A Groover’s Christmas-Part 1

So here’s the second of our EP Series. A Groover’s Christmas is our take on Christmas Music, new and old. With these EPs, our plan is to go into new areas where we wouldn’t maybe go for a whole full-length album. As an Improv-based Jam Band, the New is always more interesting than the Thing You Just Did, and this is our next step in that direction.

With that in mind, we did a completely new thing (at least for most of us) when we threw the “Miracle on 47th Street” Party/Recording Session.  For those who are not familiar with this particular gambit, we invited hard-core fans into the Studio with us while we laid down the tracks that would eventually become this new EP.  As our resident control freak, I initially was spooked by the entire concept, but being thoroughly outvoted and reminded of my often rudely and loudly proclaimed statement that “there’s nothing to be afraid of…literally”, I accepted my defeat and went on as best I could…
It turned out to be a Blast! One of those things where you find yourself telling people “I was never so glad to be wrong” and tacky things like that. People brought donuts. And Liquor. And Sub Sandwiches. And Liquor.
Did I mention there was Booze? What’s Christmas without it when you really get down to brass tacks? I mean, it seems to help, and why do the tacks have to be brass anyway? It seems like a bit of overspending since it just keeps the carpet from sliding around. The Crew says that anything you can’t do with Duct Tape isn’t really worth doing in the first place, which casts a somewhat creepy and not-at-all-Christmassy light on their interpersonal pursuits, but I digress…
Along with the above-mentioned things, the Miracle on 47th crowd also brought a cool energy that I think got captured in the process. It was certainly a first for us and we’re looking forward to trying that again. Soon, hopefully…

We should mention that a huge part of why this EP exists is due to WXRT, and more specifically Richard Milne.
For the non-Chicagoans in this group, WXRT/93.1 FM is a total jem of a radio station where, for a long time, Richard hosted a Show called “Local Anesthetic”.  He would introduce WXRT’s listening audience to Local Bands that they might not be aware of, have them in the Studio for interviews, and would play their Music.  He had us on the Show a bunch of times and we were, and are, grateful for that. Those of you that have a copy of Just Did It #1 can hear Richard introducing us at the Vic Theater Show where it was recorded. It’s just another way helped support us and the Chicago Scene.
A highlight of the WXRT Holiday Season was the annual Local Anesthetic Christmas Special.  This Show would air on the Sundays before Christmas and would include local bands singing a short Christmas message (generally about 20 seconds or so). In our case, these messages began to grow quickly in length and complexity. We also began to set records with Richard for how close we cut the time between dropping off our message and when the Episode was set to run. Kind of like “Blotto Time” but on the Radio. To the Blotto Family, this is a common enough experience, but it’s kind of how things seem to operate in our Bubble and Milne always went out of his way to accommodate us. Or Indulge us. Or Tolerate us.  But it always worked, even though we had to race across town to drop off our 3 minute Epic on a Sunday morning when it was supposed to be only 20 seconds long and should have been turned in the previous Tuesday.

So, it wouldn’t be right to not include a bit of the Local Anesthetic Christmas Tomfoolery in this here thingamabob.
Thanks Richard, and to all a Good Night.

-Chief

A Groover’s Christmas-Part 2

Back in the days when Vinyl Albums were the way we heard Music, part of the fun was opening the Album (if it was a double LP or even a single that opened like a book), and reading what was printed inside. Some records included the Lyrics, which I made my self specifically Not read until I’d heard all the songs at least once. Not everybody felt this was important, but for me it made the words come alive, out of the mouth of the singer as opposed to feeling like the singer was reading something off of a page (which he/she probably was, in fact, doing, but suspension of disbelief is more essential than one would initially think, right?).

