground Arts Movement.
David Dondero was born in Duluth, Minnesota, which coincidentally was also the birthplace of Bob Dylan, another notable singer/songwriter in the history of the world. Since then, however, David has spread his wings and taken flight, so to speak, moving away from the nest and covering more territory in his young adulthood than most people see in an entire lifetime. All one would have to do to get an idea of the extent to which David has traveled and experienced the world would be to listen to his songs. It’s all there, like the chapters of a book, from his first solo release “the Pity Party” (1999 on Ghostmeat Records) to his latest release “Simple Love” (2007 on a division of Saddle Creek Records called Team Love).
One of my favorite Dondero songs---”South of the South”---is a fluid narrative over a composition of perfectly chosen note combinations and subtle horn parts, with other marginal instrumentation like so many exhalations of cigarette smoke gathering in pungent ghost-like clouds under the dim barroom lights before thinning out into dispersing tendrils and vanishing altogether. “South of the South” possesses something all its own, something that carries on its notes and chords and vocals the undeniable elements of real life and the highway world. In fact, I have thought to myself on more than one occasion since first hearing “South of the South” that David Dondero’s music is probably what Jack Kerouac’s music would have sounded like, had he been a singer/songwriter and not a wordsmith. The lyrics of “South of the South” recount experiences and observations having to do with various parts of the south, but most of all, as David explained to me in our interview, it was mainly inspired by how much he missed Florida at the time.
I had moved out to San Francisco in 2000, he said. I had gone through a rough breakup and was longing for Florida again. I ended up going back and forth from San Francisco to Florida, eventually heading back to San Francisco to stay for a while. “South of the South” was a bittersweet song reflecting on mostly good things in Florida, but a few troubles as well. I still find it to be a sweet place…one of my favorites. I still love all of my friends back there. And I miss them very much.
In many ways I am able to relate to David’s music, especially in terms of my own personal and artistic experiences throughout the years. Of course, there have been other bands and singer/songwriters whose music has had a similar affect on me, bands and singer/songwriters such as: Jeff Mangum’s Neutral Milk Hotel, John Darnielle’s Mountain Goats, Robert Beatty’s Ghostwrite, Ben Barnett’s Kind of Like Spitting, Jeffrey Lewis, and of course Robert Sarazin Blake and Erik Petersen. They all have the same thing in common is what it all comes down to: their music speaks the language of the world. And David Dondero’s music speaks the language of the world unlike any band or singer/songwriter I have ever heard.
Yes, the world speaks to us. All we need to do is pay attention.
The evolution of David’s sound has seen many phases of development, especially taking into consideration his first band, Sunbrain, which he now remembers as…
I got to put my whole body into it, jumping around like a maniac and basically making an ass out of myself, screaming and slamming things and pouring beer all over…having a great time! We were trying to be Fugazi but didn’t quite pull it off. We weren’t Straight Edge at all. It had more of a surf music thing going on.
Following his departure from Sunbrain, David found himself in a new project called the Flatwheelers, which was very short-lived. The only recording they made was never officially released to the public. At that juncture, David was a musician without an endeavor, a potentially great songsmith without the complete formula for what would eventually add up to his self-titled project. He explained it like this…
It was during that time that I met Tony Tidwell and Kenny Roby. That was back in 1990 or so. Kenny sang in a band called the Lubricators but went on to form Six String Drag. I lived with him briefly and he influenced me to pick up the acoustic guitar and write songs. It was awesome getting to hear him sing those songs in the living room. At the same time I was hanging out with Tidwell, who was in a band called the Push. We eventually played together in that band for a few years, with me on drums. Tony Tidwell also turned me on to writing songs on the guitar. He inspired me to go further into older music. In fact, I can credit him with turning me on to a lot of great stuff.
Obviously those were the more formative years of David’s musicianship and songwriting. But ultimately, as he confessed to me in our interview, it was the tragic death of his girlfriend, Lisa Dawn Scott, in October of 1993 that drew a lot of songs out of him, particularly the song “Recover” on Sunbrain’s “Good Side” album.
That was a huge incident in my life, admitted David, and I believe that it directed me down the path of music. It was meeting Lisa that encouraged me to do it as well. That is, she taught me a lot of chords and also how to fingerpick.
Indeed, it can be said that a work of art represents the parts of the artist most affected by that which inspired him or her to create it. As such, each piece of art is an extension of the artist. We are all inspired by different things, true, and David Dondero just so happens to be one of those daring and extraordinary artists whose compass points in the various directions of his many inspirations, each in its own turn, and for all to see, whether it be good or bad. To create such personal and remarkably descriptive and honest songs, David has no doubt had to employ his mind, his heart, and his soul. And it is apparent that he does just that. It is apparent that he puts everything that he is into his songs.
Take David’s first release, “the Pity Party,” for example, which he considers his most rewarding record of all. For David, it was quite a struggle to get that album out. At the time he had no money. Nor did he have a record deal. The songs on “the Pity Party” were a fresh batch of songs written in the months following the disbandment of the ephemeral Flatwheelers. David had made the decision to “go it alone,” which was probably the best thing he could have done for his musical career, for lack of something better to call it. He was admittedly pretty “green” at the whole songwriter thing. Fortunately for him, though, Terry Johnson of This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb gave him a job at Sluggo’s in Pensacola, Florida, allowing him to do an “open mic” night on Sundays, which he called “Flat Broke Folk.” And doing that helped him finish the songs that would soon after appear on “the Pity Party” record. Unlike most bands and singer/songwriters, David ended up trading labor for studio credit, helping build the Chase Park Transduction Studio in Athens, Georgia, by installing the wood floor, tacking up the trimwork, laying carpet, and doing some of the painting. And that was how “the Pity Party” album came to be. Andy LeMaster produced the album, and it was recorded over a short period of two days. That was David’s ticket out of Pensacola. It was a reason to go on tour, which was what David wanted to do at that point.
Speaking of touring, it was also due to Terry Johnson and This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb that David learned how best to go on the road, touring about the country, as he had a brief stint in the band as their drummer. But that was when TBIAPB was in its infancy, before their sound became the “country” and “punk rock” hybrid which gained them a huge underground following for the years that they were a band. [Note: I now hear rumors that they have gotten back together, and that they are planning a new release on Plan It X Records.]
“Spider West Myshkin & a City Bus” was the next installment of Dondero’s solo material. A decidedly noticeable change takes place on this album in comparison to “the Pity Party.” In truth, I think the “Spider West Myshkin & a City Bus” record was an exercise in David truly finding his voice as a singer/songwriter. Not only that, but I also think that he was just beginning to get his footing on the treacherous incline that was his arduous climb to self realization and artistic maturity. Quite simply, he was finding his place in the world, not just as a singer/songwriter, but as a human being of the City Earth as well. To me, the entire record is brilliant, though there are a few songs that stand up just a little taller than the rest, such as: “Ode to a 1973 Chevy Open Road,” “I Had to Get Back East,” and the bonus track “Pre-Invasion Jitters.”
Apparently, David has some very strong socio-political thoughts and feelings, and he is also somewhat of a protest singer. More and more, I find that the spirits of the old folkster radicals, such as Rovics and Gutherie and Dylan and Ochs, live on in the new folksters of the City Earth. And like much of their music, David Dondero’s music is proving itself equally timeless.
After “Spider West Myshkin & a City Bus” came “Shooting at the Sun with a Water Gun.” Unlike his former albums, this one was released on Future Farmer Records, as would be the one to follow, “the Transient.” Both were exceptionally great records. In fact, those two albums were home to some of David’s best songs, like “If You Break My Heart,” “the Real Tina Turner,” “the Living & the Dead,” “Ashes on the Highway,” and “Going Back to Wilmington.”
“South of the South” was the next step for David. And it was unquestionably a masterpiece, through and through. Truth be told, it was undoubtedly my favorite Dondero record of all, and still is to this day.
David’s most recent release, “Simple Love,” possesses something altogether different from his previous albums. It’s a more orchestral record, for one thing. David was backed by a full band for this endeavor, which added a fuller, more technical and polished effect. There is also something rather country-esque about the songs on the record, more so than on his earlier releases. There is also something slightly “rock n’ roll” about them, which is pretty unique to the overall David Dondero experience. Now, he hasn’t abandoned his “folk” roots by any means. That part of his sound remains intact. He has simply added to it. Like a garden that is tended to religiously, David’s music has become an Eden of sound…well, perhaps an Eden on the outskirts of a Sodom & Gomorrah’s city limits, for his sound is both rustic and urban, something that can be simultaneously appreciated by the anarcho-naturalists of Thoreau, by Whitman’s working class proletariats, by Kerouac’s indulgent and sentient wanderers of the great open road, and by Allen Ginsberg’s bearded Zen Poet Revolutionaries. Yes, David is ever building upon the foundation that began all those years ago with “the Pity Party.” And I am confessedly excited to imagine what might come next from this great American troubadour.
When I asked David what changes had taken place in his life to effect such significant changes in the overall sound and feel of his music, he responded by saying…
I have lived on and off up in Alaska for summer work three times now. My Dad lives there. Last time I went, I was working on the “Simple Love” songs. I wrote many of them while living in the station wagon (dragon wagon) in Whitier, Alaska. I got a job as a bartender at the Whitier Inn, and after my shifts I would sleep out in the parking lot because the tunnel back to Anchorage closed at 11 o’ clock at night, leaving me stuck there. It was kind of a nice time actually. But I was longing for the city after a couple of weeks. So I returned to find that I was dead to her and thus moved onto New York City. That’s when the shit went down: the news that the Lone Rose had passed away due to an overdose. That was the final straw, the heartbreak that caused San Francisco to be a bleak, cold place for me…haunting me. Only now, after all that has happened, it is returning to a place where I want to hang out again. During that time in my life I lost six friends to drugs and alcohol. It was horrible. It made me want to live differently. It made me want to go back to Wilmington again…try to clean up my act. “Simple Love” is not simple at all.
When I first learned that I would be doing an article on David Dondero, I pulled out my record collection and listened to all of his albums in order. I had never done that before. In a way, it was almost like listening to a continuous storyline detailing David’s life. An autobiography of sorts. Each song was a chapter, each line of lyrics a sentence, each chorus a paragraph, each verse a page, and somehow they all came together into one cohesive narrative. Together, the records were an account of David’s experiences and observations, thoughts and feelings, triumphs and failures, celebrations and laments, love and loss, hardships and times of ease, genius and folly, sanity and madness, hurt and recovery, death and resurrection, complexity and simplicity, and all of the other things that have gone into making David’s life what it is today.
I have traced Dondero’s route across the map of America’s mad highways just by listening to his songs. And it is truly a wonderful place.
Yes, the world speaks to us. All we need to do is pay attention.

the Autumn Picture: a one man symphony

2008-08-20T22:27:00.000-07:00

the Autumn Picture

Philadelphia was nothing more than a receding dot in the rearview mirror as I headed down South I-95 toward whatever destination awaited me, which was quite uncertain at the time, and I found that to be rather exciting, liberating, but most of all strange. It wasn’t the act of traveling that was strange, mind you, but the general atmosphere of the highway world through which I was moving, where the small towns and truck stops and big cities all sort of came together into one vast City Earth. Of course I had been on the road before, traveling from place to place for weeks on end, living in ways I hadn’t even considered in my youth. And it was always a strange experience: the hazy yellow glow on the dim highways of the lamppost night, the dreamlike quality of the landscape rushing by on the other side of the window in blurry flashes of world-shapes, the silhouettes of cities at dawn with the sun rising behind them to create the illusion that they were on fire (and it was always beautiful!), meeting new and interesting people at new and interesting places, and living on coffee and cigarettes for too many days before feeling my stomach growl and ache with absolute emptiness. It was also stopping in for shots of whiskey at various hole-in-the-wall dives throughout the urban underground, observing all the different faces while riding for hours on end in the cramped seats of foul-smelling Greyhound buses, hitchhiking in all the wrong places (the places where no one would pick me up, and I was stuck walking for what felt like eternities), pausing briefly in North Carolina to meet with an author and Kerouac enthusiast to discuss his latest book, and then, finally, arriving in mid-state Alabama (which I instantly knew to be the place where I would settle down for a while to work on my writing). And that’s where I was---Birmingham, Alabama---when I first heard Hubert Taschereau’s music for the first time.
Now, I didn’t know that his name was Hubert Taschereau at that point. All I really knew was the moniker under which he wrote, played, and released his songs. The Autumn Picture.
That was almost five years ago, give or take, and the only reason I know that for sure is because it was about that long ago that the first Autumn Picture record was released on Hill Billy Stew Records. And it was on a Hill Billy Stew “sampler,” coincidentally, that I first heard one of the Autumn Picture songs. It was a song called “daylight,” which turned out to be one of the more straightforward “indie folk” songs on the record. The rest of the songs on the Autumn Picture album were comparable to the songs of, say, Elliot Smith, Owen, the Bicycle Emergency!, Kevin Devine, the Ghostwrite, Rocky Votolato, and Lewis & Clarke, among others of that genre. In truth, the one thing that all of those bands and singer/songwriters collectively have in common is that they tend to write and play some of the most heartfelt and beautiful songs in modern acoustic music. And that’s really what Hubert Taschereau’s Autumn Picture essentially is: a form of acoustic music. In other words, there aren’t any defining characteristics of Hubert’s music that insert it into any one specific category, but instead loosely anchor it in a gray area…or rather, the Autumn Picture seems to somehow exist on both sides of the line which divides “indie folk” and “troubacore,” so to speak. And there are other nameless qualities in Hubert’s music, too, for which I haven’t any terms for yet, much less any idea as to which sound markers to place in it, like so many wooden stakes in the ground of musical exploration.
As I’ve already mentioned, Hubert Taschereau wasn’t a name that I had known prior to getting my hands on the Hilly Billy Stew “sampler.” Nor was the name of his solo project, the Autumn Picture, at all familiar to me until then. You see, the “sampler,” badly scratched and somewhat smudged with what were obviously the oily imprints of careless fingers, came to me by way of my good friend, David, who had been sending me music during my brief period as a recluse in the Deep South. Like much of the music he sent, it was a poorly kept recordable cd that he had burned either from another disc or directly from the internet. I never knew which, though the former was the more likely case, for David had his own nighttime radio show at a local college station once every week, and, let’s be honest, he had always had a bit of a stealing problem, even before he matriculated to major in communications. That is to say, even when we were kids, he was a kleptomaniac of sorts, ripping off useless items from the local establishments just for kicks. It was simply a part of his character, the stealing, which presumably satisfied some secret need deep within him the way drugs, alcohol, sex, or extreme sports and thrill-seeking did for others. And it wasn’t a far stretch to imagine David going through the fully stocked shelves of the radio station’s music library, as it were, helping himself to whatever records that caught his eye.
After listening to the “sampler” a few dozen times, the Autumn Picture song was the one that stood out the most every time. So I went to the local library, sat down at one of their computers, visited the Hill Billy Stew Records website and placed an order for the Autumn Picture album, “fait maison,” which showed up about two weeks later at the door of the little plywood shack in which I lived at the time. Yes, a little plywood shack. You see, I needed a place to stay while down south. Thus I began renting a small corner of land owned by an old lady just beyond the city limits. For the first few nights I slept in a one-man tent, which was somewhat disagreeable and unpleasant, especially with the plans that I had while there. I mean, I couldn’t very well sit Indian-style all day with a typewriter in my lap, tapping away at its keys, while hunched over and sweating in that tiny, blue poly-nylon taffeta bubble. It wasn’t long, however, before I came up with another idea for the land I was renting, which involved having one of those ten-by-fifteen foot wooden sheds wheeled in on a rusty truck bed and placed facing away from the main house. I then carpeted the shed, built shelves, put up posters, dragged in a full-size bed and a dresser (which took all of about three or four days), making it my temporary living quarters. I even installed a window air-conditioning unit because it was unbelievably hot in the summer, certainly far too hot to endure without some sort of cooling system rigged to one’s pad. Just like in the old squatter days back in Philly, I ran an electrical line from the main house all the way across the yard and into my shack. Against the far wall I arranged a desk and office chair. Atop the desk was my typewriter, which over time became the mother of many of my works, having arduously pushed them out like any brave woman in labor. Short stories. Poems. And a novel-length manuscript called “the Mother of Exiles.” My mind was full of artistic seed, and the typewriter served as the birth canal through which the works entered the world. In fact, I often wrote while listening to the Autumn Picture record, which I set on repeat mode and allowed to just run through all sixteen songs again and again until such time that I decided to get up and change the disc.
It was a very quiet and meditative time in my life, living in my little shack in the Deep South, surrounded by the outdoors, staring at the impossibly bright stars at night (which sometimes looked so close you could reach out and hold them in your hand like so many lightning bugs), just writing for a living. Just writing. Just doing what I loved. Well, until I got all hung-up on a beautiful young woman, which is another story altogether. Suffice to say, she and I moved in together, loved each other intensely in a sort of crazy whirlwind affair, during which our hearts simultaneously lit up and exploded like a thousand-and-one Chinatown fireworks. Eventually our hearts burned less and less bright until they fizzled out entirely, leaving nothing but a black void between us. It was over. And as such, my time in Alabama was over. It was time to head back to the northeast.
A friend dropped me off at the Greyhound Station in downtown Birmingham, where I sat almost the whole day waiting for my bus to depart. Finally, it was time to stow my luggage in one of the side compartments and board the bus. The bus drove all through the night, only stopping for the occasional food and restroom break. It was a nice trip actually, far nicer than going coast to coast (which is utterly intolerable on a Greyhound bus, as it takes the better part of four days and far too many transfers to get to one’s destination).
At last, I was home. Well, not home exactly. I was still about an hour and a half from home---Philadelphia---in a considerably smaller city called Allentown, which is situated in the heart of a huge valley between New York City, Jersey, Delaware, and Philadelphia. So whether you drove north or south, you eventually ran directly into a major metropolis. Not a bad place, really. It had it’s charms. And besides, there was someone there I wanted to see more than anyone else in the world. There was someone there that was very special to me. February. Her name was February. And I had only been at the Greyhound Station at the American Plaza on 4th Street for twenty minutes or so before she came rolling to a stop curbside to pick me up. In a way, she was as much home for me as Philadelphia was. After all, home is where the heart is, they say. Remembering such times makes one nostalgically think not only of the moments and words and images retained, but also the music. For those with musical lives, there is almost always a sort of soundtrack that one can assign to any particular time in one’s life. And at that time in my life, it was: the Mountain Goats, Kind of Like Spitting, Neutral Milk Hotel, Mischief Brew, Jeffrey Lewis, and, of course, the Autumn Picture. Sure, there were others, quite a few in fact, but those already mentioned by name were undoubtedly the most important, meaningful, and worthwhile of the bunch.
Hubert Taschereau’s first full-length release under the Autumn Picture moniker, “fait maison” is undeniably a heartfelt and beautiful record, though it is also a very personal record. In fact, the Autumn Picture endeavor itself is a very personal thing to Hubert, which he told me himself in our recent interview.
Autumn Picture is nothing more than an outlet, said Hubert. I don’t consider it to be something I need to push forward if I don’t feel like it. I only write songs (for the Autumn Picture project) when I have something to say, which I guess explains why it took about four years or so to get this album (“the field”) done.
[“the field,” incidentally, is Hubert’s second release under the Autumn Picture moniker. But we’ll get to that later.]
As an independent singer/songwriter, Hubert Taschereau takes an interesting approach to his songwriting for the Autumn Picture endeavor, definitely not a method solely unique to him, but certainly interesting nonetheless. That is, for the most part he writes the songs in his Montreal pad, recording them once they’ve been sufficiently worked upon and fine-tuned, once they are exactly as he wants them to be, on tapes, which he later takes to the studio to have mixed and formatted, after he realizes he has enough songs to make an album. And that’s pretty much what the name of his first Autumn Picture release resulted from---the way in which he wrote and recorded the songs over a three year period in his place---as “fait maison” means “homemade” in French (which, incidentally, is Hubert’s primary language).
In our interview, I asked Hubert about the nature of his sound. To be more specific, I asked him what deep, artistic, and highly personal source did he have to tap in order to create such a beautiful and sensitive sound, driven by so much thoughtfulness and raw emotion. To which he replied…
“Fait Maison” was recorded in my apartment over a period of three years, more or less, which has a lot to do with the sound and intimacy the album has to offer. I never had a clear idea of how I wanted the album to sound, as it was never an album until I started going through all the tapes and realized that I had enough songs for an album. I think at first they [the songs] were only ideas quickly captured on tapes to eventually be worked on some more. That may be where the “raw emotion” is coming from---there’s a huge difference having to perform in a studio and recording everything at home at any time of the day or night, and on top of that I wasn’t even necessarily trying to get a perfect take, but rather to just get the idea out of my head.
At this point, in a usual article, I would point the musical gems on the record, but, quite frankly, the entire “fait maison” record is remarkably wonderful. In fact, I can say with a fair degree of certainty that I enjoy songs one through fourteen on the record almost equally, with a few that stand out just a little more than the rest, such as: “no hope” (probably my favorite song of all on the record), “picture of ourselves,” “words mean nothing anymore,” and “one man symphony.” For Hubert, the Autumn Picture has always been a sort of solo side project next to his main band, Milanku. Now, I have heard some of the Milanku material, and it is essentially an instrumental band with occasional lyrics. Their sound is one of distorted, experimental “post-punk” pieces of music with ambient parts and a prevailing down-tempo atmosphere. In a way Milanku’s sound is in the same vein as Explosions in the Sky, On the Might of Princes, and Sound of Reverse. What lyrics Milanku has added to their songs are in French, as all of the members in the band speak French. And although I think Milanku is brilliant musically, I admittedly prefer Taschereau’s Autumn Picture over it.
Recently---just in the past couple of weeks---Hubert entered into the last month of summer with a brand new Autumn Picture release: “the field.” Just like the first Autumn Picture release, “the field” has been released by Hill Billy Stew Records. And according to Hubert, he is quite thrilled to be working with that particular label again. In fact, Hubert and I have been corresponding at length regarding this article, mostly online, and it was perhaps about two weeks ago that he send me a recordable cd copy of “the field” before it was even available for pre-order through Hill Billy Stew, and I have been listening to it non-stop since it arrived. In many ways it is comparable to “fait maison,” certainly in the quality of songwriting, but there are also some notable differences, such as Hubert’s use of distortion and drums on the seventh track, which has more of an alternative sound than the other songs on the album. All in all, though, Hubert stayed true to his acoustic sound, especially in songs such as “go to hell,” the first song on the record, and “the best is still to come,” which is a rather beautiful, bittersweet song, with background piano and very subtle drumming.
Taking both Autumn Picture records into consideration, I must say that a very specific host of feelings result from listening to them, as well as some very specific imagery, like snowy cityscapes with the light of warmth shining in upper story windows down gray streets, bearded and sweater-wearing poets sitting in the long counters of non-corporate coffeehouses, couples holding hands while walking around frozen lakes in wintry parks, and driving all night to desperate destinations of the heart. You see, in making such records, they are not only personal to Hubert Taschereau, but also now to his listeners, who have developed relationships with the songs and in doing so have made them their own…to serve as songs in the soundtracks of their lives.
With the release of “the field” also came a free Autumn Picture ep, “postponing you life,” which you can download from the Hill Billy Stew Records website. And while you’re at it, you might as well order a copy of “fait maison” and “the field.” You will definitely be glad you did. One can only guess what the years will bring from artists such as Hubert Taschereau. I for one hope that he gives us more of the same. And even though he typically releases Autumn Picture albums on no one’s schedule, but leaves it to the music’s arrival in his heart and head, taking however many years it takes, these “indie-acoustic” masterpieces have proven well worth the wait.

