This is the second of four initial parts of a long Jason Webley interview conducted by Mike Whybark in spring, 2003.

M: [continuing, referring to the July 20 Monsters of Accordion show at the Vera Project] Um… let’s see; oh yeah, do you know how much it’s going to be?

J: I think it’s eight dollars. And then you have to pay a dollar.

M: And then you have to pay a dollar. Why is that?

J: Because you’re probably not a member of the Vera Project. But maybe you are.

M: [feeling like a thirty-six year old] No, actually, I’ve never been to a show there.

J: That’s what I guessed. But there are people who are reading this who won’t have to pay that dollar. And maybe I’ll make it seven dollars. Maybe it’ll be seven dollars and then you have to pay a dollar.

‘Cause a nine-dollar show… that’s starting to get kinda (pauses) close to ten dollars!
[ed. It’s seven plus one.]
M: One of the funniest things I ever saw at one of your shows was…

J: Someone yelled out “eight dollars”?

M: It was pretty good.
[ed. I think this was the 2001 Halloween show at the Paradox. It’s on one of the Baby Bok Choy live CDs of various Jason shows.]

J: It’s kind of funny to think back now… that was the first time I ever charged eight dollars.

[ed. Some music comes on that Mike recognizes – it’s an Irish bar, after all – and we digress into non-interview territory, mostly about who Mike had been playing music with and the status of Mike’s former band, the Bare Knuckle Boxers. This led Mike to mention that a mutual friend is in India]

J: The first time I ever touched a dead body was in India.

M: Why don’t you tell me about that?

J: It was on Easter. And right now it’s about a week from Easter.

M: When were you in India?

J: That’s all classified information.

M: So this is off the record?

J: It’s interesting, I was putting together this website, sort of what to put on it and what not to. I think this is all unclassified. All classified. Yeah, this whole line that I draw – of what’s private and what’s public.

Actually, talking about it’s fine.

[ed. – Jason had just completed a total revamp of his website, which included an exhaustive list of every performance Jason’s given for several years.]

I put together that list of all the performances, but then there’s certain things that can’t – that aren’t really – um, that guy [ed. – Jason’s stage persona].

M: You told me once a long time ago that least some of the songs on the first CD were written for a show or something. And that sort of led into what you decided to do. Is that correct?

J: Um, no. I used to write a lot of music for theater shows. That was pretty much my only public outlet for writing music for many years. I never performed it myself, I always taught the songs to other people. There were always sort of these little songs that were getting written along the side.

What the first album was, was like the last batch of these sort of – first … I had been working at a recording studio, and I had this project of recording every song I had ever written, which was hundreds and hundreds. And when I was finishing up this project there was this handful of bastard songs that didn’t – that felt really different and weird and I didn’t really know how to record them. I didn’t know what to do with them. I didn’t really know how they went.

[ed. – for the next little bit, brackets represent recalled speech as well as clarifications and annotations. Voice-activated recording got turned on somehow on the tape recorder, so if the mike was off of our mouths, the recorder would stop and then start unpredictably.]

J: [And so I decided to record them differently], just you know, in the kitchen with really simple equipment. [When I was done], it really seemed obvious to give [them] to people.

M: So that’s where Viaje [ed. – mispronouncing as “vee-auj”] came from?

J: Ve-ah-hey. [ed. – correcting Mike’s pronunciation]

M: So, interestingly enough, that implies the existence of hundreds of pre-Jason Webley Jason Webley studio recorded material. Is that correct?

J: [silence, laugh] At some point that existed.

M: “At some point that existed?” So, did you junk those tapes, or do you still have them stashed away someplace?

J: I remember when I was first playing…

M: Oh, very slippery!

J: I remember when I was first playing concerts, and I didn’t feel like I had any material, I would actually play some of these old songs. I don’t anymore.

M: [grinning] So you’re dodging the question, though. The material exists. You recorded it.

J: It’s really not very… interesting. [laughs]

M: Well, it’s interesting that it exists, actually, to me. I’m not pressing you to release it, but it’s interesting.

J: I’ve looked at it occasionally.

Things existing… It’s a funny thing, what actually has life, what exists, what’s really there. I feel like the process of me making all those recordings was incredibly important for some reason; I don’t really know where that impulse came from, but it was ridiculous.

M: Yes. Hundreds, you said.

J: It was ridiculous. The work was to try archive like things that I had recorded at different times in my life.

[waiter brings food]

J: [to waiter] Do you have any interesting stories about monkeys?

W: [a bit boggled] Monkeys? [pause] No, I don’t.

J: Dammit. You’re gonna get a lousy tip [laughs]. No, I’m sorry.

[ed. more food interaction, eating, etc.]

M: So those recordings, you did them in the studio you were working at. Were they multi-track, or were you just miking, and getting them out of the way?

J: Various different ways.

M: The stuff you did on Viaje that you recorded in your kitchen – what was the equipment you were using?

J: It was a digital multi-track recording device. I didn’t use any effects and I didn’t do any, really very much, like any kind of manipulating of the sound or using like effects. It’s much more real takes, no clicks.

M: What mikes did you use?

J: RE-55s – these Electro-Voice mikes that I found for five dollars at a garage sale. A pair of omni-directional dynamics. They’re – GREAT. I love ’em. Best five dollars I’ve ever spent. I’ve used those on all three albums for lots of things.

M: Karel has an Electro-Voice he got someplace – very sensitive, clean mike.

Did you use 58s for your vocals?

[ed. – Shure SM-58s, a popular vocal mike. Karel Trubac was the guitarist for the Bare Knuckle Boxers.]

J: For the first two albums I used 58’s. [Not the greatest mike to use on your vocals] – but it worked.

M: But it’s such a standard for that.

J: [emphatically] Live. Because they don’t feed back. That’s why.

M: Greg uses 57s for instrument miking, live, and we’ve used that for some recording stuff as well. Is that the same mike, with just a different cover on it?

[ed. Shure SM-57s, a popular instrument mike. Greg Brotherton was the other mandolinist in the Bare Knuckle Boxers]

J: It’s the exact same mike.

M: OK, Mr. Recording Engineer person, those were questions that are mysterious to me as someone who has never studied that…

J: How do you mike your mandolin for a performance situation?

M: There’s two different ways to do it. The one that I use most of the time is a contact pickup that sticks on with a kind of putty.

J: Is it just one of those cheap ones that are like fifteen, twenty bucks?

M: It’s like ninety bucks. It’s a McIntyre. They’re made specifically for violins or mandolins; although I think they maybe might make a contact mike, one that’s usable for acoustics, like regular guitars. There’s a range of different technologies, though; you can use an active bridge, but you that you’ll have to an outboard transducer. This way, it’s really easy, it’s just a regular socket you just run a quarter-inch to. It’s real easy, though to overload the sound – get sort of this blown-out effect in the amplifer, it’s not very pretty, you know?

The other way of doing it is to mike it with a straight mike, like a 57. But you have to do pretty close-miking, like this [ed. holds hands to demonstrate]. Which can get kind of tricky. If you’re getting excited, you bash the mike. And that’s the same principles as if you’re doing close-miking on an acoustic guitar, you want to mike away from the hole, have it go across.

The other kind of component for capturing acoustic mandolin sound is that the quality of the instrument has a big, big effect on the sound. I think maybe even a larger effect on the sound than it does for guitars. Partly because there’s such a large market for guitars, even relatively inexpensive guitars are made to higher quality standards – in some cases – than are mandolins.

J: I have a really crappy mandolin.

M: Like a Kay or something?

J: Mexican… um… Borracho? No.

[ed. “borracho” means “very drunk” in Spanish. It’s probably not the brand name of Jason’s mandolin.]

M: Like a Santa Rosa type deal? They have a kind of a different sound than American-style mandolins. I’m not really sure why. Does it have classical-style pegs?

J: What do you mean by classical style?

M: You know like an open, um, neck, and the pegs instead of coming out the sides are like this on the neck?

[ed. demonstrating with hands to compensate for verbal incoherence]

J: Do you mean like, pegs, like a violin, or no?

M: No, like on a classical guitar.

J: Yeah, I think that’s how they are.