So, given the restrictions on space on the Christmas EP, we decided to print the Lyrics for the songs that nobody knows yet with the CD, and in a nod to both the Vinyl and Digital Ages, post the Liner Notes here in the Blog.
If this were a Fold Out Album, you’d open it up and see…

Mr. Blotto is-
Alan Baster-Drums
Steve Ball-Keyboards and Vocals
Mike Bolger-Bass, Vocals and Synths
Paul Bolger-Lead Vocals and Acoustic Guitar
Mark Hague-Electric Guitar and Vocals
Jason “Jah Son” Litwin-Percussion and Bird Calls

Recorded by Colin Peterik at the Jam Lab November  2019

Thanks to God, Peer Munck, Richard Milne, The Groovers who came to the Miracle on 47th Street, and Whoever makes Guinness..

Copyright 2019 Casa Moolah/BMI.
All Rights Reserved

-Chief

A Groover’s Christmas-Part 3

Math Stuff…

Merry Christmas!
As the Third and Final (you’re welcome) Blog post regarding the new A Groover’s Christmas EP, we thought it appropriate to point out a couple of things.
Both are Math-based for those who think these things Count… (Sorry for that).

I-(The Short One)
“Why did you wait until December 13th to release the CD?”

I-First off, when they asked Lemmy of Motorhead why they named their most popular Album “Ace of Spades” he immediately answered “Because it’s Bad Luck”.
Here in Blotto-land, we’ll take a lesson from anyone, so when we had a chance to release a CD on Friday the 13th we figured it was a great start.
Then, when one looks at the Numbers, December the 13th is the first day of the 12 Days of Christmas, since 13(th) +12(days)=25 (which is Christmas).
That seemed kind of cool for both reasons, so we went with it.

II-The Math of the 12 Days.

One day, during Finals in December, I was mentally fried. Looking for a distraction in the Library, I came across a random odd book, the title of which I cannot remember. It dealt with the deeper roots of Holidays. As a student looking down the barrels of Finals (which are somewhat darkly titled, if you’re asking me, but that’s another paragraph I suppose…but what if it isn’t a different paragraph? What if we stop farting around and denying the very real questions in front of us and grab the proverbial Bull by his proverbial horns [since female cows don’t have horns, no judgement] and asked the question that I think you’d like me to ask so we can get on to the Math, which is frankly insulting as (1) No one EVER really wants to get on to the Math and (2) Stop Interrupting or I won’t get to the Math, and (3) I never actually heard about a Bull in a Proverb, and (4) Finals are a bit dark, but we haven’t been able to come up with a really bright and cheery word for “a Test that might Define One’s Future”, so maybe it’s best to just move on)
I welcomed the distraction.
Don’t worry about the syntax of the preceding sentence. It’s grammatically correct in a Dr. Who sort of way. But it is.
Now, getting back to the thing,

I welcomed the distraction.
Opening the book to a random page and putting my finger down on a random line as one does when one is dating a certain type of New Age-y type girl whose methodology you suspect but her solidity of results you increasingly find hard to dispute (so you try it when she’s not around) leads you to do, I actually landed on an article that pointed the following out.

Here’s The Fun Math part. Thank you for waiting for it.

If you add up all the gifts in the 12 Days you come up with a cool thing.
There’s 1 Partridge in a Pear Tree. That’s 1.
But it happens 12 times because there are 12 days. Since it’s each day, it’s 1×12=12.

Then there’s the 2 French Hens. Its 2, but they only show up 11 times, since they are not on the first day, but on all the rest. So 2×11=22.

If you break down the Gifts times the amount of times they are given, you get the following…
1×12   +  12
2×11   +  22
3×10   +  30
4×9      +  36
5×8     +  40
6×7     +  42
7X6     +  42
8×5     +  40
9×4     +  36
10×3    + 30
11×2   +  22
12×1    + 12
 364
…and the love we get and give on Christmas is the thing we need every day of the year so add 1 to make it 365!
Merry Christmas from Mr. Blotto*.

*and whoever wrote that Article.

-Chief

NOLA Radio-WWOZ

The first thing that we do as we pull away from the Arrivals section of Armstrong International in New Orleans is turn on the radio and tune to FM 90.7.