by:
James G. Carlson

*photo credits, from top to bottom: unkown, Yannick Grandmont, David Dinelle, Elisabeth Rocheleau, unkown.

http://www.myspace.com/autumnpicture & http://www.hillbillystew.com/autumn.htm

the Ghostwrite: "Jesus Christ was a carpenter; I am a carpenter!"

2008-08-20T21:36:00.000-07:00

the Ghostwrite

In the dawn, armed with a burning patience,we shall enter the splendid Cities.
-Arthur Rimbaud

Robert A. Beatty, Jr.’s entrance into my life marked the changing of the seasons this year, specifically winter into spring. Singer/songwriter, poet, author, Robert A. Beatty, Jr. is decidedly one of those obscure presences one is quite lucky to find, as he is tucked away in the layers upon layers of underground mediums listed in the seemingly innermost recesses of the web, on the pages of equally obscure zines with very limited circulation, and in random conversational pieces with well informed individuals of the underground. And he has presumably been such a presence since the beginning of his music career, for lack of something better to call it. That is to say, for Robert, music is not so much a career as a way of life.
Now, singer/songwriters like Robert are only independent artists by choice, only part of the underground because they prefer it to the dull, unoriginal, uninspired, mass-produced artificiality of the mainstream, and they only keep doing what they do because, quite simply, it’s what they do, it’s who and what they are, and they can no sooner stop being and doing that to which their individual natures move them than a hawk can stop itself from a life of soaring through the sky on its mighty wings, than the sun can stop itself from shining down upon the Earth, or the branches of the trees can stop from swaying in the high winds of mid autumn.
Yes, Robert is a singer/songwriter, but he is also somewhat of a divided individual in terms of his lifestyle (or lifestyles, I should say), for there is an admitted duality on his part, involving the young man he is while temporarily settled down, usually in western Pennsylvania, working as a union carpenter, and the young man he is while on the road, traveling from city to city with his voice and guitar (his two most valuable possessions), playing gigs, meeting interesting people at interesting places, and experiencing and observing new and wonderfully strange things around every corner. It would seem then that Robert has a pretty even balance between the two extremes that make up the two halves of his existence. Though one’s thinking would be quite flawed in being convinced of that, for the scales unquestionably tip a little more heavily to one side. After all, he had explained to me in our recent interview that what he truly loves is to play his music, to tour, to be on the road, playing his songs to crowds of attentive individuals of the underground music community (or communities, rather). He is a true child of the City Earth. A vagabond wanderer of the Suicide Generation. A young man for whom music is both an art form and a lifestyle, as well as both a religion and a revolution. And it is my belief that music can very well be all of those things…that is, if one were inspired enough, if one were dedicated enough to the pursuit of such musical transcendence. And Robert very well may be one of those artists.

Cheap Thrills. St. Cloud, MN. 05/26/08-Photo by Laura Webb

Instantly I recognized Robert (or Robby, which he is sometimes called) as one of those hard-working, starving artist types, with an abundance of passion and inspiration, plenty of life experience, a solid system of beliefs, a certain code by which to live his everyday life, and a tremendously restless spirit. In addition to those things, I also found him to be one those individuals to whom I was able to relate on an uncanny level, as his life reminded me a good deal of my own life, during my younger, wilder years, that is---the years I spent traveling the seemingly never-ending stretches of highway across this vast City Earth, and the cities to which those highways eventually led, each and each. And for me, each one of the cities I visited held something wholly unique and special, something entirely wonderful, almost magical, which made me want to return in the future, sooner rather than later, confessedly, and then having it constantly on my mind until such time that I returned to revisit that which had so attracted, intrigued, or enchanted me in the first place, that which had affected me so profoundly. And in a way I can see that part of myself in Robert, which has resulted in a degree of mild nostalgia on my part.
But we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves here.
Indeed, after listening to his music at length and getting to know him through our correspondence, I was ready almost immediately to list him as a young troubadour traveling this mad City Earth with little more than his voice and guitar and the clothes on his back, living solely to play and sing his songs. And that voice of his! It’s one of those strong and intense yet slightly tremulous voices, comparable, not so much for sound but affect, to the likes of Jeff Mangum, Ben Barnett, and John Darnielle. And it is also the kind of voice that is meant to be heard accompanied by the strumming of an acoustic guitar.
As I have already mentioned, Robert’s entrance into my life marked the changing of seasons this year, winter into spring, and…
For what may have been the first time in my life I actually found myself missing winter, not just any winter, but the semi-harsh winter of southeastern Pennsylvania, less than an hour drive from the city of my birth, Philadelphia. It wasn’t just the way winter made the city into a world of ice and shadow; it was the sky, which was a constant shade of gray. It was the exhalations of breath that turned to white, vaporous phantoms in the cold night air. It was the crazy chill that determinedly worked away at one’s endurance. And it was also a reminder of the first time I fell in love, truly and completely, with a girl named February. That last was neither here nor there, and yet it entered my mind nonetheless, just a reaction, both cerebral and visceral, perhaps a bit spiritual too, brought on by winter’s end. Missing winter. Missing February. And that’s why I returned to Pennsylvania in the first place, I admit, after I’d been gone for so long: because of winter, because of February. But we’ll talk about that later.
It was strange. Unlike most people, I was able to see an undeniable beauty in the grayness of winter. Even the cold was something to be appreciated, for it made one desperate for warmth, like a junkie for his dope, or a drunkard his booze, giving one an unequalled sense of relief upon finding it, especially after shuffling and stumbling about in the cold, dark city streets for a while. There was something poetic about it. Almost romantic.
Winter was over, though. And with each passing day, I woke to less and less of the white frost, flecked with crystalline bits throughout, which adhered to the drooping blades of dead, brown grass, like so many expensive jewels around the withered necks of corpses, diamonds glistening on their bony fingers, and shiny platinum earrings dangling from the leather-like flesh of their shrunken lobes. The cold was abating to such a degree that the ice had all melted, the piles of snow that the plows had deposited in the corners of parking lots were nothing more than tiny black mounds peppered with dirty rock salt and gravel, and…
Speaking of the cold, it seemed to somehow realize its end was approaching. That is, it had stirred within me first, after having spent all those months laboring with biting winds and intolerably low temperatures to penetrate flesh and blood and bone, finally residing at my very center, from which it eventually evacuated altogether. And at that point I couldn’t help but feel the void.
The smell was also gone. You know, that clean air smell that you experience when high up in the mountains, or exhaling deeply after drinking from a cool natural spring. It was that nearly odorless, healthy, and pristine smell, unlike autumn, which smells of dead leaves and wood fires, an earthy smell, and unlike spring, which smells of pollen and freshly mowed lawns, and unlike summer, which smells of sweat and sex, the pungent aroma of cooking food wafting from open doorways, stale beer and cigarette smoke sneaking through the screens of half open barroom windows, exhaust fumes from countless cars driving about the city streets, and the sweet bubblegum breath of a thousand half remembered lovers.
Even the grayness had receded toward the horizon beyond the cityscape, where everything seemed to just fall off the edge of the world into oblivion, or eternity, or…
And now I lift my head to observe the heavens at dusk, where ghostly wisps of purple-bellied clouds drift almost imperceptibly over the pale moon in all of its various phases of celestial radiance. At dawn I sometimes carry out much the same ritual, if I’m still awake, sitting on the stoop in front of my apartment and taking in the lipstick and rouge skyline just above the fiery aura of the sun rising in the east. And I think to myself that spring is poetic in its own way…only less significant in terms of the events that have taken place in my life, the kind of events that find their way onto the blue-lined pages of so many personal journals.
Spring had already had time to sit up, yawn, stretch its arms, get out of bed, and do some seasonal chores, like adorn the naked branches of winter-stripped trees with new foliage, summon blades of grass to break through the frost-free soil, and fill the long-standing quietude of the dead world with birdsong and insect noise, when I first began corresponding with singer/songwriter and word-artist, Robert A. Beatty, Jr., known to some by his nom de plume, Robby Lester, or the moniker under which he writes and plays his songs, the Ghostwrite. It was the end of May, with June only just around the next bend. I had just finished an article on the bluesy, experimental, one-man folk endeavor out of Canada, Timber Timbre, and I was wondering which article I should tackle next. Robert was on the last leg of a Midwestern and West Coast tour when I first contacted him, and yet he was happy to accommodate me by replying almost immediately. In fact, his first piece of mail to me read, apologetically, that he was currently on tour, with no fixed address, just moving from one random place to the next, crashing here and there on the road, but that he was interested in what I was doing and would send me his cd, “Anxiety//Fabled,” as soon as he got back from tour. He also promised to send along a short story he’d had published; a sort of fictional utopian nightmare and love story called the Fourth of Halloween. As an artist and writer myself, I was eagerly anticipating the day when Robert would be able to send me his cd. In the meantime, I listened to the few songs I was able to download from the internet. During our correspondence, it somehow worked out that Robert wanted to get the cd and book to me sooner, and thus sent them out in the mail from Lubbock, Texas, before his show there.
So…with the exception of those few rainy days and nights, which somehow seemed to reach back into winter’s reserve to supplant the sunny, warm days with a grayness and chill I thought was gone for the year, spring arrived in Pennsylvania with a flourish of green, with infinities of azure skies, with a soft and constant honeysuckle breeze blowing through town, with wild flowers of the most vivid yellows and purples spotting the unkept landscape along the interstate, and the prevailing sense of rebirth associated with that specific changing of seasons. I had only been back in the northeast for a little over a year and a half at that point, having spent two years, give or take, in the Deep South, mostly in Birmingham, Alabama, and things were much as I had left them.
In Birmingham, I worked at a hotel during the day much like I do now in Pennsylvania, while at night I dedicated myself to my more artistic pursuits, which I also so now. So thing haven’t changed all that much, really. It was not at all uncommon for me to sit in my sweaty plywood shack, writing on a vintage Underwood Typewriter, Kerouac style, I had found and purchased at a crowded lot sale, more like a swap meet actually, in North Carolina. Funny how such things happen, as I wasn’t even supposed to be in North Carolina that day. But I had been invited to meet a fellow writer/journalist with whom I had carried on a significant correspondence for some months before hitting the road. So he and I met, walked around the grounds of the swap meet, checking out the art, the antiques, and the cool little novelty items and oddities that are so rare to find anywhere but in such places, all while discussing literature and poetics, life and death, politics and world decline, and eventually the Beat Generation. Mostly we discussed his new book, however, which was about Jack Kerouac, the late Beat Generation writer and revolutionary word-artist, who cruised the highways of Jazz Age America, experiencing towns and cities between the two great coasts, living simply for his friends and freedom, individuality and indulgence, art and sex, words and jazz, and also typing in drugged-up frenzies through insanely inspired days and nights, each seemingly blurred together into one cohesive typing session of his personal life-things transformed into what he called spontaneous prose. Yes, my new friend in North Carolina was a Kerouac enthusiast, indeed, just as I was, only more so. He gave me a signed copy of his book, which is now on the wall of my writing room. In fact, it was he who pointed out the old Underwood Typewriter for sale there on a rickety, old table. Just like the one Jack used to type on, he’d said to me. Of course I was already privy to that little piece of knowledge, but I acted as if he’d told me something new and important anyway, more out of habit than anything. Even so, I just had to have it. So after much haggling and gesticulating back and forth, the old man in whose possession the machine was, with his long white beard and tucked-in flannel shirt ripe with what smelled like week-old body odor, and with his strong accent and dirty eyeglasses, sold it to me for a rather fair price. When I did eventually use it, the typewriter worked like absolute shit, but I sat there punching away at its keys with my fingertips nevertheless, bringing forth poems and manuscripts and letters, as well as various other experimental and unconventional word-creations.
After months of living like a recluse, almost by some Thoreau-esque philosophy or bodhisattva code, residing in a small plywood shack to which I had hooked up electricity and running water just like the old squatting days back in Philadelphia. But the outdoors was all around. Impossibly huge trees stood, ancient and mighty, casting long shadows across the ground. Overgrown vines wound around manmade structures, all twisted and gnarled, to break them down and devour the pieces back into nature’s belly. Birds perched upon the peaks of ramshackle rooftops. Deer grazed in the backyards during balmy nights in early summer, their eyes always like the eyes of ghosts in the blinding headlights of oncoming traffic. Wild dogs howled in the distance. And countless insects gathered in the twilight to compose brilliant symphonies of clicking, screeching, buzzing, and strange violin-like rubbings.
The point is: I have traveled America extensively, as well as Canada and Mexico, and in doing so I have learned the poetry of the world. I have gained a philosophical understanding of existence I had all but thought unobtainable until then. And I have also happened upon the invaluable knowledge that next to freedom, individuality and love, art is undoubtedly one of the most important things in life. At least in my life. And as soon as I happened upon Robert A. Beatty, Jr’s music, the Ghostwrite, I knew that I had found something inexpressibly special. I knew that his music was more than just music, but an account of his own life, a personal journal transformed into song, an expression of his thoughts and feelings, and a testament to the philosophies by which he lives. And I know now, after having listened to his record, “Anxiety//Fabled,” a few dozen times, all seventeen songs, Robert is one of those great singer/songwriters that keeps the candles of the musical revolution lit, who, above all else, infuses real life with art, and conversely infuses art with real life, as for him the two are inextricably linked, and at the top of his lungs sings the heart, sings the mind, sings the soul, sings the body, sings the world, sings life.

