Just back from a great 10-day visit to Memphis, encompassing a lot of good food, family, friends, a bit of final studio work on the Linda Heck album, and a very enjoyable show at Murphy's, across from the once mighty Antenna Club - now occupied by a photography studio.
Chris Davis of the Memphis Flyer gave us some nice coverage, which elicited some interesting geekfeedback when I posted it to Twitter. Here are a few of what felt (to me) like highlights of the show, though it's important to note that we had no rehearsal. (Poor Kurt had never even heard half the songs in the first set, some of which dated back to the earliest period of Linda Heck and The Train Wreck. It's a testament to his musicianship that no one in the audience would have been any the wiser if we hadn't said something in his defence - not that he needed defending. He and John are the dream rhythm section.) These four songs are from the new project, hopefully coming to a pair of ears near you sometime soon. Extra special thanks to Doug Easley and Davis McCain for the fine guitars and amp.
My brother recently stumbled across this forgotten gem. July 1989, I was home for a month from my job in Japan, and agreed to help out my friend Roy Barnes in a class film project. This involved getting up early one day and driving out to the Hickory Ridge Mall (at that time the pinnacle of White Flight retailing in Memphis) to interview Columbo, "The Italian Elvis," who worked in a pizzeria in the mall food court. I recall him as a nice guy, fairly unassuming. At one point, apparently not filmed, I asked him about his time in the States. He said he had lived for ten years or so in Houston (I think I recall him saying it was Houston), where he had fallen in love with a woman, gotten married and had a son. "Then one day I come home and she tell me the kid's not mine."
The burst of beautiful spring weather we've had recently has evaporated, and I find myself looking out my window on a grey and unseasonably cold London Sunday afternoon, struggling to grasp that the events of the past week were real, not imagined.
I returned Thursday morning from a four-day lightning trip to Memphis, having at last escaped the clutches of Eyjafjallajokull. There I had the indescribable delight of three days in the studio with Linda Heck and the ever-amazing Doug Easley.
I shot plenty of video on my Flip Mino, but sadly this precious device seems to have died somewhere along the way, and I can't even retrieve the videos. I do have this one short segment shot on my phone, wherein we're listening as our old band mate Kurt Ruleman adds some percussion parts to a track.
The main focus of these sessions was vocals: Linda re-cut a couple of main vocals, and I added my voice to ten tracks, on some of which Linda sang with me. We have always had a deep unspoken musical understanding, and I find that harmony ideas flow thick and fast in my mind when I hear her sing. We also have a tendency to sound alike, or more accurately, I have a tendency to sound like her when I sing with her. I am curious to see if, when this collection of songs sees the light of day, listeners will even realize it's not all her.
We also synched up the guitar parts I recorded for four songs in London, so she and Doug could hear properly for the first time what we did (as opposed to the mp3 versions I sent previously, which have a Phil Spector-esque quality to them - as in it is often hard to unpick sounds). Kurt came in to do some percussion, including playing Doug's tympanis, which used to belong to Stax.
There were some more details added here and there: Linda played some sparse pedal steel parts on "Transformed," to which I also added pedal steel (though in my case it is strummed slowly, to sound like a tanbura); Doug added some beautiful pedal steel and virtual vibes to "At Your Door"; and in the absence of our friend John McClure I punched in a sparse bass line during the breaks in the same song.
So, at this point, I'm guessing this project may be near completion, apart from the mixing, not quite two months since it was begun. Linda, John and Kurt cut 15 basic tracks and vocals at the beginning of March, I did my basement sessions later the same month, Greg Easterly and Mark Harrison added strings, sparse guitar and synth to a couple of songs in Nashville in April, and this string of vocal/percussion/overdubs sessions in Memphis takes things to a pretty complete level, at least as far as I can hear.
I am as excited about this as anything I've ever been involved with, and I love every second of the 51 minutes or so which these songs comprise. I think Linda's writing and singing is in top form, and the playing from her and Messrs. McClure/Ruleman/Spake/Duckworth/Easley/Easterly/Harrison is tasteful and fine throughout. For my own part, having put the guitar down for 15 years, I feel like I play better than I ever did when I was trying consistently. Perhaps I should not play more often.
Seriously though, it's interesting to have the perspective of time to put things into context. I used to find it daunting to go into the studio in isolation to do guitar or vocal parts, and was prone to clowning in order to hide my discomfort or lack of self-confidence. I also recall many times being in the studio with no clear idea of what we were trying to achieve - this sometimes gave rise to interesting accidents, but more often led to indifferent results.
The contrast with the past could not be greater in this project, at least as I have experienced it. For once, I have felt a sense of lucidity and calm throughout, in having ideas worked out in advance which ended up being executed as planned or improved through collaboration with others. I guess this is the much-vaunted "confidence and ease that comes with age and experience," and I can only hope it eventually permeates all other aspects of my life.
The material in question also makes a good contrast with the much-lamented "Lost Album." Whereas we either ran out of money or patience, or perhaps both, before that body of songs could be satisfactorily mixed and presented as a finished, polished product, every song here already feels like a complete, self-contained work. Every song here, bar one, has a definite ending, rather than a lazy fade. The arrangements are more sophisticated and there is much more going on sonically, but the sound is much sparser - another lesson of experience being a greater capacity to listen and self-edit. Saying nothing, or little, usually carries more weight and meaning than a filibuster.
And the nature of the songs in this set is also a long way from 1992. What are the songs about? One thing I have realized after all these years is that Linda's writing process is probably a much more complex affair than might seem apparent to anyone but her, which makes interpretation a fairly treacherous task. There are some non-obvious shifts in point-of-view which I am now aware of, and in one case I assumed a song to be about a very specific individual, only to be told that the lyrics had the widest and most general application imaginable. So, in short, it's not for me to try to interpret or explain, because I may be wrong, apart from the songs I have asked about and had explained to me. However, I do hear some common themes cutting across most of the songs involved here: emotional estrangement (both from the other and the self), death (in a variety of senses/guises), vulnerability, acceptance, forgiveness, self-discovery, rebirth. Grown-up stuff, but beautiful and a lot of fun. I am ecstatic and thankful that I got the chance to be a part of it.
American readers of roughly my age will no doubt remember the brief 1970s revival of the "You Are There" show hosted by Walter Cronkite, an attempt to bring history to life for young viewers via fairly wooden, low budget re-enactments of important moments in history. I don't know why it's taken me a month to get around to producing my own twist on this approach in documenting the Memphis experience, but it is what it is. And it was what it was, which was mostly amazing.
It's always a pleasure to go back and see the family and friends, delve into nostalgia and history, and attempt to process the changes which have taken place in my absence. My children enjoy seeing their grandparents and cousins, and experiencing a different way of life, as well as the food. I had a chance to reconnect with people I haven't seen in far too many years, and I had some wonderful experiences as a result. And for all its laid-back charm, there is a certain undercurrent of energy running through Memphis, or at least through Midtown, the part most worth spending time/living in. As I tell anyone here who will listen, Memphis' music scene seems to me to be incredibly vibrant and diverse, especially considering the city's size. To have the number of independent labels and venues it is able to support speaks volumes about the enthusiasm of the locals to make their own entertainment, which I think is the way of the future.
However, I can never escape the vague feeling that I have entered a parallel universe of some sort. Simply stated, there are few places where daily life could be more different from what I experience in London. Population density is low, land use is generally wasteful, streets are wide, houses and their yards are generously proportioned. There's a profound sense of space, but also of emptiness, which are different things. Zoning, a fairly uniquely American concept, keeps residential and commercial activities pretty rigidly separate, except in older or poorer neighborhoods. As a result, everyone is effectively enslaved to the automobile, and people seem to be eternally launching out on car journeys to accomplish relatively simple tasks, which I would normally do by walking around the corner. I think I saw maybe five cyclists during my week there, and four of them were classifiable as "poor people with no alternative."