WWOZ/FM 90.7 has been a fixture of NOLA Music and Culture since it went on the air in 1980. For a time it operated from the Second Floor of the building housing Tipitina’s.  It was a very funky, shoestring-type affair. They would sometimes broadcast musical performances Live on Air by lowering a microphone through a hole in the floor to catch the Shows at Tip’s one floor down.
Luckily a great deal of the early WWOZ On Air Shows were recorded to reel-to-reel tape. When Katrina shut down the station, these were rebroadcast via the Internet as ‘OZ in Exile”.

Speaking of the Internet, you can live stream the Station here…
https://www.wwoz.org/
www.wwoz.org/listen/player

I mention this for a couple of reasons.
The first is that WWOZ is a great source of NOLA Music all year round. This is especially true during the Jazz & Heritage Fest when a lot of the music is simulcast on the station.
The second reason is we’re dropping by the station on Saturday Morning! This has been a thing some of us have really wanted to happen since we’ve been heading down to NOLA as kids, so we wanted to get the word out…

So, if you’re in the NOLA area, listen in  between 11 AM and Noon on Saturday, November 16th. For the rest of the World, you can stream it Live at the above address.

While we’re on the Media, here’s an article from last year about our (then upcoming) first NOLA Shows at the Maple Leaf.

Mr. Blotto to record live album at the Maple Leaf Bar, 11/16–11/17

As you may already know, we did record the Shows and put them out as ‘Live at the Leaf”. You can pick up your copy here…
Mr. Blotto: Live At The Leaf

“Everybody says the Radio is Magic…”
-Chief

CD#1-Stay tuned…

Parking Karma is not far off…

CD#2-Bad Hair Day

Bad Hair Day.
“Baby stay, don’t go to work today/look at how it’s storming
Take some time, call in sick and stay/and kiss me in the morning.“

To say that the success of Parking Karma surprised us would be as large an understatement as you could make. It changed the trajectory of the Band. We went from guys who had other jobs or were in other bands to becoming A Band. And things began to change very quickly for us.

The First Rule in Mr. Blotto is that nobody plays anything they don’t want to play. The whole purpose of this Project was to take a bunch of Musicians who were working to some degree of success in other bands and put them together playing only the stuff that they really wanted to play. The question was whether anybody would want to listen to that stuff.
Parking Karma changed the game for us. We began to not only see bigger rooms on a regular basis, but were starting to hear “I loved that song by ______, but what was that Song that you wrote? I liked that one even more.” As Songwriters who were finding the voice of the Band they were in, this was immensely encouraging. It fueled the Songwriting fires. As a result, we wrote all the time & everywhere, and the response to the new Songs gave us an approval that the cover Songs, while fun to play and more familiar to the audiences, did not.
We even wrote while driving in the van. Paul and I were headed home after a Show in Rockford when we came up with a song idea. This being before cell phones, we didn’t have a way to record it, so we pulled off the highway and found an abandoned gas station with a pay phone (Remember those?). Paul called our answering machine and we sang the idea into it and figured out what it was when we got home.
There was no such thing as a Sound Check anymore. Ideas were bouncing around on Stage constantly, and Songs assembled during Check would be tried out that very same night. Post-Show, arrangements would be discussed and the new version would be tried out the following night. For a Band that was playing 3 or 4 nights a week, this led to a constant Edit Mode that honed a lot of Songs to the versions that would later show up on Bad Hair Day.
Another thing that changed was that we had added another member. Dave “B3” Allen was now playing Keys of all sorts.  While he remains, in my opinion, one of the best Synth players I have heard, his specialty was the Hammond B3 Organ.
The combination of Dave’s fiery soloing and oversize personality gave Bob and Paul something to play off of and brought performances up a notch or ten.  In addition, like Paul, Dave could freestyle Rap and the 2 had a great time getting into increasingly funny and absurd verbal spaces.  Having a Keyboard player in the Band also let Bob pace his solos in a different way, and, as a result, the dynamics quickly became more complex and powerful.