Cheap Thrills. St. Cloud, MN. 05/26/08-Photo by Laura Webb

Robert hails from northwestern Pennsylvania---the Pittsburg area---where he no doubt came into his own as an artist. It was in his own words, too, that he admitted, “My sound has been developing since I began playing guitar almost a decade ago. I was fairly awful when I started. I suppose my musical skills have gone from fairly awful to mediocre in the past few years. As far as writing goes, I always just try to be honest with my lyrics.” Modest, no doubt. Overly modest, probably. Not a bad way to approach one’s music, though, I’d say. Coming up with the body of work---the chord progressions and series of notes, along with the parts that serve as the verses, as well as those that will serve as choruses, is evidently Robert’s main task, that is, before spilling his guts in fits of vocal intensity. And his vocals are somewhere between what one finds in “folk punk” music and that which one finds in the songs of uncategorized acoustic singer/songwriters of the independent art communities.
On his full-length record, “Anxiety//Fabled,” Robert starts things off with the song “heroine,” which sets the mood for the remainder of the album. The mood is still difficult for me to pinpoint exactly, though I would almost dare to call it melancholy without being “emo,” and touched lightly by a somewhat mature angst without being marketable for rebelliousness. More importantly, it’s an honest record, a very genuine record, mirroring the character of Robert A. Beatty, Jr., mirroring his innermost thoughts and feelings, fears and anxieties, hopes and dreams, flaws and philosophies, beliefs and standpoints and values. Quite simply, “Anxiety//Fabled” could be summed up as a very personal record, which is part of the reason, while listening to it, it gave me the same feeling I got when listening to Jeff Mangum (Neutral Milk Hotel), Ben Barnett (Kind of Like Spitting), and John Darnielle (the Mountain Goats). After all, those are three of my most favorite singer/songwriters of all time. And now, in addition, I can add Robert A. Beatty Jr’s the Ghostwrite as another favorite.
The second track on the record is “boa”---a more openly political song than the others, to be sure, in which he sings lyrics such as, How can we not fear when we are the targets for bombs and propaganda? for example. And just like in “heroine,” Robert quotes lines from George Orwell’s 1984. There are other songs on the record in which Robert makes similar anarchistic statements, or asks such rebellious and free-thinking questions, particularly in the songs: “newspeak,” “so civil,” and “deflation.” But there are a good many other topics covered on the record, like in the song “talking girls instead of politics,” which means just that. Then there’s “one-d motion,” which is a song of the heart, and yet at the same time breaks the shell and lets ooze the yolk of philosophical searching. Love and universal mysteries. Heart-things and deep questions. And it is not pretentious enough to offer answers, but simply asks the questions aloud and leaves it at that. There are songs on the record that employ lyrical storytelling, like “an atheist’s St. Patrick’s Day” and “inebriation stasis.”
Out of the seventeen tracks on “Anxiety//Fabled,” I can’t think of one that the record could do without. It’s a masterful piece of work as it is, and unlike most records I’ve listened to throughout the years, I wouldn’t change a thing. It’s real life music and therefore meaningful. It’s philosophical and therefore important. It’s honest and genuine and therefore worthwhile. So…all in all, it’s a aural journey through protest songs, love songs, confessionals, soliloquies, story-telling, poetry, and more. And if Robert A. Beatty, Jr’s follow-up record to “Anxiety//Fabled” is anything like the first, I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
The world definitely needs more singer/songwriters like Robert A. Beatty, Jr. (the Ghostwrite). Art keeps the world from devouring itself. It shows that there is still something important, meaningful and worthwhile left in humanity. And it very well may be the only thing saving us at this point!

*Gas Mask w/ Baby artwork on title page by Erin Gouldin
Check out the Ghostwrite at:http://www.myspace.com/theghostwrite or theghostwrite.110mb.com
Article written by: James G. Carlson(the Urban Artist Group, 2008)

the Good Day Sir: "I am the Good Day Sir."

2008-07-18T01:29:00.000-07:00

the Good Day Sir

Every once in a great while, an extraordinary piece of music comes along and reminds us just how beautiful and meaningful music can be. Not only that but it shows us that there is still worthwhile works of art to be found on this planet we call home, which is not so much a planet anymore as it is a vast and crazy City Earth. And the piece of music I am referring to in this article is called the Good Day Sir---a conceptual composition of remarkably beautiful music and ideas, gentle but powerful, emotive and yet intelligent, passionate and altogether absorbing, but most of all…it never loses the artistic focus on the storyline and its protagonist, the Good Day Sir, which the endeavor itself commands from the first note of the first song to the first utterance of vocal splendor that permeates the entire piece, occurring only moments apart, fully capturing the listener’s attention and carrying him or her through a series of musical soundscapes, or chapters, to its touching conclusion, which comes way too soon (in the opinion of this writer), as the whole of the Good Day Sir is about ten minutes in length.
Stripped down to its bare bones, the concept of the four-part piece is centered on an old man, the Good Day Sir, for whom life has obviously become a very dark and lonely place. He is not a bitter old man by any means, and he actually thinks the last and only good thing he has to offer the world is his kindness. Sadly, the Good Day Sir is a widower, and therefore very alone in the world, living out the last chapter of his full life. And what he wants more than anything else in the world is to be with his wife again. That’s the skeleton of the story. To get to the flesh and blood and bone of it, I had to contact Kaleb, who both wrote and performed the entire Good Day Sir arrangement, which is decidedly an unlikely brainchild beside his main musical project, Lorien.
Lorien is an “indie rock” outfit comparable to bands such as Armor for Sleep, Cursive, Boys Night Out, and Matchbook Romance. And although Lorien isn’t the type of band I usually listen to, my appreciation for the Good Day Sir has allowed me to see some of the value in their overall sound. In other words, had it not been for my being all hung-up on the Good Day Sir, I probably wouldn’t have explored Lorien’s sound as thoroughly as I did later…the same sound into which I wouldn’t have otherwise immersed myself deep enough to truly and fully discover had there not been a fork in the road, one to the Good Day Sir, and the other to Lorien. And though I have likened Lorien to the bands above, I must admit that there is something else in their sound completely absent in the bands to which I have compared them, something more commonly notable in underground bands and singer/songwriters, something slightly wonderful but still recognizable as that which exists in the somewhat vague and ever expanding territory between the mainstream and the independent communities. So…it would seem that Lorien holds an appeal for those involved in both scenes, each undoubtedly for its own reasons. And since Lorien remains an unsigned project, they are still by definition an independent band, wherever their collective aspiration lies. Besides, if you take the whole categorization concept out of music, erasing all of the limitations, expectations, and boundaries, every band and singer/songwriter’s sound would invariably be referred to simply as “music”---nothing more, nothing less. Wouldn’t that be a grand world to live in? But, alas, we reside in a civilization that perpetuates a constant need to label everything it creates, everything it discovers, everything it lays eyes on or experiences in one way or another.
Then again, if music was just “music,” and art just “art”…well, the very idea would inevitably crumble under the weight of the realization that simplifying the categories to such a drastic degree would be almost like saying, every piece of fruit is a banana, or every beer a Guinness, or every body of water an ocean, or every color blue, and so on in the way that things would be in a world without the necessary distinctions to which I am referring. Yes, evidently we must sometimes contradict ourselves to properly sort out our flawed points of cognition. I mean, it is pretty much undeniable that some works of art are superior to others, and so it would only make sense that the same is true of music, being that music is one of the highest and most important artistic mediums (in this humble writer’s opinion, of course). And the Good Day Sir is unquestionably one of those superior works of art, causing so many other works of art, musically speaking, to shrink in comparison.
Confessedly, the first time I heard all four parts of the Good Day Sir, I had mentally inserted them into the same column of bands and singer/songwriters whose music, always incredibly beautiful and meaningful, prompt one to close one’s eyes and listen intently, to even hold one’s breath for a few moments here and there while the notes and chords and percussion climb and fall, climax and flatline, and weave around one another like so many vines through a high garden latticework illuminated by moonlight. Such songs also cause one’s head to swim, one’s heart to pound, and one’s soul to soar to impossible heights. Music can be experienced on a level similar to Buddhist meditation, to naturalists hiking through dense wildernesses the world over, to rooftop contemplations, to waking immersed in the quietude of morning, and to just being involved in life in general…and I mean truly living, not going numbly through the days, waking and eating and working…wash, rinse, repeat, and so on. Music is born of life, naturally, so it is only logical that people make it such an important part of their lives, that people create relationships with it, that people love it and depend on it and grow close to it.
There is something incontestably akin to the sounds of Radiohead and the Umbrella Sequence in the Good Day Sir’s sound. In fact, in that respect I have compared the Good Day Sir, on more than one occasion, to bands and singer/songwriters like Sufjan Stevens, Hubert Taschereau (the Autumn Picture), Craig Gurwich (Summer at Shatter Creek), Saint Joe Hazelwood, My Bicycle Emergency! and the Great Lake Swimmers, for those bands and singer/songwriters, and only just a handful of them, to be sure, have definitely created some of the most beautiful, meaningful, and important songs of their time…and I place extra emphasis on the word beautiful. After all, it isn’t until you’ve heard and truly experienced Sufjan Steven’s “John Wayne Gacy,” “Flint (for the Unemployed & Underpaid),” and “Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois” you have yet to hear or experience unequalled beauty and meaning in a song. Or in Summer at Shatter Creek’s “Worlds Away.” Or most of Hubert Taschereau’s “fait maison” record, which he released under the Autumn Picture moniker, and what I’ve heard of his new work, which hasn’t been released just yet. Or “Moving Pictures, Silent Films” and “Merge, A Vessel, A Harbour” by the Great Lake Swimmers. And so on in that manner.
Frankly, I don’t normally pay such ridiculously huge compliments, but in this case I am making an exception, for the Good Day Sir is an exceptional piece of music and thus deserves to be named among the modern greats of musical beauty, as I tend to refer to them (well, at least for this particular article anyway), like Sufjan Stevens and Gurwich, Taschereau and Hazewood, Wilson Bicycle Emergency, Lou Rogai (Lewis & Clarke) and Tony Dekker with the rest of the Great Lake Swimmers ensemble.
Mostly it is the hushed and wavering falsetto of Kaleb’s vocals in the Good Day Sir songs that creates the atmosphere of incredible beauty. It’s not just that the vocals are beautiful; the lyrics are also very beautiful...and meaningful. In fact, the lyrics are a narrative of sorts, detailing a rather inventive and heartfelt storyline. The rest of the piece’s beauty is in the deliberately lovely strumming of Kaleb’s guitar, surrounded by the instrumental accompaniment of his bandmates. So...I feel compelled to add here that it is all of the various elements of the music that make it beautiful, rather than any one singular component. Kaleb wrote the Good Day Sir, true, but then he, along with his bandmates from Lorien, each added his (and her) own invaluable contributions to the piece.
Speaking of his bandmates, in a recent piece of mail from Kaleb, he described the members of the band, as well as what they do, and where they’re from. All of them grew up in different parts of the country, except for Kaleb, guitarist and vocalist, and Chase, lead guitarist, who both started out in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. Thomas, the drummer, is from Atlanta, Georgia, while David, the bassist, is from Winston Salem, North Carolina. And Cara, whose specialty is piano, keys, and percussion, is from Hope, Arizona. So how did these five individuals come together when they were so spread out across America? you’re probably asking yourself right now. And the answer is quite simple. They all met in Nashville, Tennessee, while attending Belmont University. Each of them had matriculated to study music in one way or another, whether it was their instrument of choice, audio engineering, or music business. It was in that regard that they became a sort of family, as it were, best friends and bandmates.

In Kaleb’s letter, he added, I think a lot of our music chemistry comes from our closeness as people. Our passion for music and community creates an unbelievable musical environment that I believe is one of a kind.
Ok; so…we’ve established that Lorien is the primary endeavor of these five musicians. We have yet to establish the fact, however, that the Good Day Sir project was an accident; which is to say that Kaleb never planned for such a project to happen, that it was unintentional, very sudden and temporary in every way.
It just started out as something I would say to friends in greeting---“Good Day, Sir!”---and eventually that simple phrase evolved into a character. I remember sitting down with the guitar one night, wrote Kaleb, with no particular purpose but to just twiddle around. I first ended up with the music of part IV of the series, and then began brainstorming lyrical topics. As I explored the idea of the Good Day Sir at length in my head, there was just so much there. It was like the story, his life, had actually happened--it existed!---and I was simply pulling from the well of that information. That is when I decided to break it apart into different song sections, each one describing and oddity or quirk of the old Good Day Sir. I finished all four songs that night. Mainly, it is an awkward story of surprising kindness, heartbreak, irony, and beautiful retribution.
Having experienced both projects---Lorien (the band’s primary endeavor) and the Good Day Sir (the accidental masterpiece)---I have found myself wishing, admittedly, that the latter of the two was in fact their primary endeavor, as I would very much like to hear more of the Good Day Sir. I mean, the story doesn’t have to stop there, does it? A story can go as far as the artist writing it is inspired to push it forward. Or, let’s be honest, the story can even go backwards, if the writer wishes it to. That’s that fantastic part of it! That’s the miracle of art! It can be limitless and magical, invented and reinvented, unpredictable and beautiful, spontaneous and passionate, poetic and wholly inspired…so much so, too, that it’s like a seed that we plant in extremely fertile soil, water and nurture, until it breaks through the surface as a tiny living presence, eventually matures into a sapling, and then grows, and grows and grows and grows…
Well, that is one tree that should never be chopped down, but should instead permitted to grow into one of those grand giants of the forest. And the same is true of the Good Day Sir. That is, it should be allowed to continue along its destined course, through the pages and chapters and various soundscapes of its existence. If Kaleb is convinced that it has already run its course, however, he is its author and indeed the one to make such a claim. And perhaps he would be right to do so, so that we might appreciate the one he’d already accomplished more, so that we might admire and respect it as the unique piece of art that it is, without sibling endeavors to compare it to. Yes, we must be content to have the ten minutes of the Good Day Sir that Kaleb and his band have already given us. And I for one am very glad that they did.
Below is a four part summary, more of a synopsis really, in Kaleb’s own words, of what the Good Day Sir is about.
Part I: The Good Day Sir is an old man who can be found on the same park bench at the same time every morning. He always sits alone and never speaks to anyone in the park. However, he smiles brightly and waves to anyone who passes by. The park-goers are almost scared of the kind old man to the point where they ignore and avoid him in the park as to avoid the “awkward” kindness he gives. He continues to go every day regardless of his unrequited kindness.
Part II: The scene is set in the Good Day Sir’s one-bedroom apartment. We find that he is a widowed husband living his last days alone. He loved his wife dearly and missed her even worse, so he went to the park every day to simply avoid his loneliness.
We are introduced to the old man’s charming ritual that he shared with his wife: he would fold her pajamas on the side of the bed every night for her. After they were in bed, they would talk about the day and in what ways they were blessed and then prayed together. He would kiss her on the neck as he leaned to put out the light. Then they would sleep.
Part III: We find ourselves in the Good Day Sir’s recurring dream. He sees his wife as an angel floating in front of him. He flies after her, farther and farther, but can never quite reach her. And when he comes closest to his wife, when it seems he can all but reach out and touch her, he wakes.
Part IV: We find that this time, the Good Day Sir did not wake up. He died in his sleep that night.
The scene is set in an empty church. It is the Good Day Sir’s funeral. He had no one left in his life but his wife. No one was at the funeral. It began storming violently outside. People on the street came running into the open church building to get out of the rain. Soon after the storm began, a crowd formed in the church. They realized that a funeral was being held in the church, and some of the crowd actually recognized the Good Day Sir as the old man who had sat in the park. As a peaceful and beautiful sentiment, the crowd waved good-bye to the old man, regretting that they hadn’t paid him the courtesy in life.
We end with the Good Day Sir approaching his wife in Heaven. He made it to her, at last---and in doing so found his true life and love.

photo by: Sol Lang

In truth, the piece of music is even better once you’ve read Kaleb’s explanation of what it's all about. I mean, after he wrote the above summary of the story for me, I listened to the Good Sir (for what was probably the twentieth time, at least), and I was able to place the two together in my mind, the entire time concentrating on every line of the lyrics, every strum of the guitar, every instrumental shift…everything. It was a whole new experience. And, if you think about it, it’s utterly genius: combining a storyline and a masterful piece of music together into one artistic body, one tremendously brilliant composition, one hell of a contribution not just to the art world but to every living being in this City Earth that eventually experiences it.

