As I mentioned yesterday, Brian asked me to blog a bit on music and memory. He was specifically interested in the topic as a reflection of my series on Dale Lawrence’s music and career from last week.

He’s right to ask for a bit on it. It’s an important part of my relationship to Dale’s music. It was part of my underlying goals in writing as I did, from direct personal recollection and without pursuit of factual confirmations.

I also noted that one song in particular, “The Midwest Can Be Allright,” initiated my relationship with Dale’s music, because it presented an idealized, reflective space into which I and my sister could project our complex emotions about being away from our home as adolescents. In a way, the song provided a place for us to play with our own memories of Bloomington.

Similarly, when I became aware of the rest of Dale’s unreleased music, the pursuit of it in combination with its’ inaccessibility and influence on the development of musical styles in my hometown and surrounding region granted it a special status. That status prompted me to listen with great care to the music and to expend a much greater degree of effort in identifying and organizing the original contexts of its creation than I did, or had to, for, say, the Ramones.

In essence, then, the music’s rarity and status as an artifact of a past moment – invulnerable at the time to the possibility of commercial excavation and release – provided a sort of direct musical connection to the past, to a socially-constructed memory.

What I’m saying here is also an expansion of my point about Dale Lawrence and Robert Ray’s songwriting employing a private pool of floating couplets. The maturing songcraft and performance of Dale’s early musical career functioned, for me, exactly as folk music can in a social context. The best example of this is the recorded collection of folk music now known as the Anthology of American Folk Music. This collection has functioned as a provider of this sort of memory-space at three points in its’ long history. I will not provide detailed notes on the history of this set of recordings as many others have already done so with greater depth and clarity than I can.

It first functioned as the product of an organic and commercial context when the individual records were released, recording what part of the culture’s nostalgic, constructed recollections of the past might be commercially valuable. Then it provided the impetus for the folk boom of the fifties and early sixties that birthed Dylan and many other artists of the era. Finally, when the set was re-released in CD in the mid-nineties it exercised a similar hold on the imaginations and memories of many younger musicians and listeners – yours truly among them.

Listening deeply to the material on the Anthology presents another opportunity for the creative memory space I mentioned above to operate – at least partially in identifying the ways in which the material on the Anthology is already familiar to the listener either in quotations or covers, or in refraction. For example, the fragmentary glimpses of American life that Dale’s Vulgar Boatmen songwriting provides also echoes the fragmentary construction of some of the oldest material on the Anthology.

On the Anthology, of course, the fragments represent various organic effects of memory – from elderly persons’ inaccurate and creative recollections of the lyrics of songs learned as children to linguistic drift over time. In Dale’s work, the deliberate use of obscured narrative creates a sense of blackout – of stress-induced memory loss, or of an inability to convey information verbally.

One of the effects of this strategy, in the context of personal narrative, is to engage the listener’s imagination, creating spaces in the narrative to which the listener responds by inserting their own narrative – frequently personal memories. When Dale’s narrator says “It was late – I could hear your father,” the listener provides the details of the setting from whole cloth – the house, the color of the night sky, the make and model of the car in the driveway, the presence or absence of clouds and fireflies in the night air.

The other effect is to render the songs – and narrative – timeless. The songs on Anthology belong sometime before the car. The Boatmen songs, dislocated by careful generalizing, belong to sometime in America, after the advent of the car. However, by employing this fragmenting in the development of the lyrics, the songs also echo constructive techniques seen in songs that have undergone many generations of oral transmission.

I suspect that this is far from a conscious strategy on Dale and Robert’s – or Jake’s – part. I think it comes from the evident depth of thought that has gone into the songs’ development – and in some cases, the nearly lifelong use of the individual songs themselves.

So, in sum, I use my memory to project my consciousness into the narrative space of songs that provide narrative hooks. In comparing songs I hear to one another, I situate them in relation to me and to one another. I often seek stylistic or structural relationships in what I hear. I believe that pop and rock music represents the most recent chapter in an ongoing narrative or organic musical development that began in America even before our European, Asian, and African ancestors arrived on these shores.

In Louie, Louie you can hear the voyageurs canoeing down the St. Lawrence; in Cry Real Tears you can hear the jilted wail of Omie Wise; and since I know Margaret changed her name from Morgan, I’m pretty sure she led at least one knight from the true path. My memory, American memory – American music.

Last week, as I wrote about my understanding of and relationship to the career and music of Dale Lawrence, I was careful to note that inaccuracies might well be embedded in the accounts. I had constructed the narrative and creative histories largely on my own, from community knowledge and personal close observation. Part of my goal in recording the information based on only my personal understanding of the information was important to me, in order to clarify what parts I had invented for myself from the creative material presented (and determinedly scavenged).