In spring, 2003, Seattle-based musician – and friend – Jason Webley and I met in Belltown following a performance in which Jason was appearing, Pastor Kaleb’s Sunday Service, at the Jewelbox Theater. Jason was not billed under his name but under a transparent pseudonym, something like Nasoj Yelbewich.

After the services, Jason and I walked up the side of Capitol Hill to Clever Dunne’s Irish House for breakfast. I miked him just before we crossed the freeway and we started talking. Most of our conversation took place while walking – we looped as far afield as Seattle University and then back downtown – but the section seen here this week is mostly set in the restaurant or walking to it.

Over the next four days, I’ll run the first four parts of the interview. There is much more that I have not yet transcribed – these four sections represent about forty-five minutes of tape.

The additional material will eventually be posted here as well, but in the fall. I had hoped to develop a print-based piece from this material previewing the Monsters of Accordion show, but didn’t land the story. The balance of the interview material may from the basis of a story for print in fall as well, and in order to place a potential story, I need to hold the material until any hypothetical piece sees print.

M: You’re going to be playing in Seattle in July.

J: July 20, at the Vera Project – named after your wife.

M: Her name is Viv, actually.

J: Viv! Viv! Why did I – I know her name’s Viv! Why did I do that?

M: My older relatives always took her name and immediately transformed it into “Vi”. Kind of irritated her.

J: You don’t have to tell her about this. You can leave it in the interview but just don’t let her read that part.

[ed. Note to Viv: do not read the previous material.]

Let’s see. So it’s “The Monsters of Accordion.“

M: So this is like a tour?

J: Short tour. This accordion shop owner Kimric Smythe in Oakland runs Kimric’s Oakland Accordion Shop – what is it called – Smythe’s Accordion Center – which is where I have all my accordion work done when I can’t fix it myself. Last summer he invited me down to headline this little event that he has every year, this little accordion festival. And then later in the autumn we did a reprise of that with just a few of my favorites of these other accordion players – and called it The Monsters of Accordion. It was just one show in Oakland. I’ve really been wanting to actually bring it on tour – so this will be the last stop on the five day Monsters of Accordion tour.

It’ll be East Bay, West Bay, Eugene, Portland and then here. That’s why we’re in Seattle on a Sunday.

M: Who else is on the tour?

J: Aaron Seeman. I think he’s like a classical musician and composer.

M: The freeway is going to overwhelm the audio…

J: That’s fine…

(noise as we cross the freeway – joking about music business stuff)

J: I’m going to play this accordion festival in Katadi (?) this summer – it’s this huge accordion festival I guess. They have all this kind of Lawrence Welk-y kind of stuff among other things. It’s kind of daunting. Near Santa Rosa.

M: In California?

J: Yeah. (pause) I’m pretty much gonna not be in Seattle this year.

M: I guess that makes sense, considering the kind of bumpy experience you had last year.

[ed. Jason was arrested and banned from Seattle Center for a year after being very aggressively hassled by event coordinators and security for both the springtime Folklife Festival and Bumbershoot. While Jason wisely counsels forgive and forget in this matter I personally feel inventive ways to deprive the responsible parties of sleep ought to be formulated, preferably involving loss of political and economic power.]

So who else is in this monsters thing besides Eric Seeman?

J: Aaron Seeman. He plays Dead Kennedys covers, note for-note on the accordion; does very good Jello Biafra imitations. He’s only interested in the first album; he can play Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables in its entirety. In the Bay Area, anyway, even if you weren’t a Dead Kennedys fan you have somehow subconsciously have picked up on ‘California Uber Alles.’ We’ll see how it goes over in Seattle.

He’s great. He’s recorded with Mr. Bungle. Very talented – very different energy than me, I think.

Daniel Ari – who is – I think his group is called Bass Line Dada – he’s just GREAT. I fell in love with him. He sings very sweet songs. Very funny, disarming – very immediate, real connection happens between him and the audience. In a way he is kind of similar to me. So remind me to put Aaron between – have Aaron play between us so we don’t get confused.

That’s it. Three monsters.

M: You all play unaccompanied?

J: Yeah. Bringing back that old tradition, of, you know, the guy and his accordion. A show of several solo male performers and their accordions. (laughs)

M: (deadpan) So you’ll have to beat the women off with a stick.

J: (also deadpan) Yes. That we did agree on in the contract. They each get 25 percent.

— (We arrive at Clever Dunne’s and get a table) —

M: So you said, quote, it isn’t going to be a really exciting show

J: It’s going to be really boring.

M: How exactly is it going to be boring? In what specific ways will it be boring?

J: I’m not going to kill myself on stage. There’s not gonna be any kind of parade. No fireworks.

M: No fireworks?

J: No. I don’t know. The last time I played with these two guys though – people in the audience…

At some point I was mentioning to the crowd that earlier that day I had seen Peter Tork of The Monkees.

He was doing a signing at Rasputin Records in Berkeley. I was walking along the road, and I saw a flyer with a picture of Peter Tork, and it said “Peter Tork appearing on Wednesday at 3 o’clock at Rasputin Records” and it was two thirty. I went into Rasputin and waited around a while – he was a bit late. But sure enough, come about 3:15 or so, this guy in a jean jacket that looks like Peter Tork showed up.

But anyway, I was telling the audience this same thing, and they were wondering “Why is he telling us this?” just like you are right now, and as I said that, someone threw a monkey at me; like a stuffed animal monkey. It was really shocking.

Occasionally the audience will you know heckle you or do something, and usually you know … what to do with the situation. And the first monkey, it really shocked me.

M: So you did the Peter Gabriel song.

J: Well actually no; we eventually got into a medley of monkey songs. But for a while I was useless. I couldn’t do anything. Then a second monkey came. A third monkey. All different.

Like different old monkeys that had been loved by some child like had completely different histories. It was as if the audience had conspired together to bring their unique, special monkeys and at some given point all throw them at me. There were probably about forty or fifty of these monkeys on the stage.

And um, the concert was over…

—(ed. interruption while we engage in food debate and ordering)—

J: (resuming story) So the show ended – I did various things with these monkeys. Filled the space up. But then the show ended, and no one came up and claimed responsibility for the monkeys, no-one took any of the monkeys; they all just stayed there. They’d been a little bit enigmatic when I first saw them, but then I sort of came to terms with them, I became able deal with them.

But then I really had a hard time dealing with the fact that everyone just left them there. I mean it really, really got to me. I didn’t know what to think of that.

M: So there you are alone on the stage with the monkeys, breaking down sobbing.

J: A very humbling moment.

M: So whatever happened to the monkeys?

J: Well, I don’t want to ruin the Mystery of the Monkeys.

Like a lot of things like that – there’s a lot of things that happen in my life, there’s a lot of things that are just authentically, truly, filled with divine mystery, that keeps unfolding and being mysterious, or kind of drifts away.

These monkeys though, they just belonged to Kimric, the guy that ran the place; at some point he had just started passing them out to the audience. That’s why they suddenly appeared and that’s why when it was over no one had any sense of ownership about them.

That was what was disturbing is that no one felt any ownership of these monkeys, and I felt like, “How could that be? How could the monkeys just exist here now?” and “Are they my monkeys?” and then there was sadness! – There was sadness when it was all said and done I was disappointed that the mystery was gone and that they’re not my monkeys now!

M: Well there’ll be other chances. You know, I’ve heard there’s a rule of comedy – if something’s funny, add a monkey and it will be funnier! (digression not transcribed.) If you’re ever in doubt, just add monkeys.

J: Well, I’m not normally one to exploit a monkey like that. I need some sort of external… But the Peter Tork connection is not completely devoid of divine mystery. I haven’t seen Peter Tork since, though.

M: I haven’t either.

(End part 1)

Wide Awake

Since Sunday I’ve been overflowing the boundaries of length for blog entries with a series covering my relationship to the music and songwriting of Hoosier musician Dale Lawrence and his various performing outfits over the years. This Saturday sees the release of Wide Awake, a compilation of mostly previously released tracks from Dale’s current and long-running project, the Vulgar Boatmen.