Raise Up Roof Beams: City Earth poetry & Suicide Generation philosophy

2008-06-20T19:02:00.001-07:00

uag '08

RAISE UP ROOF BEAMS

from left to right: Justin Arawjo, Nathan Robinson, Harrison Gordner, Kelly Musser, & Alan Carroll

When thou seest an Eagle, thou seest a portion of Genius. Lift up thy head!
-William Blake
(the Marriage of Heaven & Hell)

The chords rang out from Nathan Robinson’s acoustic guitar, while Harrison Gordner’s steady drum beat tapped away the seconds between each strum, and while Kelly Musser pressed her strong and highly adept fingers to the thick strings of her upright bass, all accompanied by Justin Arawjo’s fantastic mandolin playing and Alan Carroll’s crafty finger-work on the keys of his piano, until it all just sort of dissolved perfectly into a whisper of music punctuated by the individually struck notes of a marimba. That was just the beginning, though, for the songs beautiful instrumentation continued to build around Nathan’s unmistakable vocals and intelligent, heartfelt lyrics. And that’s when the first verse started.

-James G. Carlson (on listening to "heavy machine" from Oh, Paradox cd)

__________________________________________________________

It was the name of the band---Raise Up Roof Beams---that first caught my attention. You see, J.D. Salinger, the author from whose work the band admittedly got their name, has been one of my favorite writers in the history of this mad City Earth since I first read Catcher in the Rye as a teenager. And still, I am of the opinion that Catcher in the Rye is a literary masterpiece that belongs on the Shelf of Greats, so to speak, beside the likes of: Arthur Rimbaud’s Season in Hell, Hemingway’s the Sun Also Rises, Nelson Algren’s Man with the Golden Arm, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s the Great Gatsby, and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and the Dharma Bums. Later, of course, I went on to read some of Mr. Salinger’s other works: Nine Stories, Franny & Zooey, and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenter & Seymour: An Introduction (obviously the title after which the band had named themselves). If it were an undeserving band of lesser talent and a sound that I didn’t appreciate as much as I did theirs, I would have most likely considered the Salinger reference a sort of literary blasphemy. But just as Salinger had offered me some of my favorite literary pieces when I was growing up, Raise Up Roof Beams has now given me, in my adult life, what I decidedly consider some of my favorite songs.
Like so many other things these days, I happened upon Raise Up Roof Beams simply by searching the internet, just as I had done on countless other sleepless nights. It was one of those nights during the long hours of which I had smoked too many cigarettes and had too many cups of coffee, which has almost always been the case when I write. In my youth things were different; sleep came easily. Recent years have seen me close the figurative door on much of my old life, however, which meant sacrificing some of the things that caused sleep to come easily, especially whiskey and opiates…the tools of the alcoholic and narcotic revolution that have destroyed so many wonderful individuals of my generation, the Suicide Generation…which reminds me, incidentally, of the opening lines of Allen Ginsberg’s masterpiece poem Howl:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,

starving, hysterical, naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix…

I have since learned degrees of abstinence and restraint in the all-consuming and self-destructive things that can so quickly and thoroughly empty one of everything good in oneself, leaving one a mere shadow of who one used to be. Some of the karmic prices I had to pay---and my outstanding debt was rather long by that time, the “turning point” I suppose you could call it---were sleepless nights. Like W.H. Auden wrote in one of the best poems of his career, “…Every farthing of the cost, all the dreaded cards foretell, shall be paid…”
So now I stay awake through many of the moonlight hours, still haunted by the past. And, more and more, I am moving quite a distance down the road from the times when I lived among the young and the doomed of the City Earth...when things were at their worst.

This sleeplessness affords me more time to commit words to paper, to write that which I am moved to write, such as this article. Besides, my inspiration doesn’t reach its peak until the sun has completely disappeared beyond the horizon, and night has proved to be the most fertile ground for my writing. Sometimes I even work with such a strangely absorbed concentration and drive, while the hands of the clock move in their inevitable course of measured ticks, that midday finds me cradled in the palm of slumber’s hand, awkwardly slumped over in my chair, and my fingers resting on the few random letters on the keyboard that have since covered the rest of the page displayed on the monitor. In fact, I had been taking a break from the manuscript I had been working on for the better part of two years, when I decided to clear my all too cluttered head, relax a bit, and listen to some music. Somehow I ended up on a website featuring a few songs by Raise Up Roof Beams, and I instantly knew that they were something great. So I listened, and I listened some more, the whole time growing increasingly fond of their music, and eventually my interest and appreciation was such that I struck up a correspondence with singer/guitarist Nathan Robinson, who later provided me with much of the material for this article.
It wasn’t long after contacting Nathan Robinson for the first time that I received a package in the mail from him. Enclosed were two cd’s---“Fingers & Photons” (the band’s first full-length release, recorded in March of 2006) and “Oh, Great Paradox” (their second full-length release, recorded in May of 2007)---and there began my in-depth study of the evolution of their sound. Immediately upon listening, really listening to the music of Raise Up Roof Beams, I was hooked on them. There was something undeniably different in their music as compared to many of the other bands and singer/songwriters in the “indie-folk” catalogue of the City Earth Underground, something simultaneously both original and inspiring, beautiful and poignant, intelligent and poetic. But there was also something else: something with all of the honesty, emotional openness, reflection, basement philosophy, and confession of a personal journal.
Incidentally, it was only a few days after receiving those cd’s from Nathan that I hit the road for a day in the city with my girl, February. It was only an hour drive from our modest pad in Allentown to the city of my birth---Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And the entire way, while heading south on the turnpike, I played both Raise Up Roof Beams records non-stop. Even when we reached Philadelphia, I was utterly absorbed with Nathan Robinson’s guitar and vocals. Kelly Musser’s basslines. Harrison Gordner’s drumbeats. Justin Arawjo’s multi-instrumentation. And Alan Carroll’s piano. And even when we began navigating the narrow, crowded streets of Chinatown, I listened intently to the song “heavy machine,” still taking in every strum on the guitar, every note emanating from the bass, every tap and crash and boom of the snare and cymbals and kick drum, every twang of the mandolin, every glorious sound produced by the keys of the digital piano, and every clear and trembling word of the genius lyrics. That’s not to say that I wasn’t also concentrating on the cityscape, because I was. In fact, I was taking note the people, the architecture, the storefronts, and the various other sights of the city.
We watched the redbrick and brownstone rowhomes of Society Hill, along with the vestiges of the historically significant architecture and charming cobblestone streets lined with ornate ironwork lampposts and balcony enclosures, then the impossibly tall buildings of downtown all give way, finally, to scarlet and gold facades, to crumbling brick and coarse plaster stucco-like tenement walls, fish markets, restaurants, a pair of authentic rickshaws being pulled down backstreets and alleyways, strange and unnamable items on vendor carts, novelty joints, and various other shops. In addition to the expertly painted wall-sized mural on the southeast corner of 10th & Winter Streets commemorating Chinatown’s 125th anniversary, the extraordinary statuary and other visually stunning monuments and adornments gave one the feeling of having entered another world altogether. Also contributing to the cultural richness and fantastic experience of it all, there was the large, colorful, and artistically remarkable “Friendship Arch” (or paifang), the first of its kind in America, which served as a clear indication that we were entering the nucleus of the neighborhood, as did the seemingly indecipherable symbols either glowing bright in neon splendor, etched deeply into stained wood surfaces, or painted on storefront signs and above restaurant entrances and on billowing red banners hanging over the busy streets. And after driving around a bit, we reached a point on Race Street when February and I, having both expressed our growing hunger to each other, decided to grab a bite to eat at the inexpressibly terrific Singapore Vegetarian Restaurant, where I had dined so many times as a resident of that very city.

Of course I was absolutely loath to turn off the music to which I was so quickly becoming attached, and with which I had began a sort of artistic and personal relationship. After all, what do we have with the things to which we have dedicated our lives if not relationships? The writer has a relationship with his or her words. The painter has a relationship with his or her brushstrokes on the canvas. The photographer has a relationship with the images he or she has captured. The philosopher his or her deep thoughts. The journalist his or her topics and his or her coverage of those topics. The musician his or her music. And just as they all have relationships with the things to which they have dedicated their lives, so do the people who experience and observe their works have relationships with them, each in his or her own way.
Later that same night, after having dined on meals of specially cooked bean curd and steamed vegetables topped with slices of pineapple and sweet sauce, February and I both sipped cups of hot tea and nibbled on orange wedges and what I can only now describe as delicious balls of dough only partially baked and covered in sesame seeds, and then cracked open our fortune cookies. I remember that my fortune was rather bizarre…but that’s neither here nor there, really. And besides, I can’t remember the words exactly as they read on the tiny slip of paper.
Overall, though, it was a very memorable day.
I especially remember…
The chords rang out from Nathan Robinson’s acoustic guitar, while Harrison Gordner’s steady drumbeat tapped away the seconds between each beautiful strum, and while Kelly Musser pressed her strong and highly adept fingers to the thick strings of her upright bass, all accompanied by Justin Arawjo’s fantastic mandolin playing and Alan Carroll’s crafty finger-work on the keys of his piano, until it all just sort of dissolved into a whisper of music punctuated by the individually struck notes of a marimba. That was just the beginning, though, for the song’s brilliant instrumentation continued to build around Nathan’s unmistakable vocals. And that was when the first verse started.
Lyrically the song was part narrative, part poem, and part philosophy. But the best part, I came to realize that night, was the climax of the song, during which Nathan’s vocals didn’t so much become one with the music as the two came together like malleable metals being skillfully forged into a specific shape, and during which he sang what in my opinion were the best lyrics of the song---Oh, great paradox: I find it in you…which he sang over and over until the song was brought to a musical halt of lovely strings and barely audible percussion and the wonderful echoes which signified its end.
How best to describe the sound of Raise Up Roof Beams? Indeed, they are a folk-based endeavor. That is indisputable. But they are much more than that, much more than just your average “indie folk” endeavor. On one side of the Raise Up Roof Beams coin, they have an almost rustic, rootsy sound, while on the other side there’s a more urban edge, which can only be referred to as “folk punk,” along with an undercurrent of “acousticore” which flows through the river of sound that is Raise Up Roof Beams, at times gentle and beautiful, and at other times mighty and surging. Nathan Robinson is a modern day troubadour. Though unlike the typical troubadour experience, Nathan is surrounded by a small “indie folk” orchestra of sorts. No, there is nothing simple or ordinary about this band. To the contrary, they are a tight and complex group of musicians and songsmiths, who together have created something all their own, something absolutely extraordinary.
If pressed to make a comparison of Raise Up Roof Beams’ music, I would probably say that they possess a sound comparable to something between the Decemberists and Frontier Ruckus, with Nathan Robinson, unquestionably a masterful singer/songwriter, passionately offering up vocals similar to the tremulous, heartfelt, and strong voices of Connor Oberst of Bright Eyes and David Dondero. What’s more, Robinson, with his vocal style what it is, is also somewhat like a modern day, City Earth version of Dylan. Yes, a poetry-mouthed, guitar-strumming, songwriting Dylan of the “indie folk” community, for lack of a more adequate musical categorization.
As I have already mentioned, it was on the internet that I first heard the songs of Raise up Roof Beams. There was a sample track titled “drinking to you” listed among a few others on a website for independent bands and singer/songwriters. I have also already mentioned that it was the name of the band that caught my attention above all else, though “drinking to you” was somehow the track I knew I should listen to right away. So I did. And immediately the song reached in and grabbed something deep within me, striking that chord of recognition which tells one that, “Yes, you have truly discovered a true masterpiece here.”
“Drinking to you” is a slightly catchy, acoustic piece which flows with brilliant instrumentation. It is decidedly a busy song, but in no way do they overdo it. And the lyrics, as well as the manner in which they are sung, are nothing short of great. That is, the song opens with Robinson’s unmistakable voice rising and falling with the entrance of the music---She said!---and then suddenly singing: She said, Your ears must have been burning because I have been talking about you. I have been thinking about you. I have been drinking to you.
Later in the song, Robinson gets a bit poetic with the words: Because…I am in love now, and we are all smoking outside of sex shops under oven clouds, laughing out loud, ‘Hahahaha’…we are laughing out loud.
It doesn’t take much for one to tell, purely from listening closely to Robinson’s lyrics, that his words are both emotional and poetic, as well as intelligent and philosophical, though probably more of the latter, especially on tracks like “drinking to you,” in which he gives mention to names such as Sartre and Soren, no doubt referring to the Existential Philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Soren Kierkegaard. Such things make it all too evident that our Mr. Robinson is a university gent with a mind stuffed to overflowing with all the various things of post-matriculation academia.
Speaking of philosophy and such…
Making reference to Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra in relation to the subject matter at hand, it has occurred to me, and on more than one occasion, that if I were to ask Nathan Robinson of Raise Up Roof Beams, just as the old saint in the forest asked Zarathustra during his “down-going”---What wilt thou do in the land of the sleepers?---he would undoubtedly reply with a confident and resounding, “I will wake them with song!” And he would mean it with every particle of living matter with which he is comprised.
Robinson conveys some other profound points, as in the song “Mary Magdalene,” for example, one of the tracks from the “Fingers & Photons” record, when he sings over and over, Mortality makes a lot of things ok. Granted, it seems like a simple statement. But if one were to think about it at length, one would come to realize that it is completely and undeniably true---mortality does in fact make a lot of things ok. The fact that we as human beings are ephemeral creatures in the incalculable lifespan of the universe, that our lives can so very easily be snuffed out at any moment like the flames of so many candles, may cause some of us to take more chances, to fiercely embrace our own existences, to re-evaluate our values, to re-adjust our perceptions of time, to love harder, and dream loftier dreams. Of course, the opposite is no doubt also true; which is to say, with the knowledge that we just may expire at any moment, that nothing means anything because it will all be over soon, some may simply say, “Fuck it!” and give up altogether, reducing their lives to a sort of brooding defeatism, waiting in a state of apathetic inaction for their lungs to expel that final breath. And what a terrible waste that would be.
Along similar lines, but in an entirely different song, Robinson goes on to sing, Existence shouldn’t be a reason to grieve. And it most certainly shouldn’t. Surely anyone could come up with a dozen different reasons to grieve, but not their own existences. But then again, there are two different kinds of people in the world in regards to this topic: those who consider life a gift, and those perpetually and hopelessly depressed and wretched people who bemoan every day above ground.
Perhaps it’s largely due to Robinson’s lyrical genius that I am so taken with Raise Up Roof Beams’ songs…or rather, due to the noticeable optimism and hope, which is rather nice and refreshing in an age of such cynicism and hopelessness. In a way, at least for me, they somehow return at least a little of the azure to the seemingly perpetual and pre-apocalyptic gray skies of the City Earth. Their sound is something natural in a world of artificiality. And it also goes to prove that there is still a fair degree of art left in music. And for those reasons, among others, I celebrate Raise Up Roof Beams and their songs.
Sometimes the most profound use of music is to bookmark the most important and meaningful pages of one’s life…or rather, to create a sort of soundtrack of remembrance, so to speak. For the most part, such things are almost entirely unconscious and unintentional. For example, every time I call back the memories of that day in Philadelphia with February, I instantly begin hearing Raise Up Roof Beams’ “heavy machine” in my head. And the opposite is true when I listen to “heavy machine”---I think of that day in Philadelphia with February. It would seem as though that particular song has forever marked that day of my life, and that is absolutely fine with me. Of course, such things also carry with them subtle psychological implications, mainly pointing towards one’s personal level of sentimentality and the degree to which one is affected by of nostalgia, for remembrance brought forth by musical association says quite a lot about the person within whom it takes place. For some smells trigger recollection, like that of the nag champa incense an old friend in New Orleans used to burn in his pad, a past lover’s perfume, freshly mowed grass in summer, and that of dead leaves on the crisp air of autumn. For others it can be anything from the taste of the bitter red wine they gave at Holy Communion on Sundays, the sound of rain hitting the rooftops in the middle of the night as if tapping liquid lullabies upon them, the feel of certain fabrics against one’s skin, the warm and drowsy euphoria brought on by morphine use, swimming in the ocean, crescent moons in winter, breakfast cereals with cartoon characters on the boxes, drunkenness, convenience store coffee, expensive chocolates melting on the tongue, honeysuckle mornings in spring, dead leaves blowing about the autumn streets in colorful swirls of oranges and reds and yellows and browns, cigarette smoke, Irish pubs, barking dogs, and so on. We all have little things that remind us significant people and places in our lives, both the recent past and distant past, or rather…yesterday or what feels like a lifetime ago. Music takes me back more than anything, though as an artist it has proved rather difficult to not connect many different things by association, sometimes consciously, sometimes not.
On the way home from Philadelphia that night, I listened to more of Raise Up Roof Beams’ music. Songs like “drinking to you,” “faux revolutionary,” “forbidden fruit,” “letter to Alyasha,” and “Egypt,” among others. I remember thinking that the music joined together so well with Robinson’s utterly exquisite voice…not exquisite in a Sufjan Stevens or Craig Gurwich (Summer at Shatter Creek) or Tony Dekker (Great Lake Swimmers), but rather in a Bob Dylan meets David Dondero way or Connor Oberst (Bright Eyes), as I have already mentioned, but with perhaps a bit of Jeff Mangum (Neutral Milk Hotel) meets Colin Meloy (the Decembrists) in there as well. Also in every Raise Up Roof Beams song the music seems to merge perfectly with Robinson’s vocals to form what I can only now describe as so many vines, some flowered, others covered in thorns, all weaving their way through an aesthetic latticework until entangled like the limbs of countless lovers in a magnificent orgy. In an instant Raise Up Roof Beams’ music can conjure up simultaneous images of cityscapes and forests, pointing out their interesting artistic dichotomy---half roots and folk, the other indie and punk. But can one see the buildings through the trees, or the trees through the buildings? In other words, which tips the scales slightly more on one side? Or are they perfectly even? It’s difficult to say. And really, it doesn’t matter all that much. What does matter is that it is a fine union, that it works better than if they could have planned it that way. But such things can’t be planned, can they? The answer is definitely, No. And that’s why the spontaneous and unpredictable things of the world are so goddamn beautiful. That’s why some mistakes are the best things that can happen to us.
This is highway music, I also thought to myself, the kind of music one listens to while driving at high speeds down rural stretches at night and watching the moon chase the treetops, and while going through the traffic-choked city streets illuminated by block after block of neon glow and the sickly yellow shafts falling from street lights with failing wattage. But it’s also the kind of music, continued my line of thought, that one listens to while sitting on the Jersey beach watching the sun rise in all of its orange sherbet splendor over the calm and seemingly endless water. Or having just lit a cigarette, sitting in one’s car at a point overlooking the city, sipping from a bottle of Tennessee whiskey, and meditatively observing the soft pink fingers of the cotton candy twilight touch upon the rooftops and streets and reflect in the many-windowed towers of downtown. Then the music stops, and that’s ok, because all is dark and quiet, and because…well, the music never truly ends.
In a brief interview in October of 2007, Nathan Robinson provided me with a short history of the band that had formed in the summer of 2004. At first it was just Robinson, his friend Drew Hermeling on bass, and a drummer by the name of Harrison Gordner from another band with whom Drew was acquainted. They played together as a three-piece for a year, though something seemed to be missing. The formula that eventually added up to today’s Raise Up Roof Beams was not yet complete. And so entered multi-instrumentalist Justin Arawjo on banjo, mandolin, accordian, melodica, and lap steel in the fall of 2005. With that lineup, the four musicians went on to play a good deal of shows and even released their first full-length album, “Fingers & Photons, ” which they recorded in three days that winter. Despite the live performances and release of “Fingers & Photons” in May of 2006, Drew left the band. With Drew no longer there, the band welcomed yet another new member, Alan Carroll, primarily on keyboards, but who has contributed other musical bits and pieces apart from the keyboards since his inclusion. The final addition to the band came in the fall of 2006, when Kelly Musser was brought into the warm fold of Raise Up Roof Beams to play bass.
I love my bandmates dearly, stated Robinson in my interview with him, and we have an important and communal relationship that would be difficult to replicate outside of shared experience and long journeys. And that certainly had a ring of truth to it, for when one looks at a photo of the band, really looks at it, one sees a small group of individuals with varying personalities and styles, thoughts and feelings, views and values, and so on in the way that such things are, but also one sees that the individuals have an unspoken connection, a bond, so to speak, both personal and artistic. And upon hearing their music, one can hear that bond, one can sense that connection, and even more than that, they are able to take note of an indisputable chemistry which seems to flow out from their hearts and minds, meets in the middle, and then comes pouring forth from their collective instrumentation, as well as their voices.
There’s Nathan Robinson with his clean-cut and fresh-faced appearance, with his thin frame clothed in a style all his own, which I can only describe as jeans that are neither too baggy nor too tight and artsy sweaters over button-down, collared shirts, and sometimes purposefully imperfect, though very hip suits, complete with tastefully patterned ties. Next there’s Kelly Musser; a blond-haired folk heroine, attractive and cool behind her big upright bass. There’s Justin Arawjo, who, upon first glance, and second for that matter, seems to be the band’s eccentric presence, with his thick, black, plastic-framed glasses, bandana hanging loosely around his neck, perfectly sized t-shirts from which long, thin arms protrude in all of their jointed glory, and at the end of which, bending and pointing and gripping, are the hands that confidently hold his instruments, and the fingers that scramble over the fret boards and pin down notes like the legs of so many talented spiders. Harrison Gordner, lightly bearded and earnest, looks like a cross between a jazzman and poet, or both, or neither. And Alan Carroll, youthful and shy-looking, has the appearance of a Suicide Generation cat of the indie community.
Yes, it would be fair to assume that these musicians and songwriters are going places…one would imagine a long way from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where Robinson lived for quite some time in order to attend college, before moving to DC. And all the other members from their hometowns. They certainly have the potential.
We can only hope, however, that Raise Up Roof Beams doesn’t fade into the same level of obscurity and artistic inaction that Salinger himself did over the years, for the world hasn’t seen any new works published by Salinger since 1965. Nor has he granted an interview since 1980. And for whatever reason, perhaps simply a reclusive nature, Salinger left urban Manhattan, New York for rural Cornish, New Hampshire, where he now resides in almost complete isolation. Salinger has confessed to some that he still writes, but only because he “loves to write,” which serves to point out his true dedication to art, without any ugly ambitious intentions, and without that sloppy and careless desperation that sneaks its way into the work of those artists stumbling towards approaching deadlines and dwindling bank account funds. Perhaps there is too powerful a fascination between the ever-contemplated mystery of Salinger’s seclusion coupled with the fact that he simply abandoned the growing fame and fortune of his career as a writer, as it were, and the appreciation and fondess people have for his literary offerings, as the two seem inextricably linked, and both are embraced by the reading public with equal fervor. It is nearly impossible to separate the artist from the piece of work, for the work, in more ways than one, represents the artist as a human being of this mad City Earth in which we all live. Indeed, in the same way that a child possesses characteristics of his or her parents, a work of art holds bits and pieces of its creator. So when we listen to bands like Raise Up Roof Beams, we are also listening to the anguish and ecstasy, triumphs and failures, love and loss, hope and despair, bravery and fear, joy and sadness, sanity and madness, observations and experiences, and the intelligence and emotions of those involved in having made it. I suppose this is what one means when one says he or she is looking at the “big picture.”
I am looking for truth and meaning, just like everybody else, said Robinson in our interview. For me, music is an avenue for that pursuit. I write simple songs and sing about very personal circumstances in the hopes that after I sing about them, I will understand more about myself and other people. That is why I started writing songs in the first place, and that motivation has held true, even though I have practiced enough and written enough for other people to start actually wanting to hear them.
Nathan was being modest in having said that his songs were simple, as some of them are quite profound, lyrically, passionate and emotional, vocally, and intricate and prodigious, musically. I am also quite sure that his reasons for having become the singer/songwriter he is today go well beyond the attainment of understanding, personal in specific, and humanity in general. And the slight surprise with which he faced the fact that people began to actually want to hear his songs…well, people do want to hear Raise Up Roof Beams. In fact, anyone like me would almost always want to hear their songs. Or rather, anyone like me wouldn’t be able to get enough of their sound. And I know I am not alone in having those feelings towards the music.
Speaking of music, each musician and singer/songwriter brings music into his or her live differently. Each artist feels differently about his or her work and also has his or her own thoughts pertaining to it. But for the members of Raise Up Roof Beams, I think they have their own take on their endeavor, holding Music as Art, Music as Life, Music as Religion, and Music as Revolution.
…as it should be.
Ocassionally, if one were to look up from the many things that fill one's life, one would find something altogether new and exciting, for one should consciously seek out such things, collect them like so many sentimental photos or journal entries. One should allow one's life to overflow with with it all. Take the William Blake quote at the opening of this article---When thou seest an Eagle, thou seest a portion of Genius. Lift up thy head!---and truly contemplate its meaning. That is, there are so many beautiful, interesting, and infinitely wonderful things that, if we don't take the time to look for them, or listen for them, we simply pass right on by, missing them entirely. And our lives certainly aren't any better for having missed that which would have no doubt made them all the more fulfilled. Quite the opposite is true, in fact; our lives are undoubtedly better for having made such things part of them. In this particular case, the "Eagle" is the band Raise Up Roof Beams, metaphorically, as it pertains to the above quote, and I am definitely glad that I "lifted up my head," as it were, to discover their existence in the world.