Dale was kind enough to write back with a few thoughts and clarifications that he’s permitted me to share here. Additionally, Brian Sobolak (who apparently had some Boatmen hoodo fall upon him at the Schuba’s show) and Anne Zender spun off the material I was covering last week as well into a discussion on music and memory, and have asked me to blog on that topic here this week. Starting tomorrow, I shall. It is the precise subtext to the stuff I was posting last week.

Before we begin with his annotations, he also wrote, “We’ll have copies of the CD at shows in the coming weeks, but the official street date is August 12. We’re told there’s a very nice review of it in the new Blender, but haven’t been able to score a copy yet.”

So if anyone out there has a copy of that ish of Blender, share away! Dale also noted he wasn’t going to correct my by ear on-the-fly lyrical transcriptions.

Dale, take it away. Now I can say I’ve opened for you!

Part one

Nothing to add.

Part two

The first Dale Lawrence/Robert Ray “collaborations” occurred around 1983 and were simply Robert taking four Gizmos songs that he especially liked and reworking them slightly (or, in the case of “Tilt-a-Whirl'” more than slightly. The other three were “Cry Real Tears'” “Heartbeat'” and “Stop Alternating.”) These songs then entered the repetoire of the band Robert had joined the previous year, the Vulgar Boatmen. We started actually exchanging tapes and working on new songs in (I think) 1984, though a lot of the Satellites material was just me.

The Satellites stuff you have was recorded not by Paul, but by Dave Langfitt, the group‚s guitarist at the time. He ran a small studio out of his garage (Hit City, still in business today, though Dave’s no longer involved). As such, it was the first time I got to really play around/call the shots in any kind of studio situation, which was fun and an education. Dave (who plays on two tracks from You and Your Sister) was also an accomplished harmony singer — the first time I got to use that element in a band as well. Dave is a great guy and was an important connection at the time. (If any of your tapes include “Sea of Heartbreak'” that’s Dave singing lead.)

The Baade/Speake/Myers lineup of the band did not emerge until 1988. The Satellites broke up sometime in 1985. About a year later I started playing out as Right to Left, whose first lineup was me, Erik Baade (who stayed onboard for eight years), Tony Philputt (replaced almost immediately by Shadow), and Langfitt (soon replaced by Mannon Kersey, then Matt).

[ed. interjection – This explains a peculiarity in my recollections from the series last week, in which my recollections of immediate post-high-school time – 1985 – blended seamlessly into my recollections of seeing shows at bars after I’d turned 21 in 1987.]

Shadow never lived in Austin. He was slightly older than the rest of the Gizmos, married, and had no interest in relocating to New York. Hence, the change of drummers.

You write more than once of my consciously wanting to pursue a different direction (from the Gizmos) after I moved back to Indiana. This is correct but overstated I think. I was interested in pursuing a looser beat than punk — but I was heading there already in the New York demos. In fact, basically when I started playing out again in Indiana, I remember wanting to forge a whole repetoire that would take off from “See About You'” “Biscuits and Gravy” — the stuff I’d written out east, but still the Gizmos. The single biggest conscious change I wanted to make was to employ a cleaner guitar tone. I was bored by distorted guitar — to a large extent still am — and it was eye-opening to see how many people equated “distorted guitar tone” with “rocking out.” Your article made me think about this again, how that is still largely the case. It‚s something I really don’t understand. To me, “rocking” CAN involve timbre, but ALWAYS involves rhythm, how you manipulate that beat.

A fuzzy guitar tone can be (and often is) used (like speed) to mask inferior rhythm playing. And even as a device, it’s so overused as to be ineffectual anymore. I much prefer “overdriven” (like the Sex Pistols) to “distorted” (like Jesus and Mary Chain). What the Boatmen often end up using in its place (in the studio) is compression, which is weirder and harder to read (and responsible for those overtones you’re hearing on “Anna”) than simple distortion. So I think THAT was my single biggest departure from the Gizmos aesthetic, back in the eighties.

Part three

Most of my Gizmos songs (including “Bible Belt Baby”) were written without collaborators; I seldom actually wrote with Billy. The handful that were co-written, though, are definitely among the more well-remembered: “Tilt-a-Whirl” (w/Ted Neimeic), “The Midwest Can Be Allright” (Liz Main), “Melinda is a Lesbian” (Doug Holland), and “Reggae Song” (Billy). (There was also “Tin Foil Chew” — Holland — but no one remembers that one.)