Anyway, the focal point of the trip for me was the New Year's Day reunion of Linda Heck and The Train Wreck, with whom I had not played since 1993 or so. I hadn't played with drummer Kurt Ruleman since 1984, if I'm not mistaken. There was huge anticipation on my part, but also some anxiety, so I spent the weeks before in London getting to grips with the electric guitar again. I had no expectations other than having fun and being in the moment, but we did much better than that I think, despite having only one three-hour rehearsal all together, and a couple of smaller break-out sessions in twos and threes.
On New Year's Day we returned to the venue on Broad Street formerly known as Fred's Hideout, where so much good music took place in 1987/88. This in itself was strange for me, because the room itself brought back its own set of memories, in some cases different from, and in some cases overlapping, my memories of the people who turned up to see us. I have to confess that this contingent was nowhere near the number I thought it might be. As someone pointed out to me later, New Year's Day is a funny time for a gig, and I agree, but I guess I felt that, given that we are a rare surviving remnant of a scene which ultimately laid the groundwork for what is happening today, there might have been more people there, if only out of historical curiosity. Sixteen years is a long time.
Never mind, the friends who did turn up were a wonderful audience, and I saw, if only too briefly, a lot of people I wish I could see more often. On the whole, I think we collectively (band and audience) were not a bad-looking bunch, the ravages of time kept at bay by clean living and low lighting. However, the material, particularly Linda's newer songs "Rescue," "How About You?" and "All Things Fall Away" revealed the marks of age and experience on the heart, and maybe I'm just imagining it, but it felt like people were listening a lot more intently during these. A heartfelt thanks to everyone who came out, to Clayton Rogers for shooting the video, to Jim Duckworth for his generous loan of amplifier and the most beautiful guitar I have ever played, and most of all to Linda, John, Kurt, and Jim. It was an honor and a pleasure to share the stage with you again, and I enjoyed it more than you can possibly imagine.
What follows is more or less the entire show, minus a handful of songs which weren't captured due to some battery life issues.
The first two songs "Look Away" and "Can't Change Me," two stalwart songs of early LHTW shows, are sadly missing, though the rehearsal video does survive.
When Water Burns
How About You?
I love this song, though its subject matter is distressingly familiar.
Laff
A song for/about Jim Duckworth, probably the Train Wreck's biggest fan back in the day.
Sunday
As far as I can recall, this is a song about an epiphany of sorts which Linda had after an all-nighter in Memphis. Whatever the background, the lyrics are generally inspiring.
Skinny Little Thread
Another early song, a real heartbreaker.
Barrooms to Bedrooms
A tribute to The Country Rockers, who also played in this space back in the day, and whose drummer, Gaius "Ringo" Farnham, died ten years to the day before this gig. I always loved this song, and was really happy to be able to sing it to a crowd of people who knew and appreciated it.
Beer and Guitars
This song was inspired by the sign outside Fred's Hideout, which featured a frothing mug of beer and an acoustic guitar - both the promise of good times, apparently. I think Linda's lyrics really nail the sense of the place back in those days, when it was primarily filled with local alcoholics.
Lonely As Me
A song from the 1987 period, the demo version of which features some beautiful violin work from Roy Brewer (then our drummer), which I try to replicate here.
Hurdy Gurdy Man
A frequent fixture of our sets back in 1987 or thereabouts, especially at Fred's Hideout.
'Tis The Season
This was a retro-psychedelic meltdown, inspired, as I remember it, by a Sky "Sunlight" Saxon album which I had at the time, which was so ridiculous as to inspire.
Split the Earth
Beginning of the second set, this is a great song, which we would have probably played at twice the tempo in the past. Still, the slower pace reveals some new aspects to the song.
Onward
This is one of my favorites from among Linda's range of new material. I could say what it's about, but I won't.
Today
This is one of my very favorite Linda Heck songs of all time: for/about the late Craig Shindler, but with a message of use to anyone who ever hears it.
Love is Strange
The Mickey and Sylvia classic, a feature of our shows back in the Fred's Hideout days.
Look Out For Love
Linda's jazz-vamp classic, with Johnny Mack showing why he is the man on guitar.
Professor of Love
Somewhere there is an entertaining video of this song, shot by Roy Barnes about a block from where I used to live in Midtown. Back in the day, I think this is the song people identified as being a potential single from the album which ended up never being released.
Failing Sky
Jim Duckworth played guitar on the recorded version of this, and here I am trying to reconstruct two different parts he came up with. The late Robert Palmer used to refer to this song erroneously as "Failing Star," for some reason.
Transformed
I love this song, and for me it demonstrates the power of remaining silent, which is a valuable lesson for any musician to learn.
Crying is Done
One of the highlights of the evening, I think.
All Things Fall Away
I think this is one of Linda's most powerful new songs, though I may be biased. Only a short segment here before the battery dies, though I made a humble attempt at a cover recently here.
Rescue
A new song. Only Linda really knows what this is about, but listening to the lyrics, it seems to be about an unreachable estranged friend. "I guess maybe lost is where you want to be." Very grown-up stuff.
House is Burning
A wonderful song about Memphis gossip and schadenfreude.
Dig
A wonderful song, lead track on the Lost Album, which has also featured on compilations and film soundtracks. Unfortunately, I had a terrible cramp in the fourth and fifth fingers of my left hand, which hopefully didn't affect the whole too much.
Vela
A song postponed from the first set to the last, written in honor of a clairvoyant once resident at Decadence Manor on Madison in Memphis.
I Found My Love in Memphis
The George Clapps "classic" revived in the neighborhood where I originally discovered it.
Serious (About Rock-n-Roll)
A song we frequently used to end shows with back in the Fred's Hideout days. There weren't that many people left by this point anyway, so it felt a bit of a non sequitur.
At our New Year's Day show at The Cove, we played precisely four covers: Donovan's "Hurdy Gurdy Man," Micky and Sylvia's "Love is Strange," a David Wills song called "Barrooms to Bedrooms" which The Country Rockers used to do a beautiful version of, and this oddity.
I described the song and my discovery of it, and also put the lyrics and chord progression in this earlier post on The Grundies, for whom this was something of a signature tune. The one detail I left out of that post was the name of the producer responsible for the cache of weird records I found along with "I Found My Love in Memphis," mainly because I couldn't remember. My friend Doug Easley, with whom I had the pleasure of spending time before the gig, reminded me that it was one Style Wooten, who had a studio on Park Avenue in Memphis, and whom Doug had once met. (Doug also reminded me that the flipside of this George Clappes single was a terrible song called "The Sound of Wedding Bells," and that Memphis blues standard-bearer Don McMinn is rumored to have played on some of Style Wooten's records.) It seems as though not a lot else is known about Style Wooten, or what happened to him. Jim Spake, who played some wonderful sax with us, and whose voice can be heard off-camera here at the end, said he found a similar cache of Style Wooten records somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Arkansas - maybe he retired there.
We played this in our truncated third set on New Year's Day (truncated because almost everyone had gone home), and I forgot at the time to dedicate it to our friends Jack and Amy, who say this is their song. In this video, I am showing everyone else how this very peculiar song goes, or at least the way the Grundies played it. We were never that sure from listening to the record because the bass player seemed to be playing it for the first time when they cut it. All very strange, but oddly appealing.
Before I moved to London in July, 1995, I spent the last couple of months living in my parents' house off North Mendenhall in East Memphis. The lease on my tiny Midtown apartment had expired, and I needed to save some money, plus it was a good chance to spend some time with them before I flew off to the great unknown Blighty.
One day I felt a bit restless, so I decided to go out for a walk around some of the beauty spots of East Memphis, such as Summer Avenue. Heading back home, I was walking on White Station Road, when in the corner of my eye I perceived a car slowing down next to me at the curb. The passenger-side window rolled down to reveal that the driver was Tommy Hull, legendary songwriter, possessor of a heavenly singing voice, and co-founder of the Randy Band, the first live band I ever saw in Memphis - an experience which changed my life. I had known Tommy for years, and always liked him, and he me, apparently.