Today, dear friends, I present a blow-by-blow walk-through of my mind as I listen to that forthcoming Vulgar Boatmen release. I heard it on a preview kindly supplied to me by a singer-songwriter who shall remain genteelly hidden behind a scrim in this paragraph. First, a few tidbits, and yes, these are confirmed facts insofar as they apply to the preview disc I’m writing about here. If the tracklisting or order has changed between then and now, your mileage may vary.

If you would prefer to hear the music without reading about it first, STOP READING NOW.

First, there are two brand-new releases among the tracks, which are otherwise drawn from the out-of-print prior releases Please Panic, You and Your Sister, and the import-only Opposite Sex. According to current bassist Jake Smith, the only song he appears on is Wide Awake, which my notes indicate is from Opposite Sex. The never-previously-released tracks are a live performance of one of Dale’s oldest numbers, Cry Real Tears, and an alternate studio performance of Mary Jane which my notes describe as “acoustic.”

I will work through the songs in order, noting title, running time, original album appearance, and if the song was remixed by Paul Mahern. If I don’t note it as being remixed, it was still remastered. I don’t know of any remixes not by Paul on the disc, and I was also told of Paul’s mixes, which include the remixes. Got that?

I have further taken a stab at identifying who has the primary vocal duties between songwriting partners Dale Lawrence and Robert Ray on each track. It’s not always the easiest task, as both men have similar ranges. It’s interesting to me – and as a fan frustrating – to note that Ray’s lead vocals outnumber Dale’s two-thirds, if my count is correct.

1. Change the World All Around 4:09
lead vocals: Robert Ray
previously released on You and Your Sister
Mahern remix

Last night I stood in your driveway calling your name. It was late. I could hear your father.

Last night I drove to your house, right up to your street.

This remix has a lot of punch. I thought it was interesting that the album opens with three of the four longest songs. The performance expresses the angst of the narrator in the punch of the guitar and the atonal touches of the viola. I think the Mahern remix begins to bring some of the stage energy of the band to the recording. This is the first song on the record to mention cars and telephones.

The narrator repeatedly approaches the person addressed but we never are shown the narrator making interpersonal contact with the person addressed.

2. Drive Somewhere 5:59
lead vocals: Robert Ray
previously released on You and Your Sister

It seems like you want me to feel like you want me to

Partway through this song the lead vocals do something that reminded me of some things that Ross Danielson did long, long ago, singing with Greg Philips and Frankie Camaro in Moto-X. The performance builds out from the plucked guitar riffs. The first specific geographical locale is mentioned: Morristown.

The narrator drives, although in a relationship, in order to consider or reflect on doubts or discomforts in the relationship.

3. Margaret Says 4:45
lead vocals: Robert Ray
previously released on You and Your Sister

I’m supposed to be thinkin’ bout the rest of my life

all these steps I’m takin’ – pictures of your family

The song takes the viewpoint of a partner in a couple. Are they headed for matrimony? Margaret (formerly Morgan when the song was performed by Right to Left) may think so. Our narrator (surprise!) appears to have some doubts. The song also appears to express a mild temporal ambiguity, as the narrator says hello in French and Margaret dons a hat, tilted over her eyes, to go driving.

WDIA and the Germantown road appear, setting the song near Memphis.

I hear a courteous nod of the head in the direction of Lou Reed for both Sweet Jane and Rock & Roll – Margaret/Morgan, Jeannie, and the redoubtable Jane probably all knew one another at Vassar.

4. Mary Jane 3:57
lead vocals: Robert Ray
previously released on You and Your Sister

I call you up, and you let it ring – bye bye

The first four songs on the album form a sort of American courtship narrative, from troubled teenage romance to a split, whether before or after marriage is neither germane nor explained.

5. Street Where you Live 4:07
lead vocals: Robert Ray
previously released on You and Your Sister

And we’re back on that street. But instead of hearing your father, we see a car. Whose? A rival’s? We never know. The diffident beau of the first four songs may have had a secret competitor, one still more hesitant.

At about 2:54 into the song, the main chord progression from Sweet Jane is quoted once as a descending bridge, followed by the lyrics “Who do you love?”

6. Calling Upstairs 3:27
lead vocals: Dale Lawrence/shared
previously released on Please Panic
Mahern remix

The song opens with Dale’s voice, then on the second verse, Robert leads; on each verse the singers finish together. This is the first train station song and the drum pattern draws some rhythmic elements from train noise. I believe I hear the mighty Hammond B-3.

7. We Can Figure This Out 3:01
lead vocals: Robert Ray
previously released on Please Panic

8. Anna 2:45
lead vocals: Dale Lawrence
previously unreleased
Mahern mix

If somethin’ doesn’t happen she’ll be mine
But somethin’ seems to happen all of the time

Anna – lives a half a mile from me
Anna – right around the corner from me
Anna – seven thousand miles from me

A very deep mix. Way in the back of the mix there are a whole bunch of overtones, possibly a reversed track of something stringed. I believe this may be the long-sought two-chord song.

9. Allison Says 2:45
lead vocals: Robert Ray? Possibly Dale Lawrence
previously released on Please Panic

There’s a car down the street where Allison lives

Allison says there’s a reason that you’re not at home
Monday nights there’s a reason that you’re not at home

A well-known element in folk music generally, the blues in particular, and through the blues into rock is the phenomenon of floating couplets, where by many pairs of lines are known to the performers of a given oral tradition and available for use in performance as required by emotional tenor and/or rhythmic need. In many of the Vulgar Boatmen’s songs, the practice appears to have been applied to a body of work penned largely by two men.

10. In a Station 3:20
lead vocals: Robert Ray
previously released on Opposite Sex

You’re in a railway station – I’m online

It is so unutterably weird for me to realize that the bulk of the Boatmen’s career has taken place after the advent of the internet.

11. You Don’t Love Me Yet 4:13
lead vocals: Dale Lawrence
previously released on Please Panic

Alternating vocals, again, with Robert leading the second verse.

12. There’s a Family 3:29
lead vocals: Robert Ray
previously released on Please Panic

you will always be always the one I love

Another song that evokes the Velvet Underground with a simple rhythmic triplet set against viola.

13. Wide Awake 2:53
lead vocals: Robert Ray
previously released on Opposite Sex

I can drive until mornin’ cause I’m wide awake
Tryin to remember what it is that I forgot to say

The overall harmonic mix, mostly in the vocals, evokes strings.

Something about the tone of this song and the landscape it evokes – the drive from Chicago through Indiana to parts unknown – is dead on target.

The road trippers hear both the Boatmen’s own Mary Jane and Berry’s Maybellene on the radio, although there is no Coupe de Ville in the song, and northern Indiana has no hills to catch her on. Still, the rain must do their motor good.

I once noted that the work of the Vulgar Boatmen appears to begin with a programmatic inversion of rock. What could be more punk? Take the basic elements of pop rock. Adhere strictly to the use of cars and girls as the basis of your narratives. But make the car an emblem of frustration, the false promise of escape. Set the girls forever beyond reach. Three chords and the truth, just as they say.

14. I’m Not Stuck On You 2:34
lead vocals: Robert Ray
previously released on Please Panic
Mahern remix

15. Fool Me 3:17
lead vocals: Dale Lawrence
previously released on Please Panic

since I fell for you

This is the most radical of the little tales of love and floes on the record as the narrator invites the object of his love to ‘fool me,’ to accept the risk of acknowledging the dangerous self-exposure of being in a relationship. The music makes the invitation into the invitation of Pierrot, however; wounded and lachrymose, it mourns something.

16. Cry Real Tears (live, new) 2:27
lead vocals: Dale Lawrence
previously unreleased performance
Mahern mix

This live performance of the venerable song by Dale retains large portions of the original’s arrangement but features crucially different lyrics. “Well I wish you really loved me but it just can’t be” started life as “Well I wish I really loved you but it just can’t be.”

The song ends with the same flourish of chords it did in 1978.

17. You’re the One 3:26
lead vocals: Robert Ray
previously released on Please Panic

The inspiration for the Matrix movies. Not.

18. Decision by the Airport 2:43
lead vocals: Robert Ray
previously released on You and Your Sister

Using “you’re the one” in a line, this song also employs an acoustic steel guitar, and as in You’re the One, a character in the song is named Jeannie.