by:
James G. Carlson
(the Urban Artist Group, 2008)

*All photos by K Rush, except last photo, which is by Dustin Angell

http://www.myspace.com/raiseuproofbeams

&
http://www.raiseuproofbeams.com

Timber Timbre: In the north, a tower built with stones of song.

2008-06-10T23:46:00.000-07:00

uag: '08

Timber Timbre

James G. Carlson

For some inexplicable reason, the music of T., who writes and plays his songs under the moniker Timber Timbre, brings to mind a world like black-and-white photographs, ramshackle cabins in the far north, plains blanketed with thin layers of snow through which long brown weeds stand waving in the wind, women whose faces possess a dark and classical beauty, the undulating and otherworldly reds and greens and purples of the Aurora Borealis during cold January nights in northern Alaska, and long stretches of rural highway in the middle of winter. In a way, it also brings to mind the strange and seemingly neverending Pine Barrens of New Jersey, the hazy southern twilights of Alabama, the rocky slopes and scatterings of trees of the Adirondack Mountains, and nameless pubs with sawdust-covered floors. And, finally, nighttime campfires in the desert wastelands of the dusty west, badly kept clapboard shacks surrounded by thick-rooted trees overtaken by kudzu deep in the Louisiana bayou, large barns and infinities of farmland in the Pennsylvania countryside, and gothic style churches with gray stone walls and pointed steeples upon which black-feathered birds perch through autumn.
It would be dishonest of me to claim that I could explain such imagery, as I cannot, though it seems to be a reaction to something in the music. Yes, T.’s music conjures forth such things, along with their attendant feelings, at least for me, which simply goes to show how very powerful his music truly is. And, let’s be honest, isn’t that one of the fundamental purposes of art: to make us feel something, to make us think, and to inspire us to new creative heights?
Now, it is no easy task to describe Timber Timbre, to be sure, especially in conventional terms and standard journalistic methods and so forth. So I will just have to approach this article as I do most of my literary and poetic work: with spontaneous, artistic frenzies of typing through the strange, post-midnight hours, between the pale illumination of the descending moon and the golden fingers of sunlight which grip the eastern horizon at the arrival of dawn. And I will sit in the waxing and waning light, much as I am right now at this very moment, with my fingers hovering just-so over the keyboard, drinking too much coffee and smoking too many cigarettes.
First, Timber Timbre is a collision of past and present, a car crash of sound, as there are noticeable elements of both old and new in T.’s songs---that of the very distant past and that which is entirely modern, touching on very little in between the two extreme points. Otherwise, I like to think that the songs of Timber Timbre are like some sort of detailed map of T.’s inner self: his thoughts and feelings, hopes and fears, dreams and beliefs, triumphs and failures, sanity and madness, love and loss, likes and dislikes, labor and ease, and so on in the way that things are within the young singer/songwriter.

Picture, if you will, a small room in a rather old, country house, on the corner table of which sits an equally old phonograph, and the needle is riding the grooves of the vinyl, producing a lovely, scratchy music that makes the house feel haunted somehow. In the music one can detect, with only basic artistic dissection, the presence of the orphaned children of Old World music, a fusion of “blues” and “folk,” as well as a long lost sibling of experimental “jazz” (the kind the family keeps unseen in a padlocked cellar), and something else entirely, something belonging to the Modern World, but also something that defies all musical categorization, really, and stakes claim to a previously undiscovered part of the City Earth Underground…just when one was of the mind to think that such things were utterly impossible! That is, it is quite reasonable to feel as if there are no more rocks to overturn, no more trails to be trodden, no more mountains that haven’t been ascended by others, no more places yet unvisited, no more wildernesses to be braved, and no seas that have not been sailed. And then comes along something like Timber Timbre, which is essentially an excursion into the uncharted subterranean realm of musical exploration.
Indeed, T.’s sound is decidedly a rare blend of musical skill, artistic expression, and individuality. In truth, it only took one listen to his first release, “Cedar Shakes,” in its entirety to come to that conclusion. You see, I discovered Timber Timbre much the same way that most people find independent bands and obscure singer/songwriters these days: I sifted through the technological mud and printed pebbles of the vast riverbeds of the modern arts, gleaning what valuable golden nuggets I could, here and there, keeping only those that proved the most important, meaningful, and worthwhile. In doing so, I happened upon T.’s Timber Timbre, which had very limited information posted online. But with what little it did have, I was completely intrigued.
It was then that I ordered a copy from T. himself, which arrived from Canada to my doorstep in Pennsylvania in only a few short weeks. The day it arrived, however, I was off to Atlantic City, New Jersey, and didn’t have the time to sit down and give it the attention it deserved. Thus I decided to bring it along and listen to it on the road, as it were. And listen to it on the road, I did…so much so, in fact, that I drove my poor girl and life companion, February, utterly mad with it, for I listened to it over and over. There was just so much to enjoy and process. Each time, I found myself pointing out things that I had missed the previous listen, things in the music itself, subtle things, highly peculiar things nearly hidden behind the bolder instrumentation.
To be sure, there’s certainly no way to pinion Timber Timbre down with heavy iron shackles of any single genre. Let’s be honest, T.’s music is firstly and unquestionably a form of “folk,” but there are notable elements of “blues” and “country” in his sound as well, among other things for which I haven’t any names. But…then again, there is also something akin to a combination of middle-of-nowhere boot-stompin’ shindigs and revival tent madness in his sound that just cannot be ignored anymore than the other parts of the whole that is Timber Timbre. When I asked T. in a recent interview what he thought his music should be referred to, he simply replied: “I’m ok being referred to as folk. That’s normally my response to the question. I think it’s a broad enough description in terms of the temperament and instrumentation of what I’m doing.”
And when I asked T. about his writing process pertaining to the songs on “Cedar Shakes,” he said, “When I first started to write songs, they were very deliberate melodically. I was always trying to write something really clever, while lyrically I was being really sentimental and honest…like, too honest probably. Eventually I stopped trying so hard to avoid the obvious chord change. I would let myself fall into traditional meters and progressions when writing. Cedar Shakes was the result of that.”
“Cedar Shakes” opens with what is becoming a regular occurrence on Timber Timbre releases; a strange and somewhat eerie introductory piece, entirely instrumental, which lasts all of a minute and thirty seconds and ends like a wild flower blooming in the early morning sun, from a somewhat dark and crawling arrangement with busy background sounds to a deep, percussion-driven change accompanied by catchy notes from T.’s acoustic guitar. Following the intro track, the songs sort of pour forth like fine wine from an ornamental jug, with songs such as “home”---a woodsy, rollicking composition with a chant of a verse, invariably ending each time with, “tonight I wanna come back home.”
Immediately after the exit of “home,” the song “mercy” enters the record, which almost comes across like an old-timey revival tent song of the great, desolate wastelands in the mad southwest of this infinitely strange America.
Similar to the salty waves which crash upon the shores and then roll in upon themselves, like so many watery tongues licking away the footprints of former travelers, “mercy” is carried back out to the deeps of the record, and the title track, “cedar shakes,” washes up onto the wet sand like the glorious wreckage of an ancient vessel. And in comparison to the songs that come before it, “cedar shakes” definitely has a darker, more somber feel to it, as well as some rather poetic lyrics, almost like a song one would hear while driving down a lonely stretch of country road on a rainy afternoon in autumn.
Next, on the doorstep of the record arrive what have confessedly become my favorite “Cedar Shakes” songs: “as angels do,” “black creek drive,” and “it’s only dark.”
Well, I don’t much like the railway man, begins “as angels do.” Well, I don’t much like the railway man, he sings again. And he’ll kill you if he can, he’ll drink up your blood…drink up your blood, like wine.

