CD#3-Ancient Face
If the success of Parking Karma made Bad Hair Day possible, then Bad Hair Day shaped and directed what would eventually become Ancient Face. The post-BHD Shows were of a completely different type than those that went before. The Stages were bigger. Requests were for Originals more than for cover songs. There was an enthusiasm from the audience that was different than at earlier Shows and it started early. The instrumental sections were getting father from home in a jamming sense. People were listening closely from the first note; it wasn’t the uphill climb to win them over that might take up the First set. Now Shows started at a dead run from the first song…and the Tapers were getting all of it!
In addition, we bought our first Bus! It was an International Harvester school bus that an older guy had been converting. He said he wanted to use it to live in the deserts of the South West. It had so many water tanks that we began to think that he was going to use it more for smuggling booze than for drinking water. There’s no way to know for certain, but the smuggling story is more fun to believe, so I’ve always gone with that one myself.
It ran well, but was completely empty inside. Since we were spending just about everything we were taking in on Studio Time and new and better gear, we decided to fix it up on the cheap. We went to every Salvation Army and Resale Shop on the Northside and found a half dozen really funky but super comfy couches and we were halfway there. One twisted evening, we had a painting party where we painted the ceiling in the most psychotic styles imaginable. At first, this made it hard to sleep, but it eventually became calming in a weird way.
The bus made it possible for us to start traveling a bit farther from home. We’d take the bus and the Equipment Truck and go for 3 day weekend tours. While we had the ability to physically do a month long Tour, we’d always been suspicious of that approach. A lot of our friends in other Bands were going out on that plan and coming home in not great shape, physically or musically speaking, We’ve always felt that there were pitfalls that you could see and those that you could not see, and if you avoided the ones you could you’d be better off than most.
Plus, the Chicago Area and the States that border Illinois had a million cool places to play, and we wanted to play them all. It was the contrast of this mentality and the feeling that “The Road feels like a River/set to carry us away” that informed a lot of the writing and playing that became Ancient Face.
Part of this was due to the fact that we were getting more used to playing together, developing the telepathy that comes with playing a couple hundred Shows in very quick succession. Another part of it was that 2 of us came from Bands with very strong Improvisational interests and 2 came from the Highly Rehearsed “show them what you can do, not what you can’t” School where Improving was frowned upon. The Solution for us was to cherry-pick from both traditions. This led to an effort to keep the Tight parts as ridiculously tight as possible, but to be as free and open as possible in the Improv/Jam sections.
This philosophy, if you want to call it that, led to a different kind of arranging the songs we were writing at the time. It has been pointed out that, while any of the songs on AF could fit in well with those on BHD, they would stand out due to the Instrumental sections, and I personally think there’s some truth to that.
Another significant difference is the presence of multi-song cycles (for lack of a better title). Mama Grady and Sister Rosie are related, literally related, as they are Mother and Daughter. The singer is telling the same story from 2 different perspectives.
This album also contains the Crescent City Ghost Story consisting of On the Tracks, Over and Back, and People in the Middle. While we always liked these types of Conceptual Ideas, these were the biggest we had done up to that point. We never released the 3 songs with Narration on a Studio Cd, but it has been included recently on the “Live at the Leaf” CD from New Orleans as such.
While we are speaking Conceptually, this being our Third Album we felt it would be appropriate to dedicate it to the one and only Arthur Dahlbim. In point of fact, every song on this Album was specifically written with Arthur Dahlbim in mind. (For those unfamiliar with this whole thing, try saying his name 10 times really quickly…)
A final note pertains to the CD Booklet itself. This was our second CD working with Al Brandtner, and we had a blast doing it with him. He came to our attention after word got out that a certain “Stamp Art” project had earned him an interview from Federal Authorities. “That’s our man” we figured, and went on to do every CD through Thread with him.
While there are a lot of things to discover in the booklet, it could be fun to start by checking out the maps that are behind the Lyrics. It’s no accident that they start where they start and end where they end. They show a direction and where our heads were at the time. In our psychotic Bus we were reading a lot of Maps of places far away and the Bus and the Jams were taking us farther from home every day.
-Chief