Part four

“Drive Somewhere” and the live “Cry Real Tears” are both sung by Carey Crane, a founding (pre-Dale/Robert) member of the band. As someone from the list noted, I sing “Allison.”

I’d never before noticed that “Street Where You Live” quotes the riff from “Sweet Jane” but you’re right. (Except for that move, this would be the elusive two-chord song.)

Your point about us having our own private pool of floating couplets is very cool (and funny).

The one lyric correction I’ll indulge is “In a Station” — since apparently neither you or anyone on the list who chimed in hear the word “the” in the line “I’m on THE line.”

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

The first part mostly discussed Jason’s plans for the July 20 Monsters of Accordion show and tour; the second followed that up and veered into some technical minutia about microphones. In section three, we examined busking for a moment or two.

Today it starts getting good. Unfortunately, it’s near the end of the tape, and on my microcassette tape recorder, at the end of the tape, the recording speed varies and sometimes the recorded voice begins to break up. This happened on this tape and is denoted as “[tape flaw]” in the final paragraphs.

[Responding to a question about busking, Jason highlighted three songs he uses in street performing situations: “Old Man Time, Last Song, Drinking Song, and sometimes that damn Aardvark thing.”

“That damn Aardvark thing” is one of Jason’s most absurd songs, in which the audience invariably joins in singing the barked chorus, “aardvark, aardvark.” The basic tune of the song is taken from the Blue Danube Waltz by Strauss, familiar to LITERALLY EVERYONE as the space-station docking sequence theme from Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke’s film, 2001.

Invariably at Jason’s concerts, requests for the song are shouted. Sometimes he plays the song immediately; other times it’s clear that he’d rather not. At any rate, as his comment notes, his feelings for the song are mixed.

I took his bait.]

M: “that damn Aardvark thing.” Let’s talk about “that damn Aardvark thing”, and additionally your ambivalence at “teaching monkeys how to sing.” Beginning, I think it’s on Against the Night, that’s a consistent theme in I think almost all your music from then on, there’s sort of this ambivalence about what I perceive as your awareness of your being able to accomplish certain performance goals. I don’t think I have a specific question, but I’m interested to hear you talk bout it. Where does that come from?

J: Yeah, where does it come from? There’s that one line from “Captain, Where Are We Going Now? [ed. – links to a Jason-hosted real-audio file]” – that is what you’re talking about.

But I’m wondering where – you hear some echo of that in almost everything since then?

M: Sure. “Follow the Carrot”; the “Webley of Destruction” incident…

[ed. These are references to some performance themes Jason has played with – one in which audiences were incited to “Follow the Carrot” and at the same time mocked for engaging in herd behavior; and another incident in which after a show Jason pulled a toy gun out of his pocket in a park after leading his audience from a show down the street. The gun was not obviously a toy; that is, it was not bright orange or of outlandish design. As he began to proceed with his performance involving the toy, the police showed up, thankfully not seeing the gun but consternating not a few of the people in the park.]

J: That wasn’t my [book? Gun? Inaudible]

M: There’s a desire to sort of engage the audience into this kind of call-and-response behavior at the same time as –

J: – making them –

M: – to present a critique of it. There’s like, a tension between the two things. I mean, it seems to me to be a really consistent theme in your work.

J: Yeah, yeah. I guess I want to have the cake and eat it too. I want to –

M: – the carrot cake.

[both laugh]

J: I don’t know. It could be my big flaw. [tape flaw] being this character, being this super thing and like spending all this energy trying to make that thing be really important and integral and necessary to people’s lives and appreciated and loved – and then to say – you don’t need that. You don’t need that thing. At the same time, that’s kind of it. It’s sort of like. . .

[tape flaw]

That’s all I have to say about that. It’s true, I think a lot about it.

M: Do you fret about it? Like, do you worry about it like a contradictory thing?

J: Not really. Oh I don’t think it’s contradictory at all. I mean it feels contradictory when you talk about it – in application, it’s easy. It’s exactly what it is. It’s beautiful. I mean I hope that people feel that way about it.

I don’t feel any kind of contradiction – heh – [grinning] in teaching people how to sing songs about not singing along.

M: Here’s another thing, this is kind of a less aesthetically unfocused question. I’ve seen you, at shows, engage with the street performer instructional mode, where you like, you know, tell the audience to do certain things, the audience immediately picks it up, gets it, and takes it someplace the audience is going to take it, you know, creates spontaneously based on your suggestion.

More than once, when I’ve seen you playing especially with new musicians, people you haven’t done a show with before, when you do that, and the audience not only takes your suggestion but expands on it, the people on stage, you can see them react: “Oh my god, how did he do that?”