19. Heartbeat 3:38
lead vocals: Robert Ray
previously released on Opposite Sex

With Cry Real Tears one of the oldest songs on the record. As with Tears there have been many changes. One thing that remains from the original is the instrumental emulation of a heartbeat’s pulse, although here it’s a bass and on the oldest recording of it I have it’s a guitar.

The song has also slowed from a frantic speed – nearly hardcore in it’s frenzy – to a dirge, undercutting the message of devotion with mournful sadness.

Again, many lines have changed, a key one in particular:

I love to hear the sound of your heartbeat on my shoulder

Changed from

I love the way you carry a chip on your shoulder

and

I love to hear the sound of your heartbeat not growing older

While I love the song, unlike Cry Real Tears, I have only ever been able to recall the original lyrics, not the changed ones. I am also reminded of the use of the organ on the Clash’s Sandinista!

20. Mary Jane (acoustic, new) 3:44
lead vocals: Dale Lawrence

previously unreleased performance

Another mix with a great deal of clarity and room in it, forgrounding, hooray, Dale’s voice. There’s a great deal going on in this, including more of that swirling VU-style organ.

21. Traveling 3:18
lead vocals: Robert Ray
previously released on Opposite Sex

So there you have it, Boatfans. Hopefully more releases from the current lineup will soon follow, and even more hopefully, maybe there will be a higher-percentage of Dale-sung tracks. It’s certainly possible that I’ve misattributed, and as soon as I know more, I certainly will correct this blog entry, probably with strikeouts.

I hope to get corrections of fact for all of these pieces from a knowledgeable person sometime soon, and intend to incorporate those corrections into a follow-up piece. I hope those of you who were interested in the subject enjoyed this rather longwinded discursion, and I further hope someone buys Wide Awake who otherwise might not have. Chicagoland readers, have fun at the show.

On Sunday and Monday, I explored the circumstances of my interest in the music of Dale Lawrence. I referred to the music and songwriting itself but in general did not attempt to analyze it. With a big deep breath, I’m going to take a stab at it today.

Unfortunately for me, it’s the end of a very busy few days and I can feel my exhaustion; so forgive me if this is a little less than laser-focused. While I try to present high-caliber material here, it’s also very much a first pass at things; I can only hope I communicate the basic gist successfully without gazing off into space, stupefied, too many times. I must reiterate that the ideas seen in these essays are deliberately unconfirmed! I will ask for confirmation after I finish recording my mythology, in order to know what’s mine, and what I found looking into the mirror Dale’s music has been for me.

In essence, my understanding of Dale’s songwriting boils down to two things: first, keep it simple, and second, write with a partner. Over time, the partners change, and how the simplicity is expressed changes as well.

In the first phase of Dale’s songwriting, I believe that his primary songwriting partner was Billy Nightshade, the Gizmos mk. II bassist. Without digging the Gulcher re-releases out, I’m pretty sure there are more shared songwriting credits on the material than solo; some of the songs from this period appear to be fully collaborative, judging from stylistic evidence.

A song like Bible Belt Baby (or is it Babies?) is a likely candidate. The song is lyrically both a portrait of a young Midwestern girl’s surprise pregnancy and a punk condemnation of the sociology that helps create the conditions for it, reduced to the simplest pop terms imaginable.

Bible Belt Baby

She was born to yet another
Tellin’ stories of a virgin mother
All that she knew how to do was to try not to die

To elicit both a world of sorrow
Thought alot about what’s for tomorrow
Picked herself apartment and a (quarter new field of rye?)

Chorus:
She was a young one who stopped havin’ fun
Life was all over before begun
Television set and a mass of things
Bible belt babies don’t have to think
Boys get blue and girls get pink and
Bible belt babies don’t have to think

Seventeen and she’s often tryin’
And she shops just to keep from cryin’
Summer gets hot and the winter gets cold and snows

Small-town come-out bible belt baby
If she can she’ll pretend that maybe
Mommy would be in heaven if she had new clothes

She was a young one who stopped havin’ fun
Life was all over before begun
Television set and a mass of things
Bible belt babies don’t have to think
Boys get blue and girls get pink and
Bible belt babies don’t have to think

(instrumental break)

She was a young one who stopped havin’ fun
Life was all over before begun
Television set and a mass of things
Bible belt babies don’t have to think
Boys get blue and girls get pink and
Bible belt babies don’t have to think

(I actually had some lyric corrections to this, possibly from Dale, but they appear to have been mislaid. So I must note that these lyrics contain some excellent mishearings.)

The song structure is perfectly straightforward, and in my notes I have it down as employing three chords, D, A and C. However the staccato delivery of the choruses is very much like the kinds of chorus I associate with songs I think of as “Billy songs,” and something in the way the melody runs also feels like a melody written by a bassist.

As the Gizmos move through time, Dale’s songwriting becomes more and more distinct, presumably the result of a growing ambition and awareness of trying to create a perfect pop song. Of course, on the very first vinyl out the door, 1978’s Never mind the Sex Pistols Here’s the Gizmos, a very young Dale crafted a song he still plays today: Cry Real Tears, a pop masterpiece if ever there was:

Cry Real Tears

I tried to cry real tears for you
but it just doesn’t work and I don’t what else I can do
well I wish I really loved you but it just can’t be
and if I never see ya again it’d be the same to me
and i tried to cry real tears for you

well I seen you yesterday in your blue jeans
but your manners are too nice
and your hair’s too long and clean
and all you like to do is gaze into the television screen
and i tried to cry real tears for you

(break to bridge)

baby baby you know that I’ve tried
and baby baby I’m burning inside
but honey honey, those tears won’t fall
and it ain’t like i don’t know why

your smile’s what made me want to hold your hand
but (somethin) is for cheaters and sorority signs
and if you felt the way you talked I think you’d have to be blind
I know you wanna be my baby I know you wanna wear my ring
but you’re just too well adjusted and you don’t know anything
and I tried to cry real tears for you

and I tried to cry real tears for you

and I tried and tried to cry real tears for you

As the song has been played, the lyrics and delivery of the song have changed dramatically. At one point, the hair became “too short and mean,” for example. Over time, the flippant dismissal of the validity of the pursuit of a conventional lover’s relationship became a plaint of isolation.

The other early pop gem, this one still in performance, I think, is Heartbeat, a straightforward pop-love song, an ideal A-side to Cry Real Tears. The Boatmen have recorded this more than once, never fully realizing the song’s potential. Interestingly, as this song aged, it too became less celebratory and tinged with desperation.

Heartbeat

I love to hear your heartbeat – really beatin’
love to get you things that you’re really needin’
world go round an’
don’t get you started
I can’t let you go ’til I can hear your heart
I’m in love with the way you seem to carry a chip on your shoulder

I love to lose myself girl inside your head now
I love the way you wear the clothes that you wear now
perfect little angel
I could answer all
you could be a queen if you knew how to fall
I’m in love with the sound of your heartbeat not growin’ older

Your heart – understand
I could carry it with me in the palm of my hand

Your heart – will be so glad
makes me glad to think I’m your man

(instr. break)

Your heart – understand
I could carry it with me in the palm of my hand
Your heart – will be so glad
makes me glad to think I’m your man

Yeah and I love to hear your heartbeat – really beatin’
love to get you things that you’re really needin’
world go round an’
don’t get you started
I can’t let you go ’til I can hear your heart
and I’m in love with the sound of your sweet heart
not growin’ older

I love to hear your heartbeat (aah-ah)
I love to hear your heartbeat (aah-ah)
I love to hear your heartbeat (aah-ah)
I love to hear your heartbeat (aah-ah)

The last few songs that the Gizmos recorded – the previously cited The Midwest is Allright, the songs on the 1981 demo such as My Baby Loves Crime and Biscuits & Gravy, represent Dale’s mature songwriting skills in first flower. As such, the songs look back toward the inncocent vigor and snottiness of the Gizmos’ punk heyday and forward at a long adulthood, full of anxiety about the choice being made to pursue a career as a professional musician and feeling the loneliness of being away from home. Another Gizmos song, Rockin’ for Tacos, addresses the topic in the first lines. The song also bears comparison to Margaret Says:

Rockin for Tacos

I think about doin’ this for the rest of my life, for the rest of my life
I think about what it’s goin’ to mean to me
But when the lights go down
and they play that hurt sound
and I start thinkin’ about what I been missin’
and I gotta have the only thing (unintelligible)

And now
we’re rockin for tacos
we’re rockin for tacos
we’re goin’ na-na-na-na
we’re goin’ na-na-na-na

Margaret Says

Margaret’s friends walk in, Margaret’s friends sit down,
I say hello in French, they think I’ve been around
And then we start in to play, I’m feelin’ down on my luck
And then I win a couple rounds, don’t think it means too much

And I’m supposed to be thinkin’ about the rest of my life
And I’m supposed to be thinkin’ about the rest of my life
I’m lookin forward to this – she says “Ready to ride?”
With her hat on her head tilted over her eyes
All these steps I’m takin’ – pictures of my family
That’s what Margaret says when she talks to me

After the Gizmos and prior to Right to Left, Dale worked on quite a few songs in an outfit called the Satellites; I have much less familiarity with these songs and can only comment briefly on them (I do have a CD of them, I’ve just spent less time listening to them and thinking about them). This is one period in Dale’s career where I wonder if he had a regular song-writing partner. I assume he was working with Robert Ray, his partner on most of the Vulgar Boatmen material; but the sound that Dale was pursuing at this time was highly commercial in derivation, and the songs on the Satellites demos CD reflect that, with more covers than is usual and the extremely polished production I noted earlier.

When I listen to these songs, the recordings sound brittle, overworked; it’s as though Dale’s pursuit of a mannered, controlled sound was ill-suited to the material. The sense of restraint, of unresolved tension, which is present in later Vulgar Boatmen material is in these recordings, but it’s in conflict with the cheery, idealizing material. These songs do, however, owe a deep debt to the work of Brian Wilson, and the undercurrent of alienation and anxiety that Wilson brings to his greatest work with the Beach Boys marked Dale’s work after this time.

With the advent of Right to Left, all of the elements that would become the Vulgar Boatmen were in place. Dale’s songwriting reached a lyrical maturity, which emphasizes openness to interpretation. Rather than describing a young girl’s pain at discovering her pregnancy and the subsequent end of her childhood, Dale and Robert Ray move to presenting interior or spoken monologues of contemporary American anxiety.

A person sits in a car late at night, hearing the father of the person the song is addressed to. We don’t know what the father is doing, but it’s late, and he’s audible from inside this car. We imagine the details, screaming, broken crockery.

Morgan, who would later become Margaret, tells her French-speaking boyfriend that he’s supposed to be thinking ’bout the rest of his life. He tells himself he’s looking forward to this – all the steps he’s taken. Won’t do to be rockin’ for tacos if he’s to marry the girl, now. Driving, listening to WDIA late at night he considers the moment, and thinks about the rest of his life.

There’s a famous photo of a very young B. B. King, posing with a battered acoustic guitar on which the call letters of a radio station he performs on have been daubed. WDIA, they say. He’s looking ahead at the camera with youthful enthusiasm.

The diffident, doubt-filled observer at the heart of the Boatmen’s songs is radically unique in rock, a music that has a hard time accommodating doubt and certain kinds of quotidian anxiety. As a teenager, that meant that watching Dale’s performances as he unfurled his commitment as a mature artist to exploring this modality could be frustrating.

As an adult, the terrain that Dale has been exploring offers staying power and artistic integrity and depth. Additionally, the subject matter of the songs is well-suited to Dale and Robert’s studio manner, which emphasizes meticulously controlled performances. I believe others have termed it chamber pop. It certainly eschews the sonic extremes of much rock, and, most contentiously, even that of the band itself in performance.

In discussing the music of the Boatmen with other fans who have seen them in performance, the subject of the tension between the hushed, recital-like quality of many of the studio recordings of the band and the raucous, celebratory, incredibly loud and fearless performances seen live comes up with such predictability I’m surprised there hasn’t been a term coined for it.

Listen to the sample tracks provided at the band’s web site, and then to the live recordings I host locally, which was made at Schuba’s in 2001, especially to the closing numbers. This is, by the way, the band and lineup you can expect to see on the 19th at the same venue, when Wide Awake will be released.

I have long wished that the muscular, daredevil sound of these performances were reflected in more of Dale’s studio-recorded music. However, I have also come to the conclusion that the avoidance of that sound on the Boatmen’s studio works is not an accident of production but a deliberate creative choice, one made with a fully considered aesthetic viewpoint, and that the choice is grounded in Dale’s experience as a recording musician.

The recorded works that most closely capture the louder possibility I hear in Dale’s songwriting are the 1981 Gizmos demos. It’s worth noting that only Please Panic, not recorded in the studio, I think, has made it into regular performance by today’s Boatmen. My personal favorite, My Baby Loves Crime, is not in performance, I think partly because of some awkward lyrical constructions and the flippant subject matter.

Consider that these recordings were followed by a few years of experimentation by Dale before the mature songwriting style of the Boatmen appeared. In my opinion, some of these interim recordings suffer due to a conflict between the recording and performance style and the lyrical and melodic content of the songs.

In performance, the band has the luxury of resolving the tension inherent within the songs, and indeed, in order to get you, dear audience member, to dance, thereby selling beer, they must. In the studio, in order to pursue the goal of making effective art, art that does not compromise or pander, the constrained, controlled sounds provide the psychological backdrop for the vignettes of everyday frustration and reflection that accompany them.

I find it worth noting that this difference between expectation and desire and execution between audience and performer more or less perfectly recapitulates the kind of nuanced portraits of relationships that the songs provide.

I have not addressed or done justice to the newest, and current songwriting partnership that Dale is engaged in. I have too fragmented a picture of the material to address it in detail, and I apologize for the oversight. With Jake Smith playing bass in the current incarnation of the Vulgar Boatmen, and Dale playing in Jake and his wife Freda’s band, The Mysteries of Life, new directions in Dale’s songwriting have clearly emerged, and the newer songs are played in concert at Vulgar Boatmen shows.

I think it’s worth noting that Dale’s work with the Gizmos involved a songwriting partnership with another bassist.

In conclusion, another apology is due: to all of the musicians who have worked with Dale that I have not mentioned by name, I apologize. It’s clear that as Dale works with different groups of players, they influence his songwriting as well. I personally deeply appreciate the time and effort you as individual musicians and collectively have put into working on these songs, from 1978 to 2003. These essays, focusing on Dale, are also appreciations of your individual contributions and should be recognized as such, however absurd it may sound to you as you read this. I thank you: you have enriched my life.

Tomorrow: the big finale, a careful, blow by blow reflection on Wide Awake and who knows what else.

In looking over yesterday’s entry on Dale Lawrence, the Gizmos, and me, I realized a bit of clarity on the information I’m presenting here might be of value. Today, I correspond with Dale via email semi-regularly, and probably could have peppered him – or others – with numerous questions to establish a baseline of recollection against which my tattered and speculative historical narrative could be measured.

I might even do so one day. However, these essays are an attempt to accurately depict my current and evolving beliefs about Dale’s music career rather than an attempt to craft an objectively reported and fact-checked account. As I noted yesterday, my relationship with Dale’s music began in a vacuum – the music could only reflect back what I brought to it, and this is the basis of my powerful connection to it.

Knowledgeable and independent observers of the events and periods I describe are welcome to comment, of course. Today, I’m writing to cover the prehistory of the Vulgar Boatmen as I understand it to have been.

In 1983, Dale had returned to Indiana and was playing in various lineups, essentially looking for the post-Gizmos project with which he could focus his developing songwriting skills. At some point, dale had begun writing songs in partnership with a friend from his college days at IU, Robert Ray. I don’t know when exactly this began, but I suspect that sometime around this period is when it became an established creative practice. Because my awareness of it at the time was nil, I won’t devote significant time to discussing that aspect of the Boatmen.

I have two sets of demos from the 1982-1983 period, or to be scrupulously accurate, that I believe to be from this time. One set of about six songs is acoustically recorded and includes only Dale, an acoustic guitar, and a bass that I believe played by Billy Nightshade of the Gizmos. When I first heard them, however, I was told that the bass was played by someone else. I’ve had this tape since I was a teenager as well, and the songs reflect the songwriting sensibility seen in the 1981 demos, but the outlook has moderated.