The scratchy, unpolished, and wonderfully raw sound of old vinyl records drifts above the music of “as angels do,” sort of like a thick wall of fog on the interstate at dawn, and yet, unlike the other songs on the album, the music almost seems secondary to the vocals in a way. “As angels do” is by no means the only song through which the sound of needle-on-vinyl rises up to greet the listener…and it suits T.’s overall sound quite well, really. In other words, it adds an old soul quality to the music, while giving it character, and proves itself an integral component to the machine that is Timber Timbre. And yet, the word machine may be a poor choice, as far as descriptive terms, for T.’s music has an undeniably rustic feel to it, something altogether natural, existing in that place between small country towns and all-out wilderness. There’s little in his sound that belongs to the city, to the overpopulated urban kingdoms of humanity, where buildings, streets, and machinery are indispensable to the world of artificiality, where the buildings and skyscrapers of downtown stand like the uneven teeth of a giant, where the streets are like so many veins teeming with living cells, where dark ghettoes howl their anarchistic cries of madness and criminal indulgence and beautiful chaos, and where it all stands out on the dusky horizon in faded Halloween colors…the black silhouette of cityscape against the fiery yellows and jack-o-lantern oranges of the morning sun.
What has probably become my favorite song on the “Cedar Shakes” record, however, is “it’s only dark,” which is a true “folk” masterpiece, with verses like haunted houses, and for its choruses a progression of notes that one would hear in an old fashion tavern being played on a big piano, the whole scene sepia-colored to give it that faded-with-the-ages look, while the autumnal night sky rolls by overhead in all of its celestial glory, and while the countless insects hiding in the weeds and trees play in unison their orchestral music of clicking, screeching, buzzing, and chirping.
Such are T.’s songs. But what of T. the man? Who is he? And what is he like?
Unfortunately I have only had the pleasure of knowing T. through online correspondence, as I rarely get as far north as Canada, and even rarer still do I get to leave the United States. Being that that has been the case, I have recently asked him about himself in more detail. And he replied somewhat like a calm, centered student of Buddhism, sitting lotus style before his inquisitive company, though instead of the flowing robes I imagined him in jeans and a slightly faded flannel shirt, wearing thick-soled boots and a winter hat.
Well, let’s see…, he began. I grew up in a rural area of Ontario, where I lived until moving to Toronto to study film at the Ontario College of Art. While making films in college I played in a lot of bands with friends, mostly as a drummer. By the time I had graduated, I was more interested in composing and began writing songs and singing very quietly in secret.
I like to stay close to home, he said. Also, I like watching movies and walking my dog. Recently I started swimming. And I hope to make something out of wood one day.
To be sure, these are not the typical answers one gets when interviewing a singer/songwriter. They are very human answers, no doubt. Humble. And honest. T. is not just a singer/songwriter, though; he is also an artist. As a filmmaker his eye is trained to see the world in a way that most cannot---with clarity and reason, a heightened understanding of things and a silent awe resulting from the ever changing, crazy, and sometimes impossibly beautiful world around him, as well as the ability to perceive the poetry of life in motion, of cause and effect, action and consequence. Indeed, this is another example of contraries, for while filmmaking is an outward art form, in order to create music it is necessary for one to first go inward and brave one’s lower and higher self before returning to the middle to unblock the dam and let it flow forth. After all, every artistic medium holds for those who experience it, appreciate it, and make it part of their lives, a sort of intellectual, emotional, and spiritual supply and demand factor, which, if lacking, devalues the piece of art in question and causes it to fall by the wayside, eventually ending up broken into pieces and scattered about the junkyards of the art that failed humanity. One thing I can convey with absolute certainty is that Timber Timbre is an exceptional contribution to humanity, artistically in general, musically in specific, and will endure the test of artistic evaluation throughout the ages, if only in the underground art communities and subcultures of the world.
First with “Cedar Shakes,” and then with “Medicinals,” one can easily observe the gradual evolution of sound that is T.’s music. Both records are masterpieces, indisputably, each in its own way, with different backgrounds, sort of the way each season has its own prevailing mood and characteristics, creating various feelings, or rather awakening feelings within the listener. Each of his songs plays its part in submitting to or resisting the opposing forces in the universe, that which lies between light and dark, holy and unholy, life and death, bitter and sweet, worldly and otherworldly, the city and the wilderness (artificiality and nature), hot and cold, feast and famine, and so on in the way that things are on this mad planet Earth.
Much like “Cedar Shakes,” “Medicinals” opens with an echoey instrumental intro, though decidedly shorter than that which appeared on the first record, which is more than anything else a series of experimental sounds leading into the first song, “there is a cure”---a down-tempo tune in which T. shows that he can use his vocals as additional instrumentation, and do it quite well, flowing along with the music, like voices carried on the wind, or like debris floating on the rushing surface of a mountain stream, and then suddenly breaking into verse, singing, …living in the algae bed, soaking up the sunlight, fester in the daytime hours, oh, you never sleep at night, and there is a cure for this, and it starts with one deep breath, but the air is never sweet enough, no, the air is never sweet…
After “there is a cure” the song “devil’s dress” begins, which, like its predecessor is a rather down-tempo arrangement of echoey instrumentation. But “devil’s dress” is a haunted house of a song, to be sure. Like “Cedar Shakes,” “Medicinals” possesses that dark-gothic bluesy “folk” combination that is so unique to “folk” in general, both old and new. “Medicinals” definitely has more poetic lyrics than the record before it, and it is also seemingly just so much creative ground in which T. had obviously planted a good deal of strange seeds, which have since grown into little saplings of musical perfection. It thrills me to think of the monster trees that those saplings will grow into, given enough artistic nutrients, inspiration, and room to grow into their own.
Though Timber Timbre sometimes has a full band feel, it is essentially a solo project. And when I asked T. about bandmates and collaborative efforts, he simply stated, I really love playing music with others, but writing and recording has always been something I do mostly on my own. Although…my partner Christienne writes a lot of poetry and I sometimes borrow/steal bits from her. She’s really good, and I’ve learned a lot from her. She also played organ in the band when we first started playing Cedar Shakes songs live. There was also Mike Milosh on baritone guitar and Lindsay Fitzsimmons on drums. They also make great music respectively and belong to different bands. I perform on my own these days, though. Lately I just need things to be very simple.
Next on the record, and quite possibly my favorite, is the song “like a mountain.”
Whoa-oh-whoa, the mountaintop. Whoa-oh-whoa, the visions stop. And I will reap the locust crop, ’cause I love you like a mountain. Whoa-oh-whoa, the mountaintop. Whoa-oh-whoa, the beatings stop. And down comes the hatchet, the choppin’ block, ’cause I love you like a mountain. Whoa-oh-whoa, the human race. Whoa-oh-whoa, the prophet’s face. And all god’s people find their place, ’cause I love you like a mountain, begins “like a mountain,” which is an apt title for the song, no doubt. Unlike the songs that come before it on the record, “like a mountain” is more upbeat, catchy, and pseudo-traditional, in terms of “folk” and “blues” song-crafting, with the deep reverberations of what sounds to be a deliberately loose drumhead stretched across a rather large tom-tom struck at just the right moments, accompanied by handclapping, xaphoon, and full chords strummed on acoustic guitar throughout.
“Beat the dead horse,” another of my favorites on the record, follows “like a mountain.” For this song, T. employs experimental and unconventional instrumentation, sure enough. But what really throws the listener for a loop, so to speak, like a relative sitting up in his casket at his own funeral to say good-bye, are the two “hidden” tracks, which aren’t hidden at all, but rather extra tracks in addition to those meant for the record: “patron saint hunter” and “oh, messiah.” It’s odd, too, how these two tracks are, in my opinion, two of the best songs on the record. In fact, posted on the web is a video for “oh, messiah,” shot and directed by filmmaker Scott Cudmore. All in all, it actually captures the mood of the song very well. No, not just the one song. That is, it doesn’t just capture the mood of “oh, messiah” very well, but the mood of Timber Timbre as a whole, I think.

What other imagery comes to mind when listening to Timber Timbre, I ask myself now? Well, that comes somewhat easily, confessedly, as I have thought about it quite a bit, while allowing myself to get a bit hungup on the mind-heart-soul connection that has resulted from my relationship with T.’s music. So I now go inward and look at the movie reel of images flashing across my cerebral screen, seeing: the naked branches that scrape against one’s bedroom window during the midnight hours. Waterfalls surrounded by moss-covered rocks and slimy-looking roots. Covered bridges. A black Labrador Retriever sitting stock-still on a front porch somewhere in upstate New York. Hawks flying circles, with their brown and white feathers and awesome wingspans. Snake-handlers dancing ceremoniously about a Texas chapel, draped in thick-bodied rattlers, and chanting in unintelligible tongues. That ethereal shaft of golden sunlight that falls from a tiny gap between the bruise-colored clouds to touch upon an unseen patch of earth in the distance. Teenagers walking hand-in-hand down long train tracks. Antiques and bizarre odds and ends piled high in the shadowy corners of dusty attics. A worn pair of boots hanging from a Philadelphia telephone wire by their laces. Antlers fixed to the wall of a hunting cabin. Old horseshoes hanging superstitiously from rusty nails above wooden thresholds the world over. The ruins of old fashion farmhouses in the Midwest. And also that too-much-for-words backdrop in our little sections of the world, when day’s end is hours gone and the utter blackness of night is interrupted only by a pale lunar radiance and countless twinkling stars here and there, when the city sleeps with one eye open, and the country is completely immersed in contented repose.
Above all else, T.’s music is an art form of its own, altogether original, strange, beautiful, rustic, haunted, poetic, and…well beyond and far greater than similar attempts by other talented, intelligent, and eccentric singer/songwriters with fresh artistic visions. And I sincerely hope that he continues to forge along through the thick overgrowth and rocky uphill miles of path that he has chosen for himself…or, just as likely, that has chosen him. In truth, it is usually the latter scenario when it comes to clawing one’s way out of one’s artistic cocoon, famished and thirsty, simultaneously both confused and fascinated by the things of the world, and endlessly inspired by it all, sometimes consciously, sometimes not. Either way, masterpieces eventually push forth from the opiate warmth and watery womb in which they were conceived, and then spill out on to the floor with great triumphant cries, metaphorically speaking, at which time they are nothing short of inspiration materialized, the formed and final blossoms on the branches of mind, heart and soul convergence. Quite simply, it all amounts to the very offspring of artistic creation.
So where does all of this leave us? For me, I can say, right back where I was when I began this article: contemplating art, recognizing the poetry of things, digging the world and the people in it, and listening to life-changing music. Ok, I know what you’re thinking. And, yes, it is most certainly possible for a piece of particularly extraordinary art to change one’s life to a degree. Truthfully, I wouldn’t want to live in a world where that wasn’t possible.

for more information on Timber Timbre, go to:

http://www.myspace.com/timbertimbre

imadethismistake: clear skies over Tallahassee, gray skies over Pennsylvania

2008-05-31T02:02:00.000-07:00

imadethismistake

Sounds from the City Earth Underground

James G. Carlson

Most things in this world end up as something quite different from what they were when they first started out, and singer/songwriter Kylewilliam Campol, who writes and plays his songs under the moniker imadethismistake, is no exception. That is, Kylewilliam, the young man whose songs have created somewhat of a stir in the underground of the independent music circuit, began as an artist, yes, but not a musician. The truth is that his artistic self was brought into this world and baptized in the holy waters of poetics. In fact, it was in a recent interview with Kylewilliam himself that he stated, “I have always considered myself a writer above a musician, but I guess now the lines have become quite blurred, and I’m fine with that.”
One of the best things about Kylewilliam’s music is that his affinity for poetry and journal writing has carried over into his music, so much so, in fact, that some of his songs are simply spoken-word poetry over well-constructed backgrounds of acoustic strumming and other subtle instrumentation. The song “staring blindly into a dull sunset” is a perfect example of just that. “Staring blindly into a dull sunset” is the first track on the first imadethismistake ep, and, after receiving it from Valiant Death Records and listening to it for the first time, I couldn’t help but think to myself that it was both strange and highly original, though in a decidedly good way. I also thought that it translated like someone reading aloud from one’s personal journals, with deeply emotive lyrics and passionate conveyances, at times romantic, while at others tragic, always intelligent, certainly charming, and even occasionally poignant. Of course that’s not to say that Kylewilliam’s songs are not without a sense of humor. He has proven that he can be just as fun and good-humored as he can be dark and brooding, moving from one song to the next like azure skies to the grayest of stormy weather, or from the golden shafts of sunlight and verdant landscapes of mid-summer to the dead wastelands of winter in the northeast, though without equal balance, as he obviously tends to favor the latter of the two. But such is real life, after all. And Kylewilliam’s songs are definitely real life songs.
When asked how the imadethismistake moniker came to be, Kylewilliam answered, “At the time I was referring to my past relationships, romantic and not, and how in my life I had messed up most of the things that had been messed up. More recently the name has taken on a new meaning, as my anxiety in the last few years has gotten the better of me and completely warped my world. It has become a sort of personal motivator to calm down and realize things go wrong…you can’t change that, but you can certainly work to mend them.” So…regardless of how one looks at it, the name retains it meaningfulness. And surely one can’t ask for much more than that.