By the later months of 1993, we had built up a group of Songs that we thought would make up a CD that we would be glad to buy, and by the end of the year we decided to record the follow up to Parking Karma. We didn’t have a name in mind at the time, but we figured that something would suggest itself in due course.
So, on Monday, January 24th, 1994, we went back to the Studio. On that first day we put down On the Tracks, Any Kind of Lover, Sail Away Virginia and Rock Me in your Arms. We also got a version of Mean Potato that never made the CD. The next day we got Standing in the House, Wishing You Well, Dirty Woman Blooze, Got Nothin’, The Jinx, and Low Loretta. Like I said, we were tight on the material having played the songs a lot and they seemed to stick to tape well. We also did a version of Love’s Just the Time and Southern Country Gentleman that, like Mean Potato, didn’t fit on the CD.

Sometimes, when you write a Song, people grow to like or love it over time. This feels really great and affirming. It’s even better when you play a Song for the first time and you see people react strongly right away. But something even cooler happened for a few of the Songs on Bad Hair Day.
People were coming up to us requesting new Originals without knowing the names of the Songs (to be fair-some were too new to have titles at that point).  This happened for a few of the Bad Hair Day songs, and it happened enough to make us feel confident in the new material.

There were a couple of songs that we had not yet written though.  At a Show, somebody requested a Song in Spanish. Paul, knowing a beautiful song called “De Colores/The Colors” launched into it.  The rest us followed his lead and it evolved into a fast Latin Jam that we really liked. As would later become somewhat common, the next day, we had absolutely no idea how to play it, but the Show had been recorded and we worked backwards from the tape. That became “La Dia de Pelo Malo” which roughly translates to “The Day of the Bad Hair” [Note-It has been pointed out by our Latin friends that it should have been El Dia, not La Dia. In our defense, Paul and I are Irish and did the best we could.] It dawned on us at that time that Bad Hair Day would make a great CD Title, and we went with it.
One note to our Bilingual friends.  While we included both Spanish and English lyrics to La Dia de Pelo Malo in the Cd booklet, you may find some, shall we say, inconsistencies if you examine all the verses. If you do, please don’t tell anyone-Gracias!

As Recording and Mixing progressed, we continued to play a lot of Shows. On February 5th, we were at a Southside place (P.J. Flaherty’s on 95th Street) and during Sound Check came up with a thing that became “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore”.  We liked it a lot and Paul and I wrote the lyrics at a table near the sound booth between Check and Show.
Once we recorded these last 2, we felt like we had a solid Album on our hands.  Mixing continued into April and May and Bad Hair Day was released at the Vic Theater later that year…

As I look back at the writing and recording of Bad Hair Day I find myself thinking that I’d love to go back and tell the 1994 Me that the CD would really be welcomed by people when it came out. That every Song on it would still be being requested at Shows in 2020, and that all of them still find a place in our ever-changing Sets.
The Songwriter Me would be encouraged, I think, to hear that.
The Musician Me, who was playing those Songs to those people in those Rooms before we recorded them and put them out-I like to think he already knew that.  What that guy didn’t know was just how great the support of everybody who got into Bad Hair Day would make us feel.

-Chief

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

CD#4-Cabbages & Kings

Cabbages & Kings is the first CD that features Mark Hague on Guitar and Vocals.  While we had known Hague for years and had always loved his playing in whatever band he was in at the time, we didn’t know at the time just how much history we had in common with him.

Here’s a brief History Lesson…
When Paul and I were in High School we had a garage Band which went through a bunch of names, but ended up being called Fred. Paul sang and I played Guitar. The other guitarist was Wayne Healy who, with Marty Lloyd (the drummer) went on to form the Freddy Jones Band.
Initially I was the Lead Guitarist, but Wayne quickly blew past me in technique. One of the reasons he got so good so fast was there was this unnamed guitar whiz up the street from him and they would spend hours daily playing together.  At the time they were into dissecting Metal stuff like Eruption/Van Halen and everything Jimmy Page played on the Led Zepplin records.
Years later, Mr. Blotto is headlining at the Cubby Bear.  The opening band is American Garage, featuring Hague on Lead Guitar.  We get to talking after soundcheck and put it together that the guru up the street was…
…wait for it…
…Mark Hague. So it’s not like we didn’t know him, even though we didn’t.