He shouted out of the car, "Hey, are you okay?" "Hi Tommy, yeah, I'm fine." "Has your car broken down or something?" "No, I'm just taking a walk." "Get in, I'll give you a lift home." "That's very kind, but I actually want to walk. I'm just out walking for a bit of exercise."
He cocked his head and knitted his brow, uncomprehendingly, and said "Okay, whatever, take it easy." I think I even saw him shaking his head as he drove off.
The four faces looking out at you from another decade are those of a long-forgotten Memphis band called The Grundies, in their second incarnation. From left to right: Bob "Slyce" Fordyce (drums, vocals), Trey Harrison (guitar, vocals), James Enck (tenor sax, guitar, bass, vocals), and Jeff Green (bass, guitar, vocals). The picture was taken on a very cold night in the winter of 1991/92, in the backyard of Jeff's house on Rembert Street in Midtown Memphis. I lived just down the road at the intersection with Poplar, and the street was also at the time the home of now-eminent music writers Robert Gordon and Tara McAdams, and the uber-talented chef John Pearson. Jeff Buckley also lived on Rembert Street when he made his move to Memphis to record "My Sweetheart the Drunk," in a house that was just a stone's throw from my apartment, though I was already in London by that time. Trey, a very talented and enthusiastic photographer, had brought his camera and some lights over to Jeff's house, and we set up in the backyard to take some band photos. The photo was actually snapped by Bob, which is why he is so far forward in the frame.
The Grundies began as a trio of Bob, Jeff and Trey, sometime in 1990, I think, and by the time I encountered them, they had written and recorded a number of songs at the new Easley Recording studio, two of which ("McLemore Avenue" and "Eyepatch") I later added horns to. I began sitting in with them on tenor sax (which I had acquired from Jim Duckworth and played primitively and often painfully - my primary obvious influence being the squeakier output of Pharoah Sanders), and eventually joined as a fully-fledged member. We had, however, all known one another for many years. I first met Jeff in 1980, when I started working at the barftastic Steak and Ale on Poplar, where he trained me on my first night on the dishwasher. It was also through Jeff that I would meet his classmate, Kurt Ruleman, drummer in my first band Pseudobop with Linda Heck, who now plays with Linda once again. I met Bob sometime in 1982 or so, and I don't remember where or how, but I suspect it might have been because he was the drummer for the great and all-too-short-lived band Shagnasty, which also included Mark Harrison of Snakehips. Trey I knew of, but didn't actually properly meet until 1986, ironically on a trip to see my former Pseudobop band mates Mark Edwards and Richard Young in Berkeley, California.
The Grundies were an interesting musical collision between the primitive and the refined, which generated occasional moments of brilliance and beauty, but was forever on the verge of spinning out of control and crossing the line into The Unlistenable - territory we unfortunately spent a lot of time probing during our live sets. Bob was an exceptionally talented drummer, with formal training gained through participation in his high school's drum corps, and lengthy experience in a number of bands. I was a reasonably proficient guitarist, and had played with a number of bands. Jeff and Trey were much less experienced. Trey had been an occasional member of the Odd Jobs, probably one of Memphis' best, bravest and most challenging bands of the 1980s, but I think he might have only played slide guitar then, and Jeff had never played in a band before as far as I am aware. But Trey and Jeff were both naturally talented and charismatic vocalists, with a highly developed appreciation of the absurd, and this force of personality had instant appeal for almost anyone who saw them play - well, it certainly did for me.
In the first incarnation of the band, sans moi, this tension between experience and raw enthusiasm created an interesting dynamic, with the drums really providing the focal point for the listener in search of movement and accent, because most of what was going on with the bass and guitar was very stripped down indeed. I have a tape of the original Grundies sessions at Easley, which contains some fantastic performances, which I hope to obtain in digital format at some point.
For my money, the definitive Grundies song comes from these sessions, and it is called "Fire in the Driveway." The performance is fast-paced, with the guitar recorded very hot, and Trey's characteristically powerful vocal dry and right up front, with fantastic drum fills from Bob during the frequent stops. It is a concise and irresistible encapsulation of The Grundies' proposition - simple, hard-rocking, and absurd:
Well, there's a fire in the driveway (Jeff on backing vocals, "Yea-uh, yea-uh"), And I can't quite figure it out, Well, there's a fire in the driveway, And everybody's rushing about, Is it the carburetor? He said, "No!" Is it the radiator? He said, "No!" Is it the potentator? He said, "No!" Is it the lickulater? He said, "No, no, no, no!"
This early recording contains many other gems:
"McLemore Avenue" (for those not aware, this is the South Memphis street which was home to Stax Records, as well as the name of the fine Booker T. & the MGs album covering "Abbey Road"), on which I appear as a sort of zombified version of the Memphis Horns, is a funky instrumental featuring what we described as the "pyramid of entertainment" - in which Jeff's funky bass riff opens and is later joined by Trey's guitar, then Bob's drums, and lastly my horns. The suspense is almost unbearable!
"Go-Kart Track" is another defining piece of Grundiania. We used to rehearse at Jeff's family business, a landscape architecture company with a complex of nurseries and buildings on Summer Avenue, right next to the go-kart track at the Putt Putt miniature golf site. Before I joined, I guess on the 4th of July, the guys emerged from the rehearsal space to note that there was no one left at the go-kart track. This would probably account for the only lyrics of the song, which were:
There's nobody left at the go-kart track (x3), And it's the 4th of July.
Another great song from that first session is "Pyroflatulence," which has a very delicate and understated instrumental opening, with vocal to match. Things gradually build to a crescendo and eventual disintegration.
Feeling like a fool, In a brand new school, Thought I was hip, I had a pocket full of French Dip.
Hey, what's your name? I am a human flame (x3).
Pyroflatulence. Pyroflatulence.
My personal favorite from this session was "Cinco de Mayo," alternatively known as "Cinco de Mayonnaise." As the name suggests, it is an instrumental in 5/8 time signature, with the amazing Bob playing drum rolls throughout, while the bass and guitar (and sax in subsequent live performances) play an E chord in a 1, 1-2, 1-2-3, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4-5 rhythmic pattern, punctuated by a bluesy refrain in between. It's difficult to describe, and I'm not sure that my description does the piece any justice, but I remember hearing it for the first time and thinking that it was totally infectious. Robert Gordon shot a music video of this song in Jeff's backyard, which I used to have a copy of, and would love to see again.
While the group was musically fairly erratic, the strong graphic arts background and sensibility of most the members meant that we excelled at non-musical representations of the group. At some point, I found a couple of painted gourds in a thrift (charity) shop on Summer Avenue, one of which had an unusual shape and the word "Jim" written on it. This became the de facto icon for The Grundies, which featured on numerous fliers and a T-shirt which I wish I still had (I think I gave it to a girlfriend). There was also a limited edition of pennants, one of which I still have and is pictured later in this post.
The Grundies played a few highly unusual shows during the short life of the band. We played in a soybean field next to a tenant farmer's shack near Horseshoe Lake in Arkansas, which was a very odd experience. The day was sunny and beautiful, and a large part of it was captured on video by Robert Gordon, though I have never seen any of the footage. The locals, all poor black tenant farmers, were very welcoming, and we found ourselves the guests of honor at a fish fry that night, where the music on offer consisted entirely of a peculiar mix of Michael Jackson's Bad, NWA, and Z.Z. Hill.
We also played a gig with legendary Memphis hard rockers Neighborhood Texture Jam (NTJ) and the unintentionally hilarious epic metal band False Facade, at a stock car racing track (dirt) north of Memphis - I think it was in Woodstock. Jeff had organized this show around some event his Ultimate Frisbee team was involved in, but unfortunately it hadn't been given adequate publicity, so virtually no one turned up. Normally we wouldn't have cared, except that he had given the NTJ guys a guarantee. I had to leave after our set to play a show with Linda Heck back in town, but everyone else stayed at the race track and drove their cars around the circuit, which was apparently part of the package for hiring the venue.
