Man on the Run

Sarah Holmes came over last night, at my request, to make some recordings. Sarah is a veteran of the open mic and I like her stuff a lot. She has a seemingly endless number of self-penned songs, often blues or gospel-tinged, with poetic, ghostly lyrics. Mostly she sings unaccompanied. Her delivery is lazy and imprecise but she has a sweet sound which she accentuates with delicate, almost imperceptible tremelo.

I had in mind to record her unaccompanied just like at the open mic, but she arrived with all kinds of ideas. I don't know a lot about recording, and there are serious limitations to what I can acheive in the back bedroom of the apartment with just the four-track, so initially I had some doubts as to what I might be able to come up with that Sara might be satisfied with. In the end, however, things went swimmingly. We worked on one of Sarah's songs called "Nego Beach" in which a male character competes with flocks of stricken birds for the affections of a saintly woman figure. It's a strange lullaby with a sort of Brothers Grimm eeriness and beauty to it.

John Parkins turned up early on and started playing bass through the behemoth bass amp I have on permanent loan from Neil Danziger. The bassline he came up with was perfect for the song, snakey and sinister and at the same time propulsive. I got a nice sweet sound from the Telecaster hooked up through the chorus pedal, and following Sarah's suggestion I play something reggae-sounding I started strumming a staccato riff on the off-beat. This must have sounded sufficiently reggae to Sarah because she didn't complain, but to me it sounded like Marquee Moon by Television, so it satisfied both our sensibilities.

Learning the song and getting the parts right took a couple of hours so we didn't have time to make a proper recording but we did make a rough recording through one mic which is pretty listenable. It's a good song. It's been doing repeat plays in my head since the session.

This lunchtime I came across the most interesting band ad that I've seen since I've been in Ithaca. A band called The Accidents is looking for a drummer. The ad caught my eye at first because the name of the band is on my list of potential band names, (next to "Quiche Abrasion" and "God's Holy Trousers"). (Actually, I just checked, and the one I have down is "The Accidentals" which I like more because it has geographic/racial connotations). The Accidents list their influences as Nirvana, Pixies, Velvet Underground, Talking Heads, Beach Boys, New Wave, No Wave... some other cool and varied stuff followed by "19th Century British Politics, Dr. Strangelove, The Moody Blues", with a smiley face next to Moody Blues to indicate cheeky humor rather than huge pretentiousness. There's some other stuff about how the drummer needs to be able to play hard but be flexible, and then at the bottom are the words, "We are NOT a jam band".

These guys seem to have the right spirit. I give them my full support.