Hague joined up in 1999. His “Bandiversary” date is  3/25/1999. We rehearsed for a little over a Month and then hopped in the Vans and went to Colorado for our first Shows together. We figured there was a great tradition of getting things tight on the Road and then coming home as a well-oiled machine.
One of my first impressions of what Hague was bringing to the table came from the fact that for some odd reason, “After it Rains” got requested every night. Now, normally, we don’t repeat songs night after night (or even week to week if we think of it) but seeing as we were way out West and the requests were for an Original, we did it as requested.
While this might seem repetitious, those who attended all 3 Shows didn’t think so and the reason was Hague’s solos. It’s not that they were different each night: they were. But it’s not that…
It’s that his approach to the solos each night was so radically different that it made each performance a completely different experience. To me, it was like we were auditioning 3 different guitarists with that song, each with a completely different approach to the solo section. It wasn’t the first time that I knew we were doing something different, but it was the biggest, clearest, and most obvious sign to that effect and it made the long downhill drive to Chicago a lot more enjoyable.

A Brief Digression…
A few years later, someone had the idea that it would be fun to do Van Halen’s Eruption in the set. Hague says Yes, he can do it at the Show, but really wishes he had this MXR Phase 90 pedal that he used to play it thru as that really would give it an authentic Tone.
I say “No problem. I’m a stomp box junkie and I have one that I “borrowed” from Wanye”. Hague says “Wait, those pedals are orange, but does yours have a mismatched yellow back panel?”.
I say “Yes, how did you know that?”
Hague-“That’s MY pedal! I knew Wayne “borrowed” it from me. I put the different back panel so I could prove it was mine if anybody ever “borrowed” it.”
Me-“That’s great, but I “borrowed” it from Wayne fair and square and I’m not giving it back to either of you. It’s mine now…” But I dig it out it and he plays through it and it does sound really good in rehearsal.
So we do the Show and Hague rips through “Eruption” and we go into “Running with the Devil” for good measure. Paul does a David Lee Roth kick that came so close to Mark that it actually moved the hair on the right side of his head. We think he came really close to getting knocked out cold.  That might have sucked at the time but would have given me a really good punchline (no pun intended I suppose) for this here digression thingy.

Jumping forward to about a year after that Show, I’m looking for the Phase Pedal because I want to use it on a demo I’m working on. I can’t find it anywhere. The Crew can’t find it, but they’re sure they didn’t lose it because we only used it that one time. So I ask Hague about it and he says “…maybe it’ll turn up” and gives me a strange laugh that told me that in no way was that pedal ever going to turn up…

While we all agree on a lot of things, artistically speaking, one of the biggest is a dedication to writing original Music. Paul, Mark, and I got together at our Warehouse every Monday night to work on new stuff. Besides coming up with Songs, it was a great way to get to know each other quickly. And it was a lot of fun. That tradition largely continues to this day.
As a result, since Hague joined up, every CD could have been a double CD.  We had to make some hard choices about what songs would be included on Cabbages & Kings and on every CD since. In the interests of time and space, and not wanting to tax the Gentle Reader’s patience, I’ll only mention a couple of specific songs here…

Prologue/Cabbages & Kings-This was a new thing for us. We wanted to write a sort-of Overture that would unify the CD, like the first or last song you hear in a Musical or Opera. However, we didn’t want it to be a musical medley, so we came up with one line referring to each song on the CD and those became the verses. The odd thing here is that by putting in the Overture, we had to eliminate one of the songs.  If you’re ever stuck on a flight or otherwise need to kill some time, feel free to figure out what line that is.  Extra Credit goes to those who have heard the missing song live…

Busman’s Holiday-Not everyone has heard this expression. I know this because a lot op people have asked me “Hey, what’s a Busman’s Holiday”. Being a clever sort of guy, I figured that they didn’t know what it meant. I’ve always been blessed with an acute sense of awareness I guess..
Anyhoo, my Grandmother Marie used to say it all the time. According to her, it’s when you do what your job is on your break, like when a Bus Driver goes on vacation and the first thing he does is get on a Bus to go on vacation.  That sort of thing.
The application here is when the Musician has romantic problems due to the fact that he’s always playing Music somewhere. Breakup ensues. Feeling bad, what does our Musician do? He picks up the very Guitar that got him in this predicament.
The kicker here is that the Musician is playing the guitar…on a Tour Bus.