Among these songs is “Please Panic,” and an early driving song, “Miss my Car,” about being stuck far from a loved companion. Where the 1981 demos (released as “the Midwest can Be Allright” in 2001) share a celebratory spirit tempered by homesickness and the first twinges of adult doubt, these demos feature the themes that would become the central feature of Dale’s songwriting subject matter from then on – doubt, loneliness, and frustration in a pure pop song structure.

The other set of tunes I have from this period of time is credited as “Satellites” demos, and combine the trademark mix of obscure pop covers with the first versions of music that would later become known as Vulgar Boatmen songs. The production on these demos emulates the classic radio-pop sounds of the early sixties, with sharp, clearly etched parts and deeply worked vocal harmonies. The sound is brittle and in my copies of the material high-end tinniness has crept in via dubbing, emphasizing the artificiality of the style.

To my ear, while the informal acoustic demos are among my favorite of the unreleased material I am aware of, the material on the Satellites demos has an inherent tension between the increasingly grown up subject matter and the spun-sugar commercial production. Additionally, the emphasis on this carefully constructed sound has the effect of minimizing the raw quality of the Gizmos-era performances.

Despite this, I strongly suspect that this material was very important technically to Dale’s aesthetic goals as a musician and songwriter – the production is very accomplished. I don’t know if the material was studio-based or recorded on four track, but it’s very polished material. Dale has had a long, long association with respected sound engineer Paul Mahern, and at the time they were living in Indianapolis and very much part of the same music scene; it’s possible that Paul may have had something to do with this set of recordings.

Nonetheless, the incarnation of Dale’s combo known as the Satellites was not ling for the world. I believe I saw them perform two or three times at an all ages club in Bloomington, Ricky’s Canteena, that between December of 1983 and summer 1985 or so was a hub of alternative music activity, hosting countless local bands and among others JFA, the Sun City Girls, Seven Seconds, and Samhain, Glenn Danzing’s post-Misfits band. Among the local bands I saw there was a teenage outfit called My Three Sons which featured a gifted young bassist named Jake Smith.

I have two songs of what may have been the first performance by the Satellites at Ricky’s, a December appearance possibly from that first 1983. The songs are the encore and may charitably be described as weakly executed. About this time, I have a recollection of attending a show in which Dale solicited names for the band. The name suggested and accepted was either the Satellites or Right to Left, and I do not recall which.

By the summer of 1984 (I think), the combo had stabilized personnel changes. I suspect that this lineup is who I started seeing appear frequently enough, still at all ages venues, as I would not be twenty-one until the spring of 1987. I think the lineup was:

Dale Lawrence
Erik Baade
Matt Speake
Shadow Meyers

This lineup should ring a bell – it’s all people who later played in the Vulgar Boatmen. Shadow was also the original Gizmos mk.II drummer, although he does not appear on the 1981 demos. My understanding is that he was in Austin, Texas; however that bit of recollection comes from an offhand remark at a party by Frankie Camaro in the summer of 1984, so I could easily have misunderstood or misrecollect.

Once these changes had stabilized, the band began playing regularly in Bloomington. I’d estimate I was aware of a show performed by them about once a month for the next few years, although generally those shows were in bars and not at the all-ages venues. The music that Right to Left played in concert was reflective and controlled, the sound supporting the subject matter of the songs.

As a teenager myself, this turn was not one that tickled my hormonal urges, and so it was sensible for the band to seek venues with older audiences. While it’s quite possible to imagine Right to Left opening for, say, the manic hardcore of the Vandals in this period, it’s probably just as well that to my knowledge that didn’t happen.

On the rare occasions that RTL would play an all-ages show I and others would inevitably call out for certain beloved Gizmos numbers – for me personally it was “Crime,” (“My Baby Loves Crime”) a song sung by Dale; others would call out for songs sung by Billy such as “Lightweight.” It was extremely rare for Dale to accede to such requests.

Sometime around 1986 or 1987 Right to Left released a cassette demo that was sold at shows, “Right to Left On Tape.” The recording artists are the lineup seen above and the production credits list Paul Mahern and Dale Lawrence. The songs are credited to Dale and Robert Ray – “University of France BMI,” it says, yet the copyright and date are lacking. This is a tracklist:

Morgan Says
All of My Friends
Drive Somewhere
When Company Comes
Change the World Around
Katy
I Like You

In everything but name, this is a Vulgar Boatmen release.

As it was made available, those of us who had been vigorously attending hardcore and punk rock shows began to hit twenty-one and become accustomed to the subtler performances and wider range – if less experimental and unpredictable in intensity – of styles seen on the Midwestern alternative music circuit, at that time still a barely-extant thing. Cover bands ruled the roost, and for many years there was only one place in Bloomington to see original music that served beer, the sainted Second Story.

Approaching adulthood and its’ lessons – friends jailed or maimed in car accidents, heartbreak, circumstance, cut off from you – combined with the less frenetic environment of a performance-oriented bar to permit a re-evaluation of the music that Dale was performing. It was still too sad, to defeatist, to devoted to the worship of the frozen and alienated relationship to appeal perfectly; yet it was also beautifully constructed, uncompromising, and clearly the result of a directed creative vision. Worth some work, in other words.

Over time, as I recall it, the stage performances of Right to Left became less shoe-gazing exercises in the recital of the music and much more like the rock shows I wanted. Yet, the glorious wail of uncontrolled feedback and atonal freestyle soloing was something I still didn’t get and didn’t expect from this band. It remained a topic of discussion and desire in my peer group: why won’t Dale cut loose?

While this much is accurate, I don’t recall ever engaging Dale in discussion on the topic, save as energetic audience member pushing the band to go farther, to return to the, ahem, rockist paradigm. All during this period, I duplicated The Gizmos Story with fervor, pressing them on the merely disinterested, preaching the import of understanding local music’s heritage and depth, and on and on.
Others also continued to carry a torch for the Gizmos of yore – ex-Panic John Barge among them. John cycled through a wide number of combs before sometime around 1987 settling into a very long run with the never-ever-toured Walking Ruins. Even before the Ruins played together, though, John was known to cover the Billy-penned song “Lightweight” about the perils and pain of being a teenage diabetic:

Lightweight

Billy’s a lightweight cuz he’s got diabetes
Can’t take a hit cuz he’s gotta take a shot
Wally’s fucked up and Party Marty can’t drive
Wally don’t got no will to survive

Help me – I’m fucked up
Waa-llly

Help me – I’m fucked up
Waa-llly

There’s hippies on the road
and along comes Party Marty
Makes Wally sorry that he owns a car
Party Marty goes fast and wrecks the (? sayers?)
[frantic unintelligible screaming]

Help me – I’m fucked up
Waa-llly

Help me – I’m fucked up
Waa-llly

Wally

Help me – I’m fucked up
Waa-llly

Getting rowdy with stupid hippies
Listen to Boston yeah rock and roll
Ignorance is bliss and these hippies are happy
With their drugstore lives at home

Help me – I’m fucked up
Waa-llly

Help me – I’m fucked up
Waa-llly

Help me – I’m fucked up
Waa-llly

Help me – I’m fucked up
Waa-llly

Wally – Wally – Wally WALLYY!!!

Finally, in the summer of 1988, rumors began to circulate that a Gizmos reunion was in the offing for Second Story. The rumors were true, and that summer, the four Gizmos mk.II took the stage for about ninety minutes, reprising pretty much all the songs I’d come to know and adding one or two I’d never heard of. It remains the best show I’ve ever seen at Second Story. The Walking Ruins opened, and by the time the Gizmos actually walked out I recall a full dance floor.

A fascinating personal memory of the show is hearing all around me people singing along to certain of the songs, even the unreleased ones, due to the by-now-locally-widespread circulation of The Gizmos Story. I have a tape of the 1988 reunion, and I can hear the crowd vocals like a whisper track coming in and out of focus behind the driving, redlined roar of the band.

It was the first time I can recall seeing Dale onstage with the happy, dazed look that can overcome a performer when experiencing the unequivocal, enthusiastic approval of an audience. At many of the Right to Left shows leading up to this period, I recall a sort of tension, as might be expected from a performer who’s made a conscious decision to move on to a new style of performance when asked by fans to provide the old.