A few weeks later, we played another gig with NTJ on the 5th of July at the New Daisy Theater on Beale Street. The night before, there had been a professional boxing match held in the venue, and NTJ had somehow convinced the management to leave the ring set up for the bands to play in. I wore some suitable gym shorts and a robe, and bounced off the ropes like a professional wrestler as we played our set, which I recall was one of our best ever, and certainly the most fun. By this time I was mostly playing guitar, and I had forced the other members in the band to learn NTJ's signature piece "Borax Factory," which we played very convincingly as our last song, both as a genuine tribute to their musical genius, but also because they had insisted on being paid their guarantee at the racetrack despite the obvious failure of the event and the fact that we all believed we were friends up to that point. I left that night before the fireworks started, but apparently Jeff and Trey were involved in some backstage slanging with some NTJ members around the issues of money and ethics, the outcome of which I'm still not sure about.
Throughout the life of the group, we had played a couple of times in Memphis with the Chicago band Shrimp Boat, which contained former Memphians Eric and Ian Schneller, the latter of whom had been in the Odd Jobs and was still close to Trey and Bob. In August, 1992, we traveled to Chicago to play a gig with them. I recall that when we left Memphis, it was about 95 degrees Fahrenheit, but we arrived in Chicago the next morning to find that it was rainy and 45 or so. Jeff, who had come up in shorts, a tank top and flip-flops, was taken immediately to a local thrift store to buy some more substantive clothing. Our show in Chicago was a failure on the whole, as the recording of the event validates. I think our self-deprecating, absurdist Southern humor and primitivist musical approach was lost on the audience, who were really there to see the far more sophisticated Shrimp Boat. We probably also didn't help our case by playing an atonal version of "Beer Barrel Polka" as a tribute to the citizens of Chicago. By this point in the band's evolution, we were overindulging in atonal free-form stuff, which did not show us at our best. Shrimp Boat themselves were wonderful hosts, and I enjoyed the few days we spent hanging out at their warehouse space. Ian and Eric were great fun, and I recall that Sam was deeply into the jazz thing, as was I, and had a fantastic vinyl collection. But, alas, I had a new job to return to in Memphis and realized that the wild and wacky life of touring penury was not for me.
It was the new job, my growing fatigue with loud music (we were very loud), as well as a general sense that we had pretty much exhausted our potential and were not particularly enjoying one another's company that much anymore, which led me to exit in September, 1992. The band pretty much ended then, though we did a recording session at Easley - McCain Studios after our return from Chicago, which sounds great in retrospect and yielded a single on Ed Porter's Loverly Records, and can be found on the fine double CD compilation "The Singles: 1993 - 1994". I have seen it available on the net for as little as 89 cents, which is ludicrously good value. The single was "San Antonio"/"You Look Good," on both of which I played bass, and horns on "You Look Good". "San Antonio" has one of the best opening lines of any Grundies song: "I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt, I read a book, I didn't know what it was about, down in San Antonio." If you have a vinyl copy of this single, you are part of a very small club, because I don't think any effort was ever mounted to distribute or promote it. The real gems of the session, however, were both obscure covers, "I Found My Love in Memphis" and "Lawman."
"I Found My Love in Memphis" was a song I discovered in a thrift store in Binghampton when I was living briefly on Forrest Street near East Parkway and Summer Avenue after my return from Japan in 1990. This thrift store had multiple copies of what looked like vanity singles from obscure local labels with names like "Pretty Girl," all of which seemed to be connected in some way. I bought several of them one day, most of which were terrible in an unremarkable way, but "I Found My Love in Memphis," written and sung by a long-forgotten man named George Clappes, was terrible in a really special way. I went back to the shop the next day and bought several more copies, which I gave to friends whom I thought would appreciate it. It feels more like a song poem than a song, I suppose, but the musical structure is so peculiar, and the lyrics so daftly charming, that it was screaming to be covered. It was recorded as a mid-tempo country song, but The Grundies' version rocked it, which actually seemed more appropriate to the strange chord changes (verses: B - C sharp - B - C sharp - A - E - F sharp - A - B - C sharp - B; bridge: B - E - F sharp - E - F sharp - E - F sharp - E - F sharp - B - E - B - A - B - A - B). I often wondered if the lyrics were written sincerely, or if George Clappes was gunning for a lucrative deal with the Chamber of Commerce, because for a song about love, it's very long on municipal amenities and very short on love.
I traveled over many a land, Even through the desert sand, Nowhere was I satisfied, 'Til I came to the riverside of Memphis
I got me a job and I settled down, Right here in this nice big town, Lots of girls there are around, I found my love in Memphis
Now I have plenty of everything, Even to my wedding ring, I just go around and sing, I found my love in Memphis
Bridge:
Listen to me friends wherever you are, All round close or way off far, There's lots of music and lots of fun, I found my love in Memphis
We've got more churches and fillin' stations, One of the best cities in the nation, And there are industries everywhere, I found my love in Memphis
We've got new buildings up to the sky, Come on friends and start a new life, Well that's exactly what I did, I found my love in Memphis, I found my love in Memphis
If you never heard The Grundies perform this song, you're probably not encouraged by my description, but trust me it was very, very good, particularly the version we recorded at that final session.
Our other epic cover, "Lawman," was a fairly lame country recording by Eddie Bond, one of his many musical tributes to Buford Pusser, with whom he had something of an obsession. The Grundies also had something of an Eddie Bond obsession: one of the early Grundies songs was "Eddie Bond" (the sole lyrics of which were his name), Jeff had a number of Eddie Bond albums, and he also produced an Eddie Bond frisbee featuring an unflattering caricature of the man drawn by Bob. We reworked it as a southern rock anthem, in which Trey, Jeff, and Bob all took turns singing the verses, ending with the singalong chorus from "Hey Jude," re-purposed as "Na, na, na, na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na, hey Buford." This was frequently a set-closer for the band, and I think it often made up for a wealth of musical transgressions perpetrated earlier in the evening.
Black smoke's rising from the poplar trees, They're making moonshine liquor down in Tennessee, Look out, bootleggers, Buford comes around, He's got a nose for whiskey like a hot bloodhound, He's a lawman
Well he could stare down the barrel of a 44, And leave six men lying on a barroom floor, Buford won't back down when the going gets tough, If he comes to getcha, you can pack your stuff, 'Cause he's a lawman
God help you boy if you carry a bounty, Don't plant your feet in McNairy County, They got a man with a plan for upholding the law, Standin' proud and walkin' tall
Towhead White's been comin' around, He told the whole dang town he's gonna gun you down, Towhead White, I'd hate to be in your shoes, When Buford comes around and starts looking for you 'Cause he's a lawman
Well they said "Buford why don't you get outta town while you've still got your life?, You've been shot six times, now they've killed your wife," He said, "They buried my Pauline in the cold, cold ground, Nah boy, nah, I ain't leavin' town. I'm a lawman."
Between the two very different recording sessions at the beginning and end of the band's life, there is adequate material for an album, almost all of it very good. I have a compilation tape of the two which contains:
Fire in the Driveway Eyepatch McLemore Avenue Tip, or Dump Mary's Head (two versions, one fast, one ambient) Cinco de Mayonnaise Eddie Bond Hurry Up and Stop Go-Kart Track Clam Ranch Jimma Lee Pyroflatulence You Look Good San Antonio Cowboy Song (written by Trey's then-toddler son, Red) Buddy Up Wise Without Study Fire in the Driveway (flamenco version) Lawman I Found My Love in Memphis
Assuming that the tapes survived the Easley - McCain studio fire, I would love it if someone assembled a definitive collection, to share the vision of The Grundies with the world. I think we could all use a smile right about now. Thanks for the memory, fellas.