Southern Woman-Lyle Lovett has always been an Inspiration to us. Partly due to his unique compositions and partly due to the fact that he made it possible for a guy who looks like he does to end up with a girl who looks like Julia Roberts.  This made him the “patron Saint of the traveling Band”. He still is.

Moviestar-Here’s one that really should not have happened. Paul and I had that song for a while but could not get the lyrics right, so we didn’t play it. for literally 3+ years…
One night, on the way to a Show in a van where the radio had been stolen, out of boredom I mention that if we fix 3 or 4 lines, that song could be playable. We have time to kill and argue a bit and by the time we’re at the Show, it’s all good. We don’t have the music arranged, but at least we have lyrics now.
After Set Break, we go on Stage and the soundman is playing a cool Reggae song we hadn’t heard before. Hague starts playing an odd groove on top of it. I go with him and Paddy starts singing the lyrics we just finished arguing about and hour or so ago. And it really works well. This is the kind of thing we’re seeing a lot from this new guy. It’s the highlight of the night and we’re really excited as it’s a great start of a new Song.
The Problem is that a couple days later, when we get together to finalize an arrangement, we can’t recapture what had happened spontaneously.
Luckily, we have always had a great relationship with Tapers. We put out the word that we were looking for a copy of that Show and a Taper-to-remain-nameless came to our rescue. He laid a copy of the night on us and Moviestar entered our songlist.
Somebody once said “if you really love Music, hug a Taper” and we never felt that more than right then…

1977-This was the first Original to really be indicative or Hague’s style. While we all loved playing it right from the start, night after night it went in different directions. Other songs were incorporated. Meandering was encouraged. Melodies were hijacked, spun about and sent home dizzy.  It’s been that way with lot’s of songs ever since with that guy, but this is the first Original to kind of suggest the truly crooked Path we were now setting out upon.

-Chief

PS-Fly Away is the first Mr. Blotto song to be covered in Polish. That’s Polish, not polish…

CD#5-Barlow Shanghai

Whoever said “Never meet your heroes” never got to write songs with John Perry Barlow.

We met up with Barlow when he was in Chicago. He was in town catching up with friends of his who happened to also be friends of ours and as these things tend to sort of keep on happening to those in these sort of oddly shaped circles will attest while they keep on bumping into these types of things over and over until they become Expected and Obvious in the end we got to talking after a Show and decided to work together.

Ok, so now we’re doing a record with Barlow. How does one ease into something like that? For me, I figured I would take it slow, and feel out the situation. Personally, I prefer to sit back silently, watch, assess and come to a logical and correct conclusion.
So Barlow asks Paul about a song Paul’s been working on. I should point out at this time, that the song had no Music, so Paul was going to Barlow with some lyrics that he thought were worth working on. I thought then, and think now about how brave that particular maneuver was.
So Paul tells him the title “Triolet”. Barlow says, “Isn’t that the 8 line thing with the 3 repeated lines?’ Paul says “Yes” and I damn near fell over.

As background, I should point out that while I have always been the more avid reader of the two of us, Paul is a language and verbal Freak. In High School he was voted “the Resident Vocab Monster” for his facility with learning definitions, synonyms and antonyms and basically ruining the curve on Vocab Tests. More to the point, he subscribed to this Word-a-Day thing that sent you an obscure Word everyday online. One day he got Triolet and fell in love with the pattern. It’s like a Haiku, but cooler…

I should also say that, outside of Paul, I am the only person I knew at the time who knew  what Triolet meant. Full Disclosure-I should also say that the only reason I knew what it meant was that Paul sent it to me with the definition and some examples.
So, when Barlow knew it off the top of his head, I realized that we were in the presence of a guy who didn’t just get lucky once in a while-No, we were standing in the room with a giant. A Giant who wanted to work with us.