At Right to Left shows after that, for about the next year, the audience’s desire for rock and roll intensity was more often indulged than denied, at least at shows that I attended. As the year rolled on, the introduction of huge crescendos and the directness and intensity of rock into the songs and performances of the band gradually became more controlled and less organic.

That’s not to say that they weren’t kept as a part of the band’s arsenal; they were. But they were used in performance in increasingly formal ways, as I recall.

In 1990, I moved to Seattle. I believe that at about that time, the band I knew as Right to Left changed its’ name to the Vulgar Boatmen.

The period from 1990 to the present contains what the majority of today’s Boatmen fans think of as the highlight of the Boatmen’s career, the busy touring period of the early nineties and the recording and release of three albums, selections from which will appear soon on Wide Awake. Because my contact with the band – and even the released recordings – in this period is minimal, I won’t have much to say about it, with the exception of discussing live bootlegs, the songs, and the released recordings.

In 1992, I did see them at the Crocodile, here in Seattle – mis-booked with a frat-boy cover band, possibly the Hit Explosion – and finally made a point of buttonholing Dale after the set and chatting. I recall him shading his eyes onstage, looking out into the lights with surprise at my call of “Crime!” during the set, him remarking, “Wow! You must be a long way from home. We never get that out here! Can we play Please Panic instead?”

Tomorrow I’ll talk about Dale’s music and the recordings themselves. The series will close on Wednesday with a discussion of Wide Awake.

As many of you know, my favorite songwriter is Indiana’s Dale Lawrence, longtime bandleader of the Vulgar Boatmen and before that the most-recognized songwriter for the seminal Midwestern punk band, the Gizmos.

The Vulgar Boatmen are re-releasing a subset of their catalog, with the occasional new track, on July 19, as the CD Wide Awake. Dale kindly provided me with an advance copy some while ago. I have meant to write about my relationship to his music for ages and ages, but as you may know, it’s difficult to write about the things that are closest to you.

The CD release part is on the 19th at Schuba’s, in Chicago.

Writing about Dale’s music is complicated by the fact that much of the meaning the music (of the Gizmos in particular) has to me was constructed in a vacuum. I was building my relationship to the music free of the complicated, enriching environment of a scene in which the people in the band had either commercial or social relationships to me. After all, they had broken up before I had ever heard most of their songs.

Over the next few days, I’m going to work my way through Dale’s music up to the new record and in some ways beyond. I’d time this more closely to the record’s release, but I have another music-related piece I need to run that ends on the twentieth, timed to coincide with a local-area concert. As I think more of you read from the environs of Seattle than that of Indianapolis, just this once, Jason trumps Dale.

The Gizmos as a band have such a complex backstory that I can’t really disentangle it here. Suffice to say there were effectively two bands that shared the name and they have different places in rock history. For information on the Gizmos mk.I, I recommend turning to original Gizmo Eddie Flowers. The original Gizmos are not who I’m discussing when I refer to the band in this piece; I’ll refer to the late-period band composed (more-or-less) of Dale, Billy Nightshade, Tim Carroll, and Shadow Meyers.

This incarnation of the band released a five-song seven inch EP in 1978, Never mind the Sex Pistols, Here’s the Gizmos, a split album with Dow Jones and the Industrials entitled Hoosier Hysteria, and one song on their label’s ambitious compilation LP Red Snerts, The Midwest is Allright.

They also recorded a handful of songs in a studio in the vicinity of Hoboken, New Jersey, where they relocated in 1981, and promptly folded. Well, maybe not promptly, but soon enough. At any rate, by 1983 Dale was back living in Indianapolis, churning through a series of band lineups, names and sounds, in search of pop epiphanies as pure as Buddy Holly’s finest but incorporating the danger and ambiguity of punk.

It should be noted that roughly every piece of Gizmos material ever recorded in any form has been recently re-released by the returned-to-life Gulcher. Gulcher’s releases include all the Gizmos model one material, numerous practices, demos and outtakes by that lineup, and not only the studio releases of Gizmos model two but also the never-previously released Hoboken tracks. Here’s a list of the CDs at Gulcher’s online store (there is vinyl available as well):

Gulcher Records

Gizmos mk.I

1975-1977: Demos And Rehearsals: $16.00. This collects 54 rough tracks, as noted in the title.

1976/1977: The Studio Recordings: $12.00. This offers all the released pre-Dale Gizmos material, including the stuff that won notice in the rock press.

Gizmos mk.II

1978-1981: Never Mind The Gizmos Here’s The Gizmos: $12.00. This collects the 1978 EP, the Gizmos half of Hoosier Hysteria, and I believe a bit more.

1981 NYC Demos: The Midwest Can Be Allright: $8.00. My favorite. These songs were recorded in 1981 but sat unused, if not forgotten, until 2001. Beautifully recorded, this is some amazing stuff.

Just before the Gizmos moved to the East Coast, I had become aware of them as some older friends of mine made friends with them. While I never met any of the Gizmos mk.II at the time, they were valued friends of my older pals, who also had a band that recorded for Gulcher, The Panics.

Shortly after Gulcher released Red Snerts in 1980, my family moved to Europe for eighteen months, and during that time, the precious handful of vinyl we had from Gulcher and other Indiana labels – including Red Snerts and two or three miscellaneous proto-punk EPs including the very first Zero Boys release, a seven-inch EP called Livin’ in the Eighties – became precious writ to me and my sister. Along with a scattered few records lugged across the ocean such as the Clash’s 1980 experiment Sandinista! and the brilliant simplicity of the Ramones’ first album, the songs on Red Snerts were a lifeline to our home, proof that there was new hope for the wretched and an older generation of art-damaged rockers to befriend as soon as we returned from exile.

Inevitably, the single Gizmos song in that collection, The Midwest can be Allright, came, somehow, to sum up our idealized longings for things we’d never done.

The Midwest can be Allright

I like the Midwest in the afternoon
I’m walking around with nothin’ to do
Streets are all wide open nothing happens to you
I happen to like the Midwest I got nothing to do

Maybe nowhere special sometimes not much fun
But I like the Midwest because it’s fun to feel young – unh-unh-unh-unh-ung

Cruisin down the highway when it’s dark at night
Midnight and sittin’ close to someone – Midwest can be allright
No-one else is thinking – no-one cares at all
That I’ll be go-oin’ nowhere – let’s give them a call

Maybe nowhere special sometimes not much fun
But I like the Midwest because it’s fun to feel young – unh-unh-unh-unh-unng

[break]

Sometimes in the morning haven’t had much rest
Something’s really goin’ on – right in the Midwest
[elided vocals – years later, I still don’t know what Dale says here]
Dogs are barkin’ – happy that we met

Maybe nowhere special sometimes not much fun
But I like the Midwest because it’s fun to feel young – unh-unh-unh-unh-ung

[vocal outro]

The song, radically different in texture and tone from everything else we were listening to, appeared to come from a creative position on the other side of punk, not so much one that posited or even debated the idea of no future but one which having looked apocalypse in the face decided that the spectre of imminent doom did not necessarily preclude the pleasures of driving around on a sunny day, listening to the radio and breaking in a new pair of Chucks.

Musically, the song did this by rejecting the spit-n-snarl sound of the buzzcut guitar in favor of a sparkling pop production that – me all unawares – was a lesson in listening to Big Star and Buddy Holly, names I had only the vaguest awareness of.

By the time we returned to Bloomington, I was a leatherclad, spiky-haired punk rock kid, and man, I can’t even count the number of beatings I took. At the time punk was very strongly associated with homosexuality and the masculine identities of certain testosterone addled pituitary cases at my high school were sufficiently threatened that a backwoods psychology lesson was repeatedly enacted upon my face by Dr. Knuckles.

It was pretty clear to me that even though I loved the song, the Midwest was not Allright, but rather, completely fucked.

Despite this betrayal of art and propaganda, I had grown a set of big ears and was furiously listening my way through rock and pop history, frantically following the developments in punk rock, and anxiously wondering when Dale would deliver more of the magic I heard in that one song.