After my family moved to Memphis in 1974, I went to sixth grade at the MSU Campus School, which I have to honestly say was a pretty shambolic example of 1970s-style open-classroom independent learning. One of my teachers there was a woman by the name of Barbara Jackson, who sported a frighteningly unrealistic wig and amazing array of super-flared pant suits in a variety of garish colors and materials, including leather. We kids preferred the leather ones, because we could hear her squeaking down the hall back towards the classroom after one of her frequent forays elsewhere in the building. We preferred to have advance warning of her return so as to avoid being told off for rowdiness.
Anyway, this frequently terrifying figure was actually married to none other than Al Jackson, who visited the school on a number of occasions, and looked very cool indeed. They lived just around the corner from the school on Central, giving Barbara almost certainly the shortest commute of any teacher in the Memphis City School system, though she still drove her Cadillac, of course. This was Memphis, after all. It was in this house that Al Jackson would be killed a year later. For as long as I lived in Memphis, I thought about this whenever I drove past that house, and wondered what really went on that night, because the accounts all sounded very strange at the time.
Thirty years later, in April 2005, the "It Came From Memphis" season at the Barbican presented a Stax reunion show, and the fabulous Jim Spake got me a backstage pass. I arrived early at the venue to meet up with Jim and managed to catch him with Ben Cauley and Booker T. & the MGs rehearsing "Your Good Thing (is About to End)" with Mable John, which sent chills down my spine. After this we retreated to the catering room for a curry, which we ate with William Bell (who seemed like a really nice guy) and Skip Pitts. At one point I had to find the men's room, and on my way back I encountered Booker T. and his wife, attempting to find the dining room (the Barbican is notorious as a place where people get hopelessly lost), and I showed them the way, for which they seemed very thankful.
Later on, I was hanging out backstage, standing next to Deanie Parker, when up walked a very friendly and unassuming Eddie Floyd. He asked me who I was, and I shook his hand, told him it was a great pleasure to meet him, and asked him if he could possibly sing "I Stand Accused," one of my favorites. He looked into the middle distance, as if mentally time-traveling, and then said with a vaguely pained expression, "You know, I sure wish I could, but I only have time for three songs." Mable John won the audience's heart before her song when she thanked them and said how nice it was to be back in London, where people had treated her so well when she had last visited - in 1967. It was an amazing night. As I have just celebrated yet another birthday, I'm reminded that sadly time is tight for these remaining treasures of Memphis music (as it is for us all) and I'm glad to have crossed paths with and witnessed as many as I have over the years, and grateful for this music like no other.
It's a curious and oddly satisfying thing to have a band take shape around you, and then to watch it take on a life of its own in your absence, both when you're out of the country and also back in again. Such was the case with Hot Joe, still one of Memphis' finest and weirdest groups, in my humble and probably irrelevant opinion.
As a natural extension of the friendship between Linda Heck and The Train Wreck and K9 Arts, I started hanging out with K9 guitarist Jim Duckworth and my band mate John McClure in 1987 and working up some songs, mostly old standards, with me as the vocalist. Jim had an amazing music collection and an encyclopedic knowledge of jazz from its earliest roots to the modern experimental scene, and he turned me on to a lot of wonderful music. These afternoons spent at Jim's house were usually accompanied by copious amounts of coffee, so naming the group was a very easy exercise indeed.
Our first gig was with Rich Trosper on drums, I believe at some sort of art opening or party in Downtown Memphis, though the venue and occasion totally evades me, probably because I was fairly terrified at the time by the prospect of fronting a band as vocalist for only the second time ever. I can't recall exactly what our set was, but it contained "Cheek to Cheek," "Moody's Mood for Love," "Strawberry Fields Forever" (yes, a straight jazz version), and God knows what else. At some point we debuted a version of "Ornithology" with original lyrics by me, which so exited an apparently well-known local "jazz dude" in the audience that said enthusiast mounted the stage and commandeered the microphone to "scat". I've always hated scat. I was very irritated by this man at the time, but ended up being mightily amused by the fact that, whenever the imperious scat-cat wannabe in question ordered (rather than requested) Rich to "lay out," Rich responded with a very loud rim-shot or flam of some sort to piss the interloper off. Eventually he gave up and left the stage.
From these humble beginnings arose Hot Joe, and the group, in various permutations, began to get real paying gigs, mostly weddings and cocktail receptions, which, in addition to a civilized audience and a guaranteed pay check, also typically included free food and drink - not a bad alternative to the thankless smoke-filled dives we were used to. The line-up of the group evolved over time, though the core was typically Jim and John, plus Jim Spake on saxes and either Ross Johnson or Doug Garrison on drums (sometimes both together). On a couple of occasions Jim Duckworth had other obligations, and I recall doing two nice gigs with John Gaskill (a wedding) and Ed Finney (some sort of corporate event in the garden at Brooks Museum) on guitar. I was intrigued by Ed, who wore a compass on his wrist as opposed to a watch - which he explained something along the lines of "I may not be on time, but at least I know which way I'm headed."
Sometime after I left for Japan in 1988, Robert Palmer turned up in Memphis and became part of the band - his skronky clarinet an interesting foil to Jim Spake's refined playing. This line-up, which often included both drummers, became very popular over the next two years, and while maintaining the civilized paying gigs, also played harder-edged material in the clubs. They worked up a rocking mash-up of two of the best Mingus tunes, "Better Get Hit in Your Soul" and "Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting," a very fast, Klezmeric version of "Over, Under, Sideways, Down," with Jim Spake and Bob Palmer trading solos, and expanded "Strawberry Fields" into a long medley improbably including "Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough," "Haitian Fight Song," "The Immigrant Song," and "When the Saints Go Marching In." There were also a few fine originals by Jim Duckworth, including "Mimi" (a K9 Arts song) and "Jonah," which was a beautiful song, and Linda Heck's "Look Out for Love."
In the summer of 1989, I came back to Memphis during the summer break, and the guys very kindly arranged a recording session while I was in town, and we also played a gig at the P&H Cafe, which I think might have been a WEVL benefit. I don't remember that much about the gig, apart from the fact that we played versions of "My Favorite Things" and "'Round Midnight" with original lyrics I had written. The recording session, on the other hand, I remember very well, and still have tapes from it to remind me of what a pleasant experience it was. The full line-up (Jim D., Jim S., John, Ross, Doug, Bob, me and Linda Heck) went into Doug Easley's studio behind his house on Marion Street off South Highland on a Saturday night and recorded into the wee hours. We cut "Better Get Hit/Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting," "Over, Under, Sideways, Down," "Mimi," "Strawberry Fields Forever," "'Round Midnight" (with my lyrics), "Ornithology" (ditto), an old Linda Heck and The Train Wreck song "My Crying is Done," two versions of "Look Out for Love" (one with Linda on vocals, and an "answer version" with me substituting my own lyrics), and a very short "Cottontail." It was a blast, and the music still sounds wonderful today.
Jim Duckworth drove me back to my parents' house that night, and Bob Palmer, who was along for the ride, regaled us with some very funny stories of his adventures. My parents' house is not far from the home of the late Sam Phillips, whom I saw many times over the years mowing his own grass, and this triggered an anecdote from Bob, which he attributed to Sam Phillips himself. It seems that when Fidel Castro was in New York City in 1959, Sam Phillips managed to get the number of his hotel room, and possibly somewhat the worse for wear at the time, called it. Bob claimed that Fidel's brother Raul had answered the phone, and told Sam that Fidel was unavailable, to which Sam apparently said, "Well, I just want to wish him well with that revolution down in Cuba, but tell him that if it doesn't work out, he always has a home in Memphis, Tennessee, and that comes from Sam C. Phillips."