Shortly after discovering the existence of imadethismistake, my curiosity somewhat piqued by the unusual experience of it all, I wanted to learn more about the individual who was making the new and interesting songs I was hearing. Naturally, I sat down at my computer and sought information online, and there were quite a few things regarding Kylewilliam Campol produced by the few search engines I employed. Having no idea what he looked like, I clicked on a link to videos for his songs “sunkist” and “gravediggers on their deathbeds, pt 2” (both directed by Alan Lastufka from Fall of Autumn Press & Distro), and was met by a shaggy-haired, scruffy-faced young man, wearing black, thick-framed glasses, below-the-knee shorts and cut-off t-shirts, and wielding an acoustic guitar. My only thought, other than that the videos themselves were absolutely wonderful, was simply: Oh, so that’s Kylewilliam Campol. And, truth be told, he half looked as I had expected him to. That in no way is to say that he is just another nondescript guy walking around the crowded streets of the City Earth. To the contrary, he has a kindly, youthful look coupled with something unnamable that says to those who take note of his appearance that he has an identity all his own, that, whether he’s aware of it or not, there’s something undeniably down-to-earth and likable about him, and that there’s nothing fake or forced in his character…which, let’s be honest, is something to be both admired and respected. Since then, the contact that I’ve had with Kyle has proved that my initial impression of him was pretty much right-on.
Recent years have seen a notable rise in artists who have started utilizing more aspects of their given talents. Since so many artists possess a certain duality, and some even possess something which far exceeds duality, it only makes sense that one artistic medium wouldn’t be quite enough for them. Take Jeffrey Lewis, for example, the New York City “folk punk” singer/songwriter and comic book creator, whose nearly ten-minute-long “History of Punk on the Lower East Side,” as well as his other better known songs (like “the Chelsea Hotel oral sex song,” “back when I was 4,” and “the last time I did acid I went insane”) and his collaborations with other singer/songwriters such as Kimya Dawson and Ya Ya of Herman Dune have all been great contributions to the independent music community in general and the “folk punk” subculture in specific. Take Justin Duerr of Philadelphia, whose band Northern Liberties and his solo material as Justin Duerr & the Etheric Phoenix of Love and/or Justin Duerr & the Auric Doves of Avalon (yes, the boy is definitely a bit preoccupied with birds!) have reached a wide underground audience, and whose incredible drawings have appeared all over as cd covers and posters and whatnot. Even Jim Carroll, diarist and author, best known for “the Basketball Diaries” (which was a novel, then a movie based on the notebooks of journal entries Carroll kept from age 12 to young adulthood detailing his life growing up on the tough streets of the poorer Manhattan neighborhoods in the 70’s), went on to front his own rock band---the Jim Carroll Band---born from a chance performance in 1978 at a Patti Smith show in San Diego, which eventually earned him the media title “the Dylan of the 80’s.”
It just so happens that Kylewilliam has been able to tie his two artistic loves together into one neat little package called imadethismistake; a unique “indie-folk” endeavor with poetic lyrics which at times erupt into bursts of passionate semi-screams, guitar strumming which fluctuates between serene and tempestuous, notes that ring out simultaneously as gentle as a sleeping lover’s heartbeat and as savage as the worst midnight ghetto wilderness of the City Earth, with a variety of unconventional and experimental layers of sound throughout. In fact, I would say that Kyle’s lyrics are sort of like a tangle of thick vines weaving their way through a high latticework section in a wild, overgrown garden of music. And his voice…well, his vocal style is comparable, though only to an extent, to that of Atom (aka Adam Goren) from Atom & His Package (a one-man “electro-synth-punk” project out of Philadelphia, which, for a lack of a better description, comes across like a weird individual stuck somewhere between cool and somewhat nerdy, working his songs out on a synthesizer---his “package”---and speak-singing lyrics that vary from witty quips and absurdly hilarious stories and ideas to social commentary and personal experiences). That’s not quite fair to Kylewilliam, though. After all, his vocal sound is all his own, really; and though it’s slightly comparable to that of Atom, it’s also a bit like that of Chris Johnston (Ghost Mice) and Johnny D. (Tin Tree Factory). But again, Kyle’s vocals are all his own and comparable to that of Kylewilliam Campol first and foremost.
One thing did come to mind as I contemplated Kylewilliam Campol’s marriage of poetry and music, and it was something by the poet W.H. Auden, who once wrote: A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become. And in a way that is unquestionably so. But in another way, with the right kind of mind, together with just the right heart and a rare soul, one is able, finally, to combine the two artistic mediums, both the one that stops to think and the other that goes on to become. Roads and highways merge, rivers and streams merge, thoughts and feelings merge, so why not music and poetry? I am convinced, however, that one cannot acquire such an ability, that it can only come about naturally as something altogether inherent. And so Kylewilliam is evidently just such an artist and singer/songwriter, whose music is some of the rarest music in that it simultaneously stops to think and goes on to become. No doubt the world would be much better off with more singer/songwriters and artists like him.
During our interview I asked Kyle where he was from, as well as where he had lived during his artistic maturity; to which he replied…
“I was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and proudly call it home. The reality is that I have spent the bulk of my childhood in suburban south Florida---Ft. Lauderdale. It was kind of a wild and crazy ride being so far away from all of my extended family, and still is. I now reside in Tallahassee, Florida, while attending Florida State University. I leave every chance I get, though.”
And when I mentioned his lyrics and vocal style and how he seemed as if he was just as much a poet as a singer/songwriter, he explained…
“I’ve always had an inclination towards poetry. When I was in grade school I would go to the local bookstore every first Friday of the month to read poems out loud. Writing has always been my major form of expression. Around the same time I was exiting middle school, I started to really get into music, bought a bass guitar, and joined a rock band that day. A few years down the road I was 15 and a seasoned local scene vet, and that’s when I found a twenty-year-old guitar and decided to pick it up and strum for the first time. The next day I wrote staring blindly into a dull sunset. Since then it has been the same general pattern: writing poems and putting them to music.”
In December of 2007, shortly after our interview, Kyle sent me the tracks from his full-length album “Tomorrow, We Start New,” which I excitedly listened to right away. All considered, it was quite impressive. There were some differences between the “Bonfire Club” ep and “Tomorrow, We Start New,” to be sure, most notably the more intricate musical compositions of the songs, which were recorded in collaboration with Chad Bishop and Elizabeth Lopicolo of the Cripple Lillies, who obviously added something undeniably wonderful to the overall quality of the album. The other players involved in the musical achievement of “Tomorrow, We Start New” were what can only be called the imadethismistake backup ensemble: Sean Petersen on upright bass, Sarah Bossa on violin and viola, and a small chorus of secondary vocalists (as heard on the track “college or a broken nose” and others). And we mustn’t neglect to mention the guitars, organ, harmonica, piano, flute, and additional vocals provided by the Cripple Lillies.
In our interview, Kylewilliam briefly discussed the record and what it meant to him. “My records have personal concepts,” he wrote. “With this past one [Tomorrow, We Start New] chronicling the relationship that has effected my entire life, and the emotions behind it. More recently I am finding myself writing my feelings on my friends and my current situations as opposed to my problems in the past. So it is new ground for me. I write how I feel, and it’s as simple as that, happily. I don’t try to be prolific, and I know I don’t say things that haven’t been said before. My entire perception of my writing is that I just be myself, which is kind of all I know how to be.”
“Tomorrow, We Start New” is undoubtedly a more mature record than “the Bonfire Club” ep, and perhaps a bit darker, and one can only assume that the feel of the record can be attributed to the mental and emotional place Kylewilliam Campol presumably inhabited at the time he wrote the songs. But such is art. And besides, what is inspiration if not a reflection of one’s innermost thoughts and feelings, as well as one’s observations and experiences in life…the moments collected in the shoebox of one’s memory, both cherished and lamented alike? It all finds a way back to the surface eventually, at which time one has one of two choices: grab hold of it and shove it back down inside of oneself, or work to purge it from oneself once and for all by incorporating it into artistic endeavors. It would seem that Kylewilliam more often than not chooses the latter, for many of his songs have a sort of cathartic nature to them.
“Gravediggers on their deathbeds, pt 1” is the song that starts off the record. At one minute and thirty seconds, it is the shortest track, especially when standing beside the title track---“tomorrow, we start new”---which, at nearly six minutes, casts a rather long shadow. One can hardly ignore the clever irony implied by the song title “gravediggers on their deathbeds.” The sound, however, is something else entirely.
Gentle strumming on the acoustic guitar accompanied by other soft, almost marginal instrumentation reminiscent of “the Bonfire Club” ep seems to surround the listener as if he or she could just reach out and touch it, turn it over and over in his or her hand, observe it at length, feel it, and seek to obtain a better understanding of it. But, then again, none of Kylewilliam’s songs are as straightforward in meaning as they initially come across, and listeners who tend to focus on the surface of things, who never fully immerse themselves in them, staying in the shallows instead of braving the uncertain deeps, will probably never fully realize his songs. Take the song “doves + hawks,” for example (by far one of my favorite on the record)---a folk-based piece with subtle harmonica and half-spoken, half-sung vocals---with its markedly intelligent and meaningful lyrical structure, especially the line, “let’s give the doves a chance for survival and declaw the hawks.” Of course, that can be interpreted a dozen different ways, but I am of the mind to think that Kyle meant it in a very specific way. To me, it seems almost like something William Blake, the 18th Century English poet, would have added to his Proverbs of Hell in his masterpiece the Marriage of Heaven & Hell, the way it expresses an idea by combining a radical thought with the things of nature.
After “gravediggers on their deathbeds, pt 1,” which is just the base of the musical incline one ascends when listening to the record, one moves on to “college or a broken nose”---one of the more upbeat and fluid songs on the album, with somber female backup vocals together with the otherworldly notes of a flute-like instrument, and with Kyle singing lyrics that remain consistent to the title of the song. That’s merely the bottom of the mountain, though. The terrain steepens, becomes wilder, and gets more complex and involved with tracks such as “my sins” and “sunkist,” both great songs, but quite different in style and composition. That is, “my sins” is a stripped-down song, full of raw folk energy, from beginning to end a frenzy of acoustic strumming, brief violin parts at perfectly timed intervals, and handclapping in place of instrumentation during the choruses, while “sunkist” is a melancholy song, in which the vocals and guitar flow in deliberate harmony with one another, ending with a trainwreck of a climax from which no one survives.
That’s another thing about Kylewilliam’s songs: the contrast between the music itself and the vocals; which is to say that it is not at all uncommon for his music to be upbeat, while the vocals are somewhat somber and the lyrics either sad or earnest. It gives the songs a discernible musical dichotomy, however. At times the duality becomes a multiplicity, and then just as quickly folds itself back up into one neat little package of singular meaning and purpose. And even though the horses are all pulling in different directions, the subject matter never ends up fully “drawn and quartered,” but rather emerges on the other side intact and with just as much meaning as when it began.
At the mountaintop, the peak of the record, one finds the last track, “gravediggers on their deathbeds, pt 2.” Indisputably one of the best songs on the record, “gravediggers pt 2” is just as beautiful as it is haunting, with male and female vocals echoing one another through a structure of chords from Kyle’s acoustic guitar. And when it’s over, one finds oneself wishing it would continue.
All in all, “Tomorrow, We Start New” is nothing short of brilliant in its own right, with a collection of songs that are just as visceral as they are intellectual, from the more orchestral pieces to the stripped-down tunes featuring nothing more than acoustic guitar and Kyle’s wonderfully peculiar vocals. Some of the tracks even have a narrative style of vocals belonging solely to Kylewilliam, like “sunkist,” for example, but nothing to match the narratives on the “Bonfire Club” ep, such as “in limbo, where you’re secrets are safe with me” and “make like the fire’s still going to burn burn burn.” That’s not to say that one song is better than the other, but rather that they simply possess different levels of storytelling. And if there is one thing Kylewilliam is not lacking, it is diversity, eclectic musical taste and skill, and artistic range coupled with passion and inspiration.
Kyle remains consistent to his poetic style of lyrics with “Tomorrow, We Start New,” each song consisting of something that one would see written in black ink on the blue-lined pages of compositional notebooks, things jotted down over coffee and cigarettes while sitting at a booth in all-night diners, watching the traffic go by on the not-so-distant highway, and only half noticing the fat raindrops clinging to the window for a moment before sliding down into a puddle at its base. They also seem like the type of lyrics a young man would possibly write while his lover slept softly, the white sheets draped over her in such a way as to expose all the right curves and features---the subtle arch of the back, the rounded rise of the hip, the barely perceptible protrusion of the spine, and just the smallest portion of the heart-shaped area just below the lower back…oh, and the smooth, flawless skin bathed in the moonlight falling in through the open window---as he sits on the edge of the bed, pen in hand, notebook open in his lap, alternating between adoring her and committing himself to words. And at other times, they almost seem like the sort of words that would go through a young man’s mind as his longtime lover and companion packed her bags to leave forever, deliberately passing over those inexpressibly sentimental things, including that old, gray t-shirt that was three sizes too big for her but she wore to bed each night anyway (because it smelled like him); and then watching from the window as she drove away in her car (the same car in which the two of them had traveled long, adventurous roadtrips across America), seeing her long dark hair fall over the back of her seat, her slender fingers reaching up to adjust the rearview mirror, and for the last time he reads the few anarchist bumper stickers he had put on the back of her car in the beginning of it all. Or…that last may have been too soon in the awful process of loss and hurt, and what I am actually looking for is that which takes place later, when one is laying sleeplessly in bed at night and rolls over to be met with the faint fragrance of the one who once slept there; or rather, when one wakes in the very early hours of the morning, when it’s still as dark as it was at midnight and yet the bedside clock reads 4:45am in large, red, glowing numbers, when one can hear the traffic increasing on the busy streets below, when one’s senses breathe in the honeysuckle air of late spring, taste the stagnant foulness of sleep, and take note of the crickets that are rubbing their legs like tiny violins to play their last musical piece for the night, and one reaches for a lover who is no longer there and instead ends up holding nothing but the ghosts of one’s memories…the memories which go through one’s head like neverending film reels throughout the moonlight hours. At that, the heart swells to bursting, something the size of a crabapple seems to be lodged in the throat, and the eyes burn with all of the unshed tears that beg to spill. Those are some of the things Kylewilliam’s combined lyrics and vocals express. And he expresses them very well, too.
But it’s more than that. Yes, it’s also comparable to personal letters to good friends, the observations and experiences of a young man written down in a battered notebook, a record of one’s beliefs and ideals and thoughts and feelings, a public confessional, as it were, and quite possibly more. I mean, if you listen carefully to everything he conveys in his songs, he is simply being true to life, for lack of a better way to put it. His songs are life in all of its various and crazy forms, dealing with friendship, romantic relationships, loss, sadness, poetry, unique experiences, change, triumph, failure, hope, despair, and just being a human being in this fucked-up world in which we all live, in this ticking time bomb of an era.
And the Suicide Generation---the generation of which we are both part, whether we like it or not---needs artists like Kylewilliam Campol, needs bands like imadethismistake to show them that there is still true art in the world, art that is important, meaningful, and worthwhile. Also, he is here to show the young and the doomed that, yes, there are still some natural things that are able to overcome the artificiality of it all. In a way, he is among the few individuals of the Suicide Generation that represent us as a significant chapter in the City Earth pages of history; or rather, what he does as a singer/songwriter proves that not everything is altogether unoriginal and recycled in this ultra-modern age of industrial and technological madness, wars that make no sense at all, socio-political discontent, eco-environmental murder, and…well, how else can one say it?---this is the Age of Artificiality…the Age of the ongoing Rape of Mother Nature…the Age of the City Earth.
But that’s what subcultures and underground communities are for, right? And that’s what artistic movements are for, aren’t they? And…as long as we---the Suicide Generation of the City Earth---continue to live our lives in the name of freedom and individuality, we have a chance…which brings to mind something Nietzsche once wrote: No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. And without that thought constantly in mind, there would be no art, no music, for only those who truly own themselves can create something artistically new and worthwhile, something meaningful and honest, something born of passion and inspiration. And as long as our art is a reflection of that freedom and individuality, and as long as there is hope and love in our words, we have a chance.
Speaking of love and words; it’s quite evident that Mr. Campol is just as much in love with words as any literary individual or poet. It’s easy for me to recognize such things, because I love words too. I love the way they sound when spoken, the way they look on paper, the way they can be strung together to form complex grammatical structures and free form word-art, the way they can express the most powerful and beautiful of things, and the way they bring humans together in great meetings of communication. I would venture a guess that Kylewilliam feels similarly about words, if not exactly the same as I do…which goes to show that art can become an obsession of sorts, an obsession that many of us share, though each in his or her own way and for his or her own reasons.
It was also Nietzsche who wrote, Without music, life would be a mistake. And I am positive that I am not alone in believing that he was quite right. Without music, life would be a mistake.
As is customary in my interviews with bands and singer/songwriters, I invariably ask the same question at some point during the sessions; the question being: What do you feel is music’s place in the art world? (Of course the question is a bit lengthier and more in-depth than that; but that’s the bare bones of it.) Kyle replied, “I feel like Art is a constantly evolving collection of mediums, including anything used to express or explain, etc. Music is an intriguing form of art because whereas in visual arts (painting, drawing, and so on) there is a sense of personal ownership. A person’s paintings and drawings can stay his or her own forever. A song is written 90% of the time with hopes to be heard, so it explores a new territory in art.”
I agree with his answer a good deal. In fact, what he says is almost undeniable in a way, for one can hardly deny that music is a form of art that is embraced by large audiences. The songs are personalized in different ways by each member of those audiences, in such a way, too, that they become like soundtracks to their lives. Some of the songs reflect their moods, some are songs for long periods of contemplation and introspection, some are for traveling, some are for making love, some are for evoking specific memories, while others are for walking around the city streets, or sitting on rooftops eight levels up in the balmy twilights of late summer and looking out over the countless tiny lights and traffic-chocked streets and seemingly doll-sized pedestrians of the city, and so forth. The truth of the matter is that one could go on indefinitely with such a list, especially pertaining to music. After all, music is just one of those wonderful things that seems to encompass all of the thoughts, feelings, and actions of life. But then again, music is the direct result of life, of having lived, of having thought and felt and acted, of having observed and experienced the world in such a way as to sing it and strum it into great musical creations.
At the time of our interview, Kylewilliam had already played close to 300 shows, 100 of which had occurred just the previous summer, throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. Regrettably, I haven’t had the pleasure of attending one of his shows yet. Soon, however, he is planning on coming through Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) while on tour, at which time I will no doubt be in attendance. In fact, I am very excited about it.
I am also very excited about the new imadethismistake record: “It’s Okay.” So far I have only heard a few tracks from it, which have collectively shown me that Kylewilliam adamantly refuses to be categorically pinned down. “It’s Okay” is altogether different from both the “Bonfire Club” ep and “Tomorrow, We Start New” in that Kylewilliam has claimed new musical territory---his mind the Meriwether Lewis and his heart the William Clark of the artistic wilds---yet again. On this new record imadethismistake is no longer an “indie folk” endeavor, nor is it “antifolk,” nor “folk punk,” nor “acousticore,” really. In a way, after listening to a few songs on the record---”clear skies over Tallahassee,” “OCD is BS,” and “tear it off proper”---it is clear that Kylewilliam had something altogether different in mind, or such was his inspiration in writing the songs that the sound that so many knew as imadethismistake underwent a sort of metamorphosis, not as to be unrecognizable, mind you, but certainly as to be new and unexpected. Of course, the music still retains that musical style and overall sound that belongs solely to Kylewilliam Campol of imadethismistake. And if I were to insert the music on “It’s Okay” into a specific category, I would say that I simply couldn’t restrict it to the artistic constraints of any single one. Instead I would say that it is a more electric record, with less orchestral pieces and background intricacies, being somewhere between your standard “indie” expectations and a very listenable “punk” adaptation. Even a version of the song “my sins,” which was first heard on “Tomorrow, We Start New,” is on the new record---a faster, more distorted, and electric version, to be sure, which, in my opinion, is neither better nor worse than the original, just different, as they both have the same general musical anatomy. It would be fair to say that one supports a slower, more somber feel, while the other supports a more up-tempo and energetic feel. When all is said and done, however, Kylewilliam’s music is like that old seasonal saying, “In like a lamb, out like a lion.” Sometimes it’s the exact reverse of that, too, which has been clearly evidenced by each imadethismistake record. Both sides of the imadethismistake coin are of equally value, though. Not only are they of equal value, they are also equally important, meaningful, and worthwhile. And that is admittedly what I look for in all of the music I listen to and love.
Kylewilliam Campol makes one thing very clear with his new release---released on 10” vinyl by Anti-Creative Records together with Covert Coercion Records, incidentally, and on cassette tape by Chimney Sweep Records---and that is…
The universe may have been brought into existence with a note played on the harp of creation, but it will undoubtedly end with a loud, wavering chord of an electric guitar in the night. So let’s keep the music playing, folks, from the fiery arrival of dawn until darkness falls and the bulb burns out for good.

For more information about imadethismistake, go to:

http://www.myspace.com/imadethismistake

http://www.thecottagerecords.com

Robert Sarazin Blake: Highways, Poetry, & Old Soul Music

2008-05-31T00:06:00.000-07:00

Robert Sarazin Blake

Sounds from the City Earth Underground

By
James G. Carlson

Not all that long ago the Bellingham singer/songwriter Robert Blake called me in the middle of the night, the shrill ringing of the telephone pulling me from the depths of a rather satisfied sleep, to say, Hey James. Robert here. It seems Jordan and I are stuck in New York, and we could really use a ride to Pennsylvania. Annville, I think…or wherever the next gig is.
(I know that none of the dialogue in this piece can do Robert’s true voice any justice whatsoever, as no amount of literary skill can adequately capture that ever-so-cool barroom hipness and worldly beatnik-esque intelligence, nor that saintly vagabond philosophy of the City Earth which seems to naturally find its way into the things he says.)
Both the telephone and Robert’s voice, one after the other, had delivered me into the cold, dark, and sober realm of consciousness, from the fringes of oblivion to the open-eyed realities of the waking world…which is to say, the little things that served as telltale signs that I was still very much alive, like the breath of my lover on the back of my neck, the numbers on the alarm clock glowing large and red, the sickening smell of accumulated cigarette butts, spent matchsticks, and stale tobacco emanating from my bedside ashtray, and the sound of my fat tiger-striped cat, Elvis, purring mightily and contentedly like a big feline engine at my feet. It was all very familiar. Well, the surroundings were familiar. The call from Robert, however, was quite out of the ordinary.
In what was undoubtedly a very raspy and sleepy voice, I asked Robert where he was in relation to the city. You see, when most people think of New York, they think of the five metropolitan boroughs of New York City itself---Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx---while completely neglecting that which lies beyond that vast, gray cityscape on the apocalyptic horizon of the Great North. And I was no exception, as like most people I too instantly thought of the city. In fact, I was under the impression that he had probably shacked up somewhere near that dive on the Lower East Side where a lot of the New York singer/songwriters play, or perhaps that joint in Williamsburg (Brooklyn) where my good friend John and I went to see the Against Me and David Dondero show. But my cerebral aim was off the mark, as it were. Granted, certain parts of my mind and body were clinging to the receding fabric of slumber in which I had been so comfortably wrapped only moments before, my intelligence like a train-hopping vagabond running along beside the open compartment of the speeding machine (just trying to catch up and get back on board), though it should have occurred to me that Robert could be elsewhere. And he was elsewhere; elsewhere being a small college town north of the city, and a considerable distance at that.
In contrast to the urban atmosphere of the five boroughs, the rest of the state is chiefly made up of farmland, forests, towns, lakes, mountains, rivers, and smaller cities like Buffalo, Rochester, Yonkers, and Syracuse, which are only small in comparison to the combined boroughs of New York City, as they can each boast a populace of over a hundred-thousand residents, some double that. And, statistically, New York is the 27th largest state in America, with the 3rd largest population. So when I asked Robert where exactly he was in New York, I was simply attempting to judge the sheer size of the commitment I was getting ready to make. In truth, though, I really didn’t care all that much about the distance. After all, I wasn’t about to leave him stranded up north there to miss his show that night. Besides, he was scheduled to play a show in Bethlehem the following night, and I didn’t want to run the chance of missing that show, as it would be taking place a mere ten miles from where I’ve been living for the past year or so.
I’m in Poughkeepsie, said Robert in reply to my question.
Then I asked how he happened to get stuck in that particular part of New York. He replied that he had played a show there the night before---a regular stop on his tours---that he and Jordan, his drummer and trusty road companion, had crashed at a friend’s pad afterward, and that things hadn’t quite worked out as planned from that point on. The general misadventures of touring America were what such things all boiled down to, it seemed.
What’s that old saying, though: A friend in need is a friend indeed? Well, that may or may not be so depending upon each individual’s belief in the very concept. Whatever the case, my friend Robert was stuck and needed my help, which obviously made me one of the individuals for whom the concept was decidedly agreeable. And so it was time to take a road trip. Besides, I was a bit overdue for a good road trip.
You live near Philly these days, don’t you? asked Robert.
I told him that, yes, I did live near Philadelphia, about an hour or so away in a small town called Allentown, and that I could probably take the drive to Poughkeepsie to pick him up. It would only be a few hours each way, I told him.
That would be great, James, said Robert. That is, if you’re up for a little road trip, some adventure and good times, all that.
Robert was familiar with Allentown and said that we could just drop him off there when we got that far, as he had friends that lived nearby who would gladly take him on to the show in Annville…or wherever the next gig was.
After the phone call I tried to go back to bed, but sleep proved elusive. That’s not to say that I wasn’t tired; in fact, I was exhausted. My mind and body were at odds, however, and the former would not allow the latter a moment’s rest. So I laid there in the dark, my arms crossed lazily over my chest, eyes closed, calm, almost meditative, resigned to have my thoughts run at hotrod speeds down my cerebral roadways.
That morning me and my girl, February, both woke and rose with the sun, which at that point was little more than a portion of a fiery sphere peeking over the horizon and preparing to stake its claim to the day. We hurriedly dressed. Then we brewed coffee for the road, which we poured out evenly into hard plastic cups with removable lids. And it wasn’t long before we were in the car and driving the first few miles of the four hour northbound journey to Poughkeepsie to pick up Robert and Jordan, who were shacked up at a messy pad used for student housing in a little suburban college community. After the long drive, February and I plopped down on a dirty couch in a dimly lit room off to the side of the split-level house, and spoke with Robert in a casual, conversational manner as though we were all three of us old friends who simply hadn’t seen one another in a while.
Robert explained again how a few different rides had fallen through for him, beginning with Alex Kerns, owner of Art of the Underground Records & Distro (the label that has released at least three of Robert’s albums that I know of) and drummer for the band Lemuria (a three-piece project whose sound is somewhere between indie rock and pop-punk, with male and female vocals), as it was right around the time that Alex had experienced a loss in his family, sad to say, for which we all offered up our silent condolences and heart-things. In fact, I remember having thought that I should send Alex a letter to express how very sorry I was that he was going through such a difficult time.
Jordan Rain, Robert’s drummer, entered the room. The night before had apparently had its way with him, and he was decidedly in rather bad shape because of it. One thing was for certain: Jordan felt horribly ill. Robert apologized for the delay caused by Jordan’s sluggishness, for which we assured him there was no need. After a bit, Jordan was ready to go. He entered the room again, looking a good deal better the second time, dressed in his usual hip black suit and thick-framed glasses, as well as a very cool thrift store Bogart-style fedora atop his head. I cannot remember for the life of me, however, whether his hat was Harris Tweed or a slightly faded and well-worn Charcoal. The overall effect brought to mind a 1940’s to 1950’s New York City or Chicago jazzman, which was quite fitting since he is nothing short of a phenomenal percussionist even on his worst of days. A good-natured aura surrounded Jordan, which made both February and I want to befriend him immediately. And I remember thinking, after only knowing him for a short while, that he was an infinitely interesting individual, with his thin and somewhat lanky, though graceful movements, his ever-thinking brow shadowed by his cool fedora, his kindly youthful features, and his quiet, come-what-may sort of attitude, all held together with an air of mystery and eccentricity (and by “mystery” and “eccentricity,” I mean that one invariably asks oneself upon getting to know Jordan: What’s this strange cat all about? and What makes this infinitely interesting individual tick?).
It wasn’t at all difficult to see why Robert and Jordan were such good friends.
Grateful to both February and I, Robert and Jordan insisted on treating us to lunch at a Middle Eastern joint in the town of Poughkeepsie before getting on the highway and heading to Pennsylvania, which I wasn’t very excited about, admittedly, since my palette has quite simply always had an aversion to those particular types of dishes, things smothered in garlic and olive oil, or mashed into unidentifiable pastes, with unpronounceable names, and so forth. At first it seemed as if the place was closed. The lights were off, and the front door was locked. But no sooner did I begin to feel relief that the place was closed that Jordan pointed out that they were in fact opening for lunch. Silently I cursed the hands of the clock, for if we had showed up only fifteen or twenty minutes prior, we would have been searching for somewhere else to eat rather than being seated there. All four of us sat down to eat among animal pelts and hide-topped tom-toms and primitive instruments of ancient survival turned into pieces of modern décor. As in such situations I went and ordered something that seemed appetizing on the menu, some vegetarian wrap involving eggplant, but when it was put in front of me, it was something else altogether; not to mention that when I braved a bite, it was enough to trigger one’s gag reflex, though I managed to hold it back, choke down the bite of greasy, tasteless fare. I then said I wasn’t as hungry as I’d thought and took the rest home in a carry-out box for February.
The long drive home from Poughkeepsie was rather enjoyable, though. The miles went by with interesting and meaningful conversation between the four of us: Robert, Jordan, February, and I. February was especially taken with Jordan, which was quite understandable; after all, he has that sort of nerdy, beatnik-like, suit-wearing coolness about him, as well as a hipness, a witty charm, and a gentle kindness which is completely genuine…all things that my girl digs in people. On the way home I sat shotgun while February drove, which meant I was in charge of what music we listened to. And it was great when I put on Sufjan Steven’s “Illinois” album and Robert started singing along to the John Wayne Gacy song. Afterward we all agreed that it was undoubtedly one of the best and most beautiful songs ever written. Then I put on Neutral Milk Hotel’s “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” cd, and Robert and I both sang along to the King of Carrot Flowers parts i & ii. The rest is a sort of vague aural-recall of David Dondero, M. Ward, Devendra Banhart, Mischief Brew, Defiance Ohio, Saint Joe Hazelwood, Two Gallants, Josh Bond, and…now that I think of it, we also listened to the Lemuria and Kind of Like Spitting split cd “You’re Living Room’s All Over Me” (which, for obvious reasons, always brings to mind the Dinosaur Jr. album “You’re Living All Over Me”).
We spoke of music and traveling, of love and art and life in general. Robert spoke of his experiences in Ireland, which was all quite interesting to listen to, not just because of the subject matter, mind you, but because he has this natural, around-the-campfire storytelling ability, as well as a deep, soothing voice that penetrates to the nucleus of one’s being, where it takes up residence and is never forgotten. And it was through spending that time with Robert that his music took on a whole new meaning for me, for suddenly I could link the music with what personal knowledge I had gained by getting to know him somewhat---the music as the man, and the man as the music---and I could appreciate his songs not just as good music that appealed to me, but also as music with its roots deeply anchored into the earth of his very unique and special being, changing with the seasons of his soul, ascending to the peak of his greatest joys and falling into the seemingly bottomless chasms of his worst sorrows, all while strumming his thoughts, picking the notes of his emotions, and singing his observations and experiences. In almost every way, too, Robert is one of those young men with an old soul…a very old soul, which knows the world in a very specific way. That is, his brown eyes show both a natural wisdom and a worldly knowledge, and they reflect the world as only he perceives it. His bearded face is like that of a philosopher or poet, perhaps both. And the easy-going, confident manner with which he faces everything is just one of a hundred things to admire about him. You can take a good, long look at Robert and think to yourself, “Yes, this is truly one of Mother Nature’s sons…a child of the Earth.” And when you listen to him speak, it’s doubly so. But you could also just as easily think, “He is one of the remarkable people…one of the wonderful lunatic artists, the barroom heroes, the strange geniuses, the wandering travelers on the highways of this mad City Earth.” And he’s probably all of those things.
Unlike many of the singer/songwriters throughout the City Earth, Robert has a voice suited just as much for story-telling and spoken word poetry as for song. In fact, it is his voice that separates him from the herd of singer/songwriters stampeding the once quiet, open plains of the indie-folk wilderness, as recent years have seen a substantial rise in the number of bands and singer/songwriters embracing new variations of the folk stereotype. During this musical revolution Robert emerged on the scene as an endeavor all his own, with a unique vision and fresh ideas, and a very original sound. He had something to say, and so he chose to sing it, and the resulting lyrics became like the things people place in their memory chests, like well-written letters to friends and lovers, like a shoebox in which sentimental black-and-white photographs are kept, and like scenery from the car window and the thoughts running through one’s head as one drives impossibly long distances down the seemingly never-ending highways of America. And yet Robert does not stand alone. Instead he stands with the all of his fans, and with the few other exceptionally talented and original singer/songwriters of our times.
There aren’t many singer/songwriters that can equal Robert Sarazin Blake’s importance to music, nor can they match his dedication, for he has made a few rather incredible contributions to music with recordings like “humdinger days,” “crowd of drunken lovers,” “still kissing last night’s smoke-stained lips,” “the beautiful and the afternoon,” and the air your lungs forced out” (which is the album he released since I first began this article), in that order. And that’s not counting the Art of the Underground Singles Series, Volume 4; a couple of songs recorded and released on 7-inch vinyl through the label.
Sure his sound is folk-based, but that’s just the foundation of it. Built upon that foundation are walls of indie, ceilings of punk, and floors of both contemporary and classic rock. All in all, it’s a perfect marriage of sounds. It’s highway music. It’s barroom music. It’s art music. It’s the music of an old soul, a poet, a wanderer, a City Earth philosopher, a heart that has climbed to the dizzying heights of love and has also plummeted to the horrible depths of loss, and a mind that has carried the weight of its secrets and has purged itself with lyrical confessions in the most brilliant of songs. There’s something undeniably raw and earthy about Robert’s songs, and yet there is something else which plays just as much for the bustling traffic-choked streets, the narrow litter-strewn alleys with their invariable smell of urine, the smoky barrooms, and the impossibly tall buildings in the countless windows of which the sun is reflected in huge glaring shafts as for the long stretches of country road between towns, the trees in their varying seasonal stages of green and full in their summer glory, beautiful in their autumnal colors, and then with naked branches reaching toward gray winter skies. Yes, there’s something in his songs that touches upon the moon and sun and stars, the rivers over which arch the long bridges we cross and through which the mighty ferry boats push from bank to muddy bank, the seemingly breath-taking blue ocean scenery on the coastal towns where we stop now and then, the infinite grains of sand on the beaches, the endless fields of farm town America with the occasional country stores and front porches adorned with folky antiquities, and laying on blankets over dewy blades of grass with lovers we’ll never see again…gazing up at the stars, kissing, holding one another, and talking until the golden fingers of morning begin reaching over the horizon and over the sleeping landscape. On the subject of lovers, Robert’s songs are nostalgic letters to the blue-eyed girl in hilly San Francisco, the brown-eyed girl in the wasteland desert of New Mexico, the green-eyed beauty in the heart of Philadelphia’s China Town, the hazel-eyed and brown-skinned angel in Spanish Harlem, and all the others for whom we build towering monuments in our heads and whose images we hold in our hearts like bloody lockets.

While listening to Robert’s records, especially “Still Kissing Last Night’s Smoke-Stained Lips” and “the Beautiful and the Afternoon,” one can recognize something slightly Dylan-esque in his vocals, true, but one can also just as easily pick out vocal parts that can be likened to that of Adam Stephens of Two Gallants, Micah P. Hinson, and Alabama singer/songwriter Josh Bond. Comparisons are sometimes taken out of context, however, and I always feel compelled to point out that these are simply marginal references, that Robert’s vocal style is all his own, and that Robert Sarazin Blake first and foremost sounds like Robert Sarazin Blake. And though his vocals have that level of comparability, it is unquestionably so that his music is completely and utterly new and original, fresh and cool, with his own trademark strumming, with his very own note combinations, his voice, and his very own timing.
Speaking of timing, Robert’s is diverse and artistically brilliant, with those few moments, clear as natural mountain springs in the far north, when the strumming stops and before it picks back up, above which hang purposeful silences, and through which Robert’s words flow like half-sung spoken-word poetry, like in his songs: “1226 North State Street,” “Turtledove,” “Hackensack Bar,” and “One Monday Night.” In fact, those are some of my favorite Robert Blake songs. But if I were to list his records in order, from my most favorite to my least, I would begin with “Still Kissing Last Night’s Smoke-Stained Lips.”
Next I would choose Robert’s split with Erik Petersen of Mischief Brew, titled “Bellingham & Philadelphia,” which is a great record, loaded with social and political issues, as well as some insight into their personal thoughts and feelings. “Bellingham & Philadelphia” is an injection straight into the “folk punk” mainline, which is decidedly somewhat rare to the overall Robert Sarazin Blake musical experience, especially when taking into account songs such as: “Marching,” “A Culture of Resistance,” and “Didn’t We.” The record is also a collaboration of two good friends and singer/songwriters---one a guitar-toting roadman, barroom hero, and saintly highway poet of the City Earth, and the other a young, fresh-faced “gypsy punk” rebel, whose utterly wonderful music and brilliant words have built with the labor of their own hands, as Thoreau would have said, a framework upon which other such singer/songwriters can hammer and nail their own individual contributions, inspired by what he began (which in no way is to imply that he founded “gypsy punk,” but rather that his sound is definitely unique to the “gypsy punk” experience. Most of all, “Bellingham & Philadelphia” is a record that supports a musical fellowship which spans the distance between the East and West Coasts.
After that last record, I would have to say that “the Beautiful and the Afternoon” is my favorite, with its perceptible shift and deviation into musical territory only scarcely touched upon by Robert previously. That is, Robert’s acoustic and clear-channel guitar sounds seem to have gained a pound or two of distortion, which, in other words, is to say that his guitar sound is a bit dirty and trebly on this particular record. With the lyrics what they are, as well as the way they are sung, the dirty, trebly guitar suits the musical atmosphere of the record rather well actually. On “the Beautiful and the Afternoon” record, unlike “Still Kissing Last Night’s Smoke-Stained Lips,” Jordan Rain had joined Robert to add his phenomenal drumming to the songs on the record. In fact, I cannot imagine those songs without Jordan’s contribution at this point. Nor can I imagine those songs without the instrumental accompaniment of Mike Grigoni, whose pedal steel, lap steel, and dobro parts are recognizable throughout the record; Josh Brahinsky, whose work on the upright bass maintains a grand musical dialogue with the guitars and almost seems to be some distant relative to the drums; and Mark Huber, whose harmonica-playing brings back that folky, Americana feel to the songs. Overall, it’s an incredible record.
Quite simply, Robert’s songs are songs of life. And the imagery evoked by listening to his songs may or may not begin with smoky barrooms in American cities, whiskey and cigarettes, interstates and turnpikes, boulevards and avenues, country roads and city streets alike, alleyways and sidewalks, buildings, forests, young lovers, friendship, rooftops, long conversations that go late into the night, the changing of the seasons, cityscapes in the moonlight, the honeysuckle air of spring coming in through the open window of the car as one drives down a seemingly neverending stretch of highway, the pungent smell of the Mississippi River at the New Orleans riverfront, neon signs in the urban twilight, beautiful women and handsome men, bus stops and train stations, subway cars and that sickly yellow light that fills the subterranean tunnels, ramshackle barns and harvested cornfields, roadside diners, and angelic vagabonds hitchhiking with their thumbs up in chilly dampness of the City Earth morning. I mean, what else is Robert Blake’s life other than a series of people and places, places and people? He comes and goes, and usually keeps on going. Sometimes he even comes back. And how else could he capture all of those experiences in the unlocked vault of his memory if not for his music? After all, isn’t that one of the very reasons music exists in the first place?
In an article---or a review, rather---about Robert, he was referred to as a modern day troubadour. And it’s true; he most certainly is a modern day troubadour. After all, if you break him down into the various ingredients that go together to create the whole being that is in fact Robert Sarazin Blake, you have the poet, the singer/songwriter, the philosopher, the romantic, the wanderer, the roadman, the friend, the charismatic performer, the conversationalist, and the fiery-hearted and intelligent young man with the old soul and the hands that were undoubtedly made to strum the strings, form the chords, pick the notes, and hold the neck of the guitar.
The guitar is more like an appendage, or an extension of Robert, than it is an instrument separate from his physical and spiritual self…which I realize must come across as somewhat crazy; but listen to his records, go see him play live during one of his tours through the City Earth, and you will no doubt understand what I mean. In fact, I would wager a good deal that, if you did what I have suggested here---listen to his records and go to one of his shows---you will say to yourself secretly: This is what he was always meant to do.
So…what’s that feeling when it’s almost 2 o’clock in the morning---the barman is about to shout out, “Last call!”---your shots of whiskey are all drained and upside down on the bar, where there’s one last bottle of beer with tiny beads of condensation on its sides, which drip down and pool at its base on the heavily scarred wood, and while a cigarette burns in the ashtray, releasing ghostly tendrils of gray smoke upward toward the low ceiling? What’s that feeling when it’s time to move on? Robert knows that feeling all too well, I’m sure. And yet he continues---through a blur of people and places, places and people, coming and going, going and coming---because that’s who he is, that’s what he is. Clearly, it’s not so much the life he chose as it is the life that chose him, which is just the way it is with artists, especially singer/songwriters such as Robert, who slice themselves open, figuratively speaking, and spill forth everything within themselves, everything they are and ever will be into their endeavors. And it only makes sense that they keep on going---and going and going---as long as there’s a road to take them further.

[Note: Since I began this article, as I have already mentioned, Robert has released a new record, “the Air Your Lungs Forced Out,” which I regrettably have not had the pleasure of listening to just yet. It’s only a matter of time, really. Besides, it will give me another reason to write about Robert and his music in the near future, which is probably inevitable anyway, as he is in no way an ephemeral presence in the art world, in the music scene in general and the folk community in specific. He shows no sign of becoming like the candle that burns down to its end within a few nights time. No, not Robert. In fact, he is decidedly more like a star fixed in the darkening skies of a thousand seasons, perhaps changing slightly with them, but always staying true to his own internal compass as to his personal and artistic direction in life.]