I eventually obtained either taped copies or genuine vinyl of the released Gizmos material, and while to this day I adore the ragged, passionate delivery of the songs on the Never Mind the Sex Pistols EP, the song-writing on that record is not the refined, distanced, deeply-developed skill that brought Midwest into being.

At long last, dear pal Seth White, another music hound with better connections than I, provided me with a tape he referred to as The Gizmos Story. The two-sided ninety minute tape contained about forty songs, assembled in roughly chronological order, beginning with the exhilarating opening chords of 1978 and continuing on through reasonably clean dubs of the raw mixes of the songs recorded in 1981 (not to be released until years later), including My Baby Loves Crime, Hard Hoboken Line, and Biscuits & Gravy.

Legend has it that Dale made the tape for a girlfriend about the time he returned to the Midwest. I don’t have a good idea of how accurate that idea is.

The whole tape fell into my ear like the word of God, containing the past and the future of rock, and I listened to it obsessively. Over time it became clear that another songwriter had contributed many of the songs as well – these songs were often silly, using ironic adaptations of outmoded pop vocal tricks to create a daffy, sped-up sound that anticipated hardcore but which was much, much less serious.

These songs included Dead Astronaut, Lightweight and Communists are Funny in the USA. As it turned out, many of the songs I was noting as being in a different style were written by Billy. The sheer intensity of the live performances on the tape, combined with the improbable mix of Billy’s silly, blazing fast songs bumping up against Dale’s developing songwriting hooked me unlike any other band has or will.

Additionally, I believe that Dale’s songwriting, as it developed in this period of time, was partly the result of very careful, highly analytic listening to the work of the cited songwriters. It’s a rake’s progress through a certain impeccable subset of pop-rock songwriters – Holly, Lou Reed, Chilton, others. I believe this partly because I learned to play guitar listening to Dale’s songs, and when I came to Holly and Reed in particular, I realized I already knew how they structured songs and sometimes even lyrics.

The Gizmos Story is the single most important listening experience I ever had with rock music, and just about the time I was beginning to worry about wearing mine out, Dale began to perform again in and around Bloomington, sometime in the winter of 1983, I think. I’ll pick up with that tomorrow.

[Tomorrow: post-Gizmos, pre-Boatmen Dale Lawrence anecdotes and vague recollections!]

Well, these things come in threes, right?

A few days ago I responded to a musicians wanted ad.

Accordion, Banjo, Mandolin, fiddle for punk rock sea shanties & Appalachian death polka. Pogues, Tom Waits, Hank Sr., Bad Livers, Clash, (123) 555-1212 or thewages@placeholder.com

Well, that more or less describes my musical amibtions and tastes, so, I kinda had to. That Bad Livers is key, too, and anyone who understands why the Clash and Hank Sr. need to be mentioned in the same paragraph has my vote.

As it happens, Jesse and Austin and I have plenty of shared acquaintances, and I think, closer musical tastes than we can really finger in detail yet. They have played the punk circuit for years, most recently as Thee Spectres.

Anyway, it went promisingly Friday night. They were sweethearts, Austin is into oddball instruments, there was no smoking in sight (!) and they have pro gear and tons of experience. So we’ll see where we go with it.

The material they were bringing was very rocky, and my mando lead style is pretty well suited to rock structure songs. But I’m painfully undedeveloed as a lead player still. Additionally, there’s a strong use of cartoon, high-color imagery – genre tropes, if you will – in the material that seems odd to me after years of straight trad material.

It’s funny, innit? I want to write about genre stuff – SF, comics, noir, what-all – but I’ve grown stick-in-the mud folkie boundaries. Gotta think a bit about this. Some of the stuff was pretty promising, though.

At any rate it was great fun, they have another mando guy on the line, which I encouraged them to check out, and I feel like I at the least have the chance to make new friends.

I neglected to blog our Thusday evening visit to Rosita’s and then the Little Red Hen in the seventies of Woodlawn, hard by Greenlake.

We had a couple of margaritas at Rosita’s along with dinner, and judging by the scope and scale of my hangover, they were much stronger than I thought they were at the time I consumed them.

The reason for venturing out of Capitol Hill into the uncharted Teva-and-Bjirkenstock reaches of furthest Greenlake, within eyeshot of the former Honey Bear, was dear former bandmate Barry Semple, formerly of the Bare Knuckle Boxers, The Hammerdowns, and occasionally also of Faith and Disease.

Barry is a precise, disciplined drummer who is also reliable as the sunrise, and this makes him an in-demand commodity in the Seattle music community. He’s been playing with the Souvenirs for some time as well, and that country gig landed him the one that saw him on the stage of the Little Red Hen with The Swains. Although the band mentioned their website onstage, I couldn’t raise it via Google; here are some tracks from a show on KEXP, without Barry, alas.

It was great to see Bear, and to hear this band; they play straight up honky-tonk country. In fact, the other big news of the night to me was the bar: it’s a straight-up honky tonk itself, apparently airdropped into the wilder reaches of our fair and Nader-lovin’ city from Concrete, or maybe Amarillo, circa 1972.

For me, this is great news. While it’s odd that I really enjoy seeing music in clubs where I’m likely to actually bump into the same rednecks that beat the crap out of me in high school, I vastly prefer the hipster-free vibe of a place like the Little Red Hen to the cooler-than-thou, let’s all stand around and frown scene that can develop at venues like the impeccably pedigreed Tractor Tavern.

Not to knock the Tractor – it’s a great place to play, and a great place to see a show. But it’s great to know about a joint that offers country music in its’ native environment, giant hats, dancing, torn red vinyl upholstery, and all.

No Lone Star, though, sorry to say.

I went down to Folklife this afternoon, despite having decided against it last year, after all that baloney the enforcement nerds at last year’s Seattle Center events put Jason through.

I went partly because (please note, usability engineers) I couldn’t find decent information on the event this year at the NWFolklife web site.

(I think it’s interesting from a usability and marketing perspective that, in this case, less information drove my decision to visit, the opposite behavior that would be generally predicted in response to such a situation. The downloadable PDFs do reproduce the schedules, and in theory they have a search interface – but that’s about all the info that’s available online.)

In particular, I wanted to find out about the annual instrument auction. Without information on the website that I could find easily, I had to go down to Seattle Center to find out. After asking two clueless volunteers, both of whom expressed horror that it might be no more, I located the information in the program.

Guess what? it’s no more, and in the program they have the arrogance, gall, and general bitter stupidity to blame eBay. The exact words are “online auction sales,” but I’m sure you can do the math.

So I don’t know, maybe I had a chip on my shoulder, but after learning that, I wandered around what used to be my favorite thing about living in Seattle, seeing the festival pretty much the way I used to as a teenager: stupid hippies faking Irish and Jamaican accents, playing pale imitations of folk music without conviction, discipline, or energy.

Indeed, the guiding aesthetic appeared to firstly, at all costs, avoid the embarrassing, authoritarian convention known as “song structure”. Secondly, emphasize needless and flashy virtuosity for its’ own sake, partly so that some structure might be provided for the dutiful listeners to insert applause at the appropriate times.

I’m quite sure that these perceptions are colored by my jaded view of the event’s organizers and hosts, and that there are as many interesting and firey performers as in previous incarnations of the festival, but I, it seems, lack the patience to seek them out.

In server rebuild news, I found a perl script to automate adding files to Gallery. Hope that bellerophon can bear up under the weight. The modock site may also be complete, save the guestbook.

KUOW’s Weekday, a morning call in show for the birkenstock and doc crowd up here in God’s Country, will be featuring weblogs for its call-in topic tomorrow at 9am 10am.

Having, I believe, heard Jim Flanagan stump for his ingenious community event, “Drive Yourself to Work Day,” on the phone lines of the very same show I hope to hear a bit from him and my fellow peeps tomorrow morning.

The GeoURL-based seablogs might prove a handy resource for the KUOW people, as well.

UPDATE: I thought this was airing at 9am, but Anita Rowland notes in my comments that it’s at 10am. I’m looking for a confirmation, but haven’t found one; perhaps the station announced the show sometime during the day today when I was off doing other things.

Ah, here it is: Weekday at Defective Yeti, the blog of slated guest, Mathew Baldwin.