I have no idea whether this story was true at all, but I found Bob Palmer to be a delightful storyteller and a very funny man. And he was into Persian classical music, as was I, and I seem to recall we ended up talking about parallels between the Charles Mingus band in 1964 and Persian classical ensemble performances, which are punctuated by unaccompanied solo segments from each of the instruments. That was the sort of conversational side alley you could find yourself wandering down when talking to Bob Palmer. Wish I'd had a chance to get to know him better.
I would really like to see a comprehensive list of all the songs played during the life of Hot Joe, because it would almost certainly run to hundreds. The paying gigs, when they required a vocalist (which was by no means always the case) often came with an obligation to learn some new songs, and I recall that we worked up a really nice version of "I've Never Been in Love Before" for some newlyweds' first dance, and another couple wanted the Beach Boys' "Wouldn't it be Nice?" for their first song. We played it faithfully, and luckily I have a pretty wide vocal range, because it's a hell of a song to sing as the first of the night.
The paying gigs, particularly the corporate stuff, gave license for some fairly subversive material, because typically no one was really paying attention, so it was not uncommon to hear the likes of "See Emily Play" slipped in among the Chet Baker numbers. It was also an interesting opportunity to observe people, because the band members were typically ignored and I was singing maybe one in three songs, so I had ample opportunity to look around the room. At one wedding reception, I remember Jim Spake was featured on a particularly fine version of (I think) "In a Sentimental Mood" and a very old woman stood close by and cried her eyes out until someone took her back to her seat to comfort her.
My abiding memory of the remarkable experiences I had with this group, beyond the awesome recording session, was a Christmas show we did on Wally Hall's Memphis Beat program on WEVL, I believe in 1991. The full line-up was there, minus Bob Palmer, and Linda Heck and I traded vocal duties, teaming up on "Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow" and "Christmas Time is Here." The evening ended with me behind Ross' drum kit beside Doug Garrison as we all accompanied Ross doing a predictably hilarious reading of "The Night Before Christmas" (including ad libs such as in the description of Santa Claus, "There were broken veins in his nose - he'd been drinkin'") which I have on tape somewhere and is still one of the funniest things I have ever heard.
I always enjoyed getting to see these guys play up close - being allowed to sing with them, and even getting paid, was purely a bonus.
Back in the 1980s, Memphis was still struggling to come to terms with the disregard it had shown for its musical heritage. The Beale Street renovation wasn't complete until October 1983, and even with this positive step forward, it felt to me (and I'm sure I wasn't alone) that the comeback strategy was more about emulating Bourbon Street than about highlighting what was really special about the musical legacy. It's not as if there was any shortage of raw material to work with at that time, but opportunities were missed or deferred, and the city still has a lot to answer for in its treatment of both people and historical sites - I still find it unfathomable that both the Stax and American studios were demolished. It was a time when giants wandered forgotten and unrecognized. On the positive side, there was always a chance that you could run into a hero or two if you were in the right place at the right time.
Sometime in 1983, I remember dropping by Dan and Linda's "Green Acres" shack in Binghampton, and there sitting on the sofa, was an older man who was introduced to me as Paul Burlison. I mean, Paul Burlison, hanging out in the ghetto with some impoverished kids, goddamn! Someone told me later that he hadn't touched a guitar in years at that point, and might have even forgotten some of the old Rock-n-Roll Trio numbers.
Sometime in the winter of 1987/88, Hans Faulhaber, an architect and musician I knew, invited me to play rhythm guitar on a single he was going to record at Phillips Recording, around the corner from Sun Studios. Just the chance to set foot in such a hallowed studio again (I had done another session there in 1984) was enough for me, but to make it even better, I was going to get to play with Roy Brewer (drums), Doug Easley (bass), and Bruce Lester, the lead guitarist from The Beat Cowboys, a hot-ass Nashville-style guitar picker of the Telecaster-slinging variety. I think I was going to get paid too, which was a rare surprise in my musical career. But the real surprise was still in store, for when I arrived at the studio, I discovered that the session was going to be engineered by none other than Roland Janes. Roland Janes - the most influential and recognizable unknown guitarist of his age, creator of some of the wildest and most provocative guitar stylings of the rock-n-roll era.
He was a really nice man, very funny and curious about things. There didn't seem to be that much going on at Phillips Recording back then, and I don't know how connected to the wider music world he really was at that point. Like Paul Burlison, he was eventually given the attention and recognition he so richly deserved, but at that point in time I sense that he was still living through the nuclear winter which all but the most popular of his generation were enduring. As he and Doug were setting the levels on the drums, I was already in position with the acoustic guitar, absentmindedly playing and singing a few songs to amuse myself, one of which was an early Beatles' song, possibly "I Should Have Known Better." Roland hit the studio intercom button. "What's that song you're playing? I like that." He didn't seem overly familiar with the Beatles' catalogue. George Harrison would probably have given his favorite sitar for a chance to be there with that man just then, and he (Roland) may not really have had that much idea of his own influence on the world. Presumably he got some inkling once things picked up for him.
We recorded two songs that day, written and sung by Hans, and released as a 45. The songs were:
Evil - A song inspired by an altercation with some belligerent rednecks at (I believe) an Elvis Costello show. It was a fast country number with some unbelievable guitar playing, and an almost out-of-control vocal performance by Hans.
"There's evil in the home of rock-n-roll, Of that I'm sure, how much I just don't know, It comes out in the night, It's dressed in red and it likes to fight, I don't."
2003 - This was an odd sort of loping country-reggae song, which I would really like to hear again if I could only find my copy. It's the only song I can think of on the topic of earthquake preparedness, something which Hans, as an architect, was very concerned about - with just cause, of course, because the last major New Madrid Fault quake was so fierce that the Mississippi flowed backwards in some places and church bells rang on the East Coast. In the last line of the song, he sings, "I can't say when it will be, my choice would be 2003." Indeed 2003 seemed to be a long way off back in 1987, but it sure came and went fast, luckily with no earthquake. That's no excuse for complacency.
"Big quake's comin', now you better beware, It's gonna get the best of me and you, It's gonna tumble old Memphis down, We're gonna really be the Home of the Blues.
That fault's gonna open so wide, Ain't gonna be no place to hide.
It happened here once before, When we weren't even around, Next one's gonna be twice as bad, It's gonna shake this city down.
That fault's gonna open so wide, Ain't gonna be no place to hide.
So get your people settled down, And talk to 'em logically, Explain in no uncertain terms, What is and what will be, Prepare them for the time, They gotta start a brand new life, They gotta start out on their own, They gotta build a brand new home."
I always really liked this song, both the music and the message, which still seems to go largely unheeded. Hans delivered my copy of the single in person, when he came to visit me in Tsuru City, Japan, shortly after I moved there on a two-year teaching gig in August, 1988. We hung out for a week, he played me some amazing recordings he had made with Tommy Hull, and I even arranged a few proper Japanese earthquakes for him.
I had a long Skype chat with Linda Heck yesterday, ahead of her solo gig at Otherlands in Memphis. She said in passing that she had always had an awful lot of material beyond what the band played, which I guess I should have expected, but this revelation still took me by surprise. I have never heard this stuff, and maybe no one else has either. The mind boggles. During its various incarnations, my guess is that the total Train Wreck repertoire of Hecktunes ran to 60 songs, or thereabouts. The 21 songs on what I have taken to calling "The Lost Album" are a pretty representative cross-section of the material the band played during its life, with a bias towards material written in the later period, when Linda had really hit her stride.
Sometime during the final incarnation of the band in 1988, Linda had begun seeing Clayton Rogers, to whom she is now married. Clayton lived in the same building as our mutual friend Belinda Killough, and became part of the social circles in which we all shuffled. I have always been surprised that we hadn't met previously. He was raised in East Memphis, as was I, and we knew a lot of people in common (he went to MUS boys' school, the Midtown contingent of which I knew because some of them dated girls in my high school). Clayton is wicked smart, with a surreal sense of humor, and is a very generous person. A talented architect, he totally revamped the big house they ended up buying on Madison in Midtown after I returned from Japan in 1990, which had been a doctor's office for years and was in need of a lot of loving care. It was a fairly Herculean task, having seen it in its unadorned state, but he and Linda made it something truly impressive during the time they were there, as an expression of their shared love of design and all things cool.