I immediately stopped assessing and got to work…

Speaking strictly for myself, I can only say that it was a Joy that I consider my self fortunate to have experienced. He was Brilliant, Fast, Confident, Informed, and unbelievably easy to be around. He treated us like his Equals. We knew that wasn’t the case. To his everlasting credit, he absolutely Did. Not. Care.
Of all the things I took from working with him, That’s the thing I’ll always treasure the most.  And try to emulate. And will most likely fail at.

For those who didn’t get a chance to meet Barlow, I’ll tell you that on a personal level, he was everything you think he’d be, and then a bit more. Funny, sarcastic, brilliant and warm.  The kind of guy who had a million great stories but didn’t feel the need to tell you them unless the conversation required it.
As a Songwriting Collaborator he was a great team player who liked to hear other opinions and work with them, but wasn’t afraid to speak up with the solution to the problem when he had it. Which was predictably often.  There were sections of songs which had fought Paul, Hague, and I to a lyrical draw for years that he solved in less time than it just took you to read this paragraph. This was both Inspiring and Demoralizing to us.  However, sometimes, when those sections of those songs come up in Live performance, I remember the man and how he just spit out the answer that had been so elusive.  In those moments, I only feel the Inspiration part.

As an Artist, he got to check that box about leaving the world a better place than it was before you got there. And that’s the Biggie right there…

More Barlow Shanghai stuff…

Yes, there’s a hidden track.
Yes, it’s a Barlow and Paddy song.
Yes, the Lyrics are at the top of the Lyrics page.
No, I’m not going to tell you how to find it…
…and that’s because, if we learned anything from Barlow is that the fun part is the Journey.

RIP John Perry Barlow, and Thanks.
We miss you.

-Chief

CD#6-Thread

What happened is we got Lucky.
Better than that, we got Lucky Early. Early enough to stay at it for a while.  In this case, long enough to put out a sixth CD.

The lucky part was obvious enough.  We’d play Biker Bars on Irving Park Road like the Iron Rail and Slates and some of the Bikers would dig it and follow us to Penguin’s in Old Town. When that got shut down after a midweek Narcotics Raid, and we moved to Rush Street, The Bikers and the Penguin’s people went with us. And so on.

We know that we’ve been Lucky. Or Blessed. Or whatever you choose to call it. We know we didn’t get here on our own and the first song on Thread says it as best we can…

Here we are, a Rock & Roll and Stoner Soul Convention.

While there are those who maintain this is our “Darkest Record”, I have to disagree.

Yes, the cover art is a little disturbing. And, yes, we’ve gotten a bunch of inquiries about what it specifically means (for the record, we are not answering or explaining anything as that would take a lot of the fun out of it).
Also, Yes, the Music is a little harder or more Rock-ish on this one, but the brighter tempos and sometimes heavier feel of some of the songs do reflect where we were musically-speaking around the time when we were writing, arranging, and ultimately recording them.  The Lyrics, though, really tell a different story…

As kids who devoured 33 RPM Albums, we always liked to have an Entrance to our CDs. It has been pointed out to us that Here We Are kicks into a heavier mood right at 4:20. Accident? As we’ve said, we’ll never tell…

In Peter Today, the Lyrics point out that tomorrow’s promised to no one.  As a result,  we are glad we are grateful that we got to be together today. Carpe Diem, everybody.

The third variation of this is in Nietzche Stares which describes a few moments of being in a Band, at least in this particular Band.  It goes on to say that it’s great to feel the “bright love that you shine on Me”. We’ve never taken that for granted and it may be obvious, but certain obvious things need to be said anyway or they get missed. And that would be a shame.

So, along those lines…

“Even if you’re leaving
There’s just one thing to ask before you go.
Ask yourself do you need anybody
That’s the only thing I need to know…”

So, yes, the CD is a little faster (sometimes) and a little louder (sometimes) than our other ones, but it also digs a little deeper (hopefully) in an emotional sense at the same time. These 2 concepts pull in different directions throughout the CD, but that’s intentional, even if it’s only held together by a Thread.

-Chief