Clayton's father had died unexpectedly some time before, at a tragically young age, and had left him some money, a part of which he decided should go to fund a proper recording session for Linda and the band. Sometime in the late spring/early summer of 1991, we went into the fantastic Easley-McCain studio (back then it was known simply as Easley Recording) to begin work. I had visited the studio when it was still in the process of refurbishment from the dilapidated state in which they acquired it, and had also seen photos of what it looked like before it had been touched. Doug Easley and Davis McCain had worked wonders with it. It was an amazing place to be, and I always looked forward to going there, as I would do for various sessions over the years, or just for a social visit. A rather unassuming building from the outside, it had a nice, homey feel to it inside, with a comfortably decorated reception/chill-out lounge just inside the door, leading to the control room and main room. There was an office upstairs, where presumably Chips Moman sat at a desk at some stage counting his gold records, and as I recall there were two reverb chambers running vertically through the building, which were actually used from time to time. The main room was colossal, maybe something like 1600 square feet, with three isolation booths, and what must have been a 40-foot ceiling. My estimates of dimensions may be off a little bit, but to put things in perspective, you could have comfortably fit a small symphony orchestra in the main room with no problem.
Working with Doug and Davis was a great experience. We had known them for years and all got on very well. I had first seen Doug playing in a band with his brother Ron and Bob Holmes, later of the Modifiers, at a fraternity party at MSU in 1980 - I was there because some of the older guys I worked with were members. Davis I met probably in 1981/2, when I unsuccessfully auditioned to be the second guitarist in his band Barking Dog. Davis was later the sound man at The Antenna Club for a number of years, and I think this experience of doing things under pressure and being pragmatic was one thing which made him so easy to work with in the studio. It always struck me that Doug and Davis were more concerned with capturing a vibe or performance when the timing was perfect than with over-engineering things. In contrast, I remember a session I once worked on at a different studio, wherein the miking of the drums alone took four hours, during which I lost the will to live, let alone record. Doug had a particular talent for surrendering to serendipity and accidents that occurred, and letting them guide the process, which suited me fine.
We initially recorded the basic tracks over three or four sessions, in three different configurations based on who was drumming. As had been the case through too much of the band's life, it was the ever-rotating drum stool which drove the process. Doug Garrison (whom we had played with in Hot Joe, but who will be better known for his work with Alex Chilton, Charlie Rich, and The Iguanas) graced us with some fine drumming on seven songs, Ross Johnson played on five songs, and I played on the other nine. We were joined on four songs by Jack Adcock (611, The Bum Notes, Professor Elixir's Southern Troubadors) on miscellaneous percussion. Jim Duckworth (Panther Burns, The Gun Club, Marilyn and The Monroes, K9 Arts, Hot Joe) played some characteristically beautiful guitar on four tracks, and the inimitable Jim Spake played sax on three tracks (should have been more!). Clayton contributed water-filled wine glasses and whirring plastic tubes to the eerie "Chalk Outline" track. Everything else was covered by Linda, John, and me.
Bafflingly, once we had recorded the basic tracks for 18 songs, the whole project seemed to go dormant for a year. Linda and Clayton had a lot of other stuff going on, as did we all, but in retrospect it strikes me as odd that, given how well those first sessions went, we weren't all impatient to finish things up. It was a more than a year later before we would return to the studio to do some refinements and mix. We realized we had more space left on one tape reel, so we quickly recorded three more songs, which are far less produced than most of the rest of the album, though I think they are all good performances: "When Water Burns," "If I'm So Smart," and "Sunday."
I am still very moved by this recording, a mixture of pride and nostalgia for what were very enjoyable sessions with wonderful people in the best studio in the world. I play it for my children from time to time, and they enjoy it as much for its musical merits as for their delight at the occasions where they can pick my voice out of the backing vocals. As with everything viewed retrospectively, I can hear things which I would want to do over if given a chance, and I would love to remix one or two songs completely. I am not sure if the master tapes even survived the fire at the studio in 2005, so the idea of remixing it one day may be a complete impossibility. Speaking strictly for myself, I think we could have spent more time differentiating some of the guitar parts and making them more forceful, but we had a fairly limited budget. It's always possible to over-analyze things across a temporal gulf such as that which separates me from these recordings, but as a package, I think they are wonderful just as they are. But don't take my word for it. Eight of the highlight tracks currently appear in the music player on Linda's MySpace page, so listen for yourself (these songs are marked with an asterisk below). Perhaps someday the entire album will see the light of day.
The Songs
1) Dig (also known as Dig My Own Hole)* [2:18]
Linda Heck - vocal, electric guitar John McClure - bass guitar James Enck - electric guitar Doug Garrison - drums Jim Spake - baritone sax Jim Duckworth - electric guitar
This song has been featured on a couple of compilations, and is something of a signature tune for Linda. An ode to defiance and self-reliance:
"Do my own thing in my own time, I'll live my own life, speak my own lines, My ears are closed, my shoulder is cold, I'll make my own bed, dig my own hole"
Fantastic guitar work by Mr. Duckworth and a strong vocal performance by Linda.
2) Professor of Love [3:11]
Linda Heck - vocal, acoustic guitar John McClure - upright bass, acoustic guitar, synthesizer (faux marimba sound) James Enck - electric guitar, trumpet, backing vocal Doug Garrison - drums Jack Adcock - guiro
I never quite understood the derivation of this song, but I think it started from a character idea that Roy Barnes had come up with for a film - a mysterious expert in love for troubled hearts. Roy later shot a music video for this song, which did not, in fact feature a Professor of Love character. Would love to re-do the end of the guitar solo, but that's life. The rest of it is spectacular.
3) Failing Sky* [2:49]
Linda Heck - vocal, electric guitar John McClure - electric bass James Enck - drums Jim Duckworth - electric guitar Jim Spake - tenor sax
One of my very favorites, with some really special guitar work from Jim Duckworth, and a splendid solo by Mr. Spake.
4) Laff* [2:06]
Linda Heck - vocals, electric guitar John McClure - electric bass, electric guitar James Enck - electric guitar, drums Jim Duckworth - electric guitar
This song was written about Jim Duckworth as part of the K9 Arts trilogy, as I recall in recognition of his undying appreciation of all things Linda Heck and The Train Wreck. Jim laid down an intro part which was amazing but very heavy and a bit sinister, which we felt was out of character with the sentiment of the tune, so we stuck to his straightforward chordal accompaniment until the end of the song, when we faded in two lead parts. I was never sure that he was happy with this arrangement, but I think it works beautifully.
5) Sunday [2:21]
Linda Heck - vocal, acoustic guitar John McClure - electric bass James Enck - electric guitar, drums
A great song about self-realization, inspired by a long night out. This was probably the most basic arrangement on the entire album, and I like its understated quality. We recorded it pretty much on the fly at the end of the process, and it felt really nice at the time. Great vocal performance, and I still find it hard to believe that's me on the drums (ditto for the preceding track).
6) When Water Burns [2:53]
Linda Heck - vocal, acoustic guitar John McClure - electric bass James Enck - electric guitar, drums, backing vocal
This was a barn-burner from the Roy Brewer era of the band, which we decided to record at the end of the sessions when we realized we had tape left over. The bass isn't high enough in the mix for my liking, but it's a spirited performance.
7) If I'm So Smart [2:30]
Linda Heck - vocals, electric guitar John McClure - electric bass James Enck - electric guitar, drums, backing vocal
A country rocker, also recorded at the end almost as an afterthought, but it's an honest and strong performance.
8) Every Mother's Son [2:55]
Linda Heck - vocal, electric guitar John McClure - upright bass James Enck - drums, flute, recorder, bass recorder
A beautiful song, apparently about the uncritical love of a parent for a child, as observed by a third party. I had made a four-track demo of this with Linda (where is that, I wonder?), but we struggled a bit with this one. I suggested to John that he think about "Pet Sounds" for the bass part, and his playing really makes it what it is, and we later added a droning bowed bass part. Doug thought my flute/recorder bit sounded like a calliope, which I suppose it does. The reverb on Linda's voice is a tad overwrought. This is one I would remix given the chance, but it is still beautiful.
9) Chalk Outline [2:31]
Linda Heck - vocal, electric guitar John McClure - electric bass James Enck - drums, electric guitar Clayton Rogers - whirling plastic tubes, musical wine glasses, bathroom sink Jack Adcock - nut shells, flexitone
The serenity of a picnic is rudely disturbed by the discovery of a chalk outline of a body.
10) It Is Alright* [2:35]
Linda Heck - vocal, electric guitar John McClure - electric bass, piano, crash cymbal James Enck - drums, electric guitar Jack Adcock - vibraslap
This one still gives me goose pimples. Written for Linda's roommate of the time, Melissa Thornton. It's mostly Linda and John for two-thirds of the way, very subtle and beautiful, with a just a bit of cymbal work from me and Jack's vibraslap, but the ending I find uplifting, to match the message of the song. I had to overdub the crash cymbal with mallets to build up the suspense for the break to the finale, and then John (standing next to me) came in and knocked it home.
11) At A Party* [2:49]
Linda Heck - vocals, electric guitar John McClure - electric bass James Enck - drums, electric guitar
This track, like the preceding one, is recorded with Linda playing a guitar strung with the high strings tuning (which Jones Rutledge describes as "Angel Hair") I alluded to in a previous post. This, coupled with my electric, occasionally sounds like a 12-string - very full. The arrangement is very simple, but it sounds complete, and I like my drumming here. The ending is a bit odd, and I'm not sure how that happened, or why we didn't fix it.
12) Magic Wand* [1:52]
Linda Heck - vocals, electric guitar John McClure - electric bass, electric 12-string guitar, backing vocal James Enck - electric guitar, backing vocal Ross Johnson - drums
I think this may be one of the earliest Linda Heck songs I can recall hearing. I'm pretty sure it was on that original home demo cassette she returned to Memphis with in 1986. It's a great song about the desire for escape. One of the few occasions in which we attempted multi-part harmony, with good results. We should have done so more often.
13) House is Burning* [2:11]
Linda Heck - vocals, electric guitar John McClure - electric bass James Enck - backing vocal Doug Garrison - drums Jim Spake - baritone sax Jack Adcock - bongos
I think I was still stuck at work when this was recorded in a session starting at midday, but when I heard it I thought there was no need for another guitar because it sounded perfect as it was. And so it remained. As I wrote earlier, Cordell Jackson thought this song was about cocaine addiction, but anyone actually listening to the lyrics will realize it is about gossip and schadenfreude, recurring features of life in Memphis, and indeed anywhere where humans are present.
14) Split the Earth [2:34]
Linda Heck - vocals, electric guitar John McClure - electric bass James Enck - electric guitar, backing vocal Doug Garrison - drums
Another rocking song from the reinvigorated, newly empowered Linda Heck songbook of the 1987/88 vintage. I used to really enjoy playing this one live. I recall that Doug Garrison wasn't particularly satisfied with his playing on this track, but we assured him it was awesome, which it is.
15) Slipping Away [2:02]
Linda Heck - vocal, electric guitar John McClure - fretless electric bass, electric guitar James Enck - electric guitar Doug Garrison - drums
Some very dreamy guitar textures here, a nice melody line, and great lyrics about procrastination. John lays down a great lead guitar part, demonstrating why he was always more than just a pretty bass.
16) He Rode By [2:34]
Linda Heck - vocal, acoustic guitar John McClure - upright bass, electric guitar Doug Garrison - drums
The other song I missed due to the time slot, but there was nothing I could add. It is simple and elegant.
17) Today* [3:12]
Linda Heck - vocal, electric guitar John McClure - electric bass, backing vocal James Enck - electric guitar, backing vocal Doug Garrison - drums
One of the very best Linda Heck songs, and one of the most exciting to play live in my opinion. Written for the late Craig Shindler to wish him well at a low point in life, it has a positive message characteristic of its vintage:
"Pain will go, before you know, Let it fall away, Happiness is within you, And it can be today"
It's an unusual and intriguing structure, which is probably why I have always liked it, because it feels like it's always moving to a new level. Starting in C and reverting there for the bridge, switching to B for the verses, with the odd A to F-sharp interlude. Outstanding performance from Doug here, and I like the rising harmony vocals in the instrumental section. Linda is sublime throughout.
18) B-Movie [2:13]
Linda Heck - vocal, electric guitar John McClure - electric bass, acoustic guitar James Enck - electric guitar, backing vocal Ross Johnson - drums
"'She's in the arms of another man,' he said, 'What should I do, shoot myself dead?' Now wait a minute, that's quite extreme, How dramatic, how B-Movie, Is it worth it? After all, just think how it would really be, Just think how it would really be."
Great Nashville-style acoustic picking from John here, and I like the way my harmony voice only comes in as the voice of the lovesick loser.
19) Nightmare [2:18]
Linda Heck - vocal, electric guitar John McClure - electric bass, acoustic guitar James Enck - electric guitar Ross Johnson - drums
A song, unsurprisingly, about a nightmare, apparently about being chased by dogs, but with a happy ending. Trippy, echo-laden vibrato guitar which I like.
20) Beer and Guitars [2:24]
Linda Heck - vocal, electric guitar John McClure - electric bass, electric guitar, backing vocal James Enck - electric guitar, backing vocal Ross Johnson - drums
I can remember thinking at the time this song was written that it was a gentle joke, and perhaps it was, but as I grow older, I find it to be increasingly poignant. The title evokes the sign of Fred's Hideout (which featured a cartoon mug of draft beer and a guitar), our beloved dive of old where so many great shows took place, but which was also the home to many hopeless, broken alcoholics, whom this song seems to portray.
"Well there's nothing like whiskey and drums, To ease the pain when it comes, We see hope in each glass, As we twiddle our thumbs, There is nothing like whiskey and drums, 'Cept bourbon and rain, And beer and guitars"
Beautiful volume-pedal guitar from John, approximating the sound of the honky-tonk pedal steel as it might have appeared on Sister Lovers.
21) 'Tis the Season [7:22]
Linda Heck - vocal, electric guitar John McClure - electric bass, Hammond organ James Enck - electric guitar, tenor sax Ross Johnson - drums Jim Duckworth - electric guitar
This was a song Linda wrote in 1987 for the 20th anniversary of the Summer of Love, which we used to do towards the end of shows at the time. The night that Ross sat in with us on short notice at Fred's Hideout in July 1987 to fill in for Roy Brewer after the birth of his first daughter Eva, we played a fairly raucous version of it, so it seemed natural to have Ross back for this recording. No one was disappointed. As I recall the song was vaguely inspired by a particularly demented contemporary Sky Saxon EP I had bought, and we pretty much cover all the psychedelic cliches here with feeling, including the "Helter Skelter" false fadeout and return (without which the track would be closer to ten minutes). Ross has the last words, which are "Ice cold Molson!" Amen.
*Available for streaming at www.myspace.com/thereallindaheck All songs by Linda Heck. Recorded at Easley-McCain Studios, Memphis, TN, summers 1991 and 1992. Engineered by Doug Easley and Davis McCain. Produced by Linda Heck, John McClure, James Enck, Clayton Rogers, Doug Easley and Davis McCain.
James Enck would like to thank all involved for a wonderful time, and the late Rich Trosper - whether you knew it or not, I was watching and learning. Thank you.
Posts