I mean, I kind of feel that way sometimes as an audience member. I’m like “How did that happen exactly?”

There’s this very economic kind of presentation of the information to the audience and the audience is completely willing to follow your suggestion.

I’m curious about the relationship of that and performance – theatrical performance – to the experience of learning or developing or hearing about those techniques in the context of street performing. Did you learn how to do it in street performing?

J: I don’t know. What you’re talking about is interesting, but that actual question is not. I mean, you’re “where did I learn these things?”

I’m interested in the phenomenon. What happens there. I mean, “Why is it that this small miracle happens?”

Actually I’m not that interested in the why. I’m interested in that it happens. That’s wonderful that that’s what you see. Often from where I’m standing, it’s actually hard for me to see. But it is something that makes me really happy.

[tape flaw]

What it shows is, it shows some kind of trust. There’s some sort of trust happening.

[tape flaw]

To follow – it’s dangerous.
I mean that’s my whole, where the whole game comes in – I mean our whole country just followed along on some… [inaudible]

[tape flaw]

and when is that good and when is that EVIL! And it’s not always so binary.

So if, um, you can acknowledge that, acknowledge that whole leader-follower thing to some extent, look at it a little bit, and with that consciousness then still go into a situation together, it’s beautiful and it shows some kind of trust.

[Jason and I talked for another two or three hours. I have another ninety minutes of tape which I have yet to transcribe. Hopefully I will be able to place a piece deriving from the interview in a print publication in the fall, as Jason returns to Seattle. The balance of the interview will be published here as a transcript once any articles deriving from it see print.]

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

The first part mostly discussed Jason’s plans for the upcoming July 20 Monsters of Accordion show and tour; the second followed that up and veered into some technical minutia about microphones. In this section, we examine busking for a moment or two.

M: [eating] Pretty good chow.

J: So are you going to ask me any more questions?

M: Yeah, definitely.

J: Or did I not answer some questions?

M: No, you’ve been pretty good, actually. I mean I kind of had to chase you around the table on that one, but…

J: That wasn’t one of your questions. I mean that you have written down. That was me stupidly going off into giving you information that I didn’t want you to ask me about.

M: Part of the joy of the interview. So some of the stuff is gonna be, like, you know, you already know it; part of the reason is to get it in the context of the interview. So how old are you?

J: You know, I don’t think that appears in print anywhere. [pause]

M: So how old are you?

J: Uh. Twenty… well, actually, I haven’t even been born yet. Incredibly young.

[ed. Jason is probably referring to the fact that his annual birthday show has yet to occur at the time we were talking.]

M: Incredibly young. So how old were you when you actually, uh, embarked on the uh,

J: [interrupting] Ninety-eight.

[ed. Understood to mean 1998, at the time, by Mike.]

M: That was right after – not right after, but shortly after you’d finished college at UW, is that correct?

J: That was after – at some point after I had finished college. [pause] More than a year.

M: Did you play out in Red Square while you were attending college?

J: [vehemently] Never. Never. Never would have even remotely dreamed of doing that. [Laughs]

M: I think you were living in Wallingford – convenient to campus after you were done with school for a while. Is that when you started busking on the Ave, regular, like Red Square and the Ave and stuff?

J: Yeah yeah yeah. That was the first – it’s funny, I think in a lot of people’s brains, a lot of people remember that as this being this huge period of time. But for me it feels like it was really brief.

I came back, I traveled that summer after I had put out Viaje a bit. And then I got back. I slo-o-owly got up the courage to go out on the street and play. I think I played for an hour or so at Bumbershoot that year. I remember going to class – to University of Washington class – to the first day of classes. Playing in Red Square. That was the first time. And it went horribly.

I remember playing in front of the U Bookstore and it going horribly.

I remember though at some point that winter – I’d go out and I’d occasionally and take a stab at it. Playing – I played like one song, and I think I sold like five CDs. They were five dollars each And I played one song and made like twenty-five dollars. And it was this sort of revolutionary, like “wow”, you could actually make a living doing this.

Seemed pretty incredible at the time. Now it’s just [inaudible].

But that was pretty much all that year. But since then I’ve really only played, as far as street performing goes, I’ve really only done Bumbershoot and Folklife. I don’t think I’ve been down to the Pike Place Market, since back then except for maybe like you know one time.

M: So how like long a period of time was busking sort of like your primary venue for what you were doing with music? Eighteen months, a year. . .

J: About a year. I guess from when Viaje came out until… well it depends, I did busking after that but it was at festivals, which feels really different. That next summer was when I did Folklife and then I went on tour and I did all the Canadian fringe theater festivals. Then I recorded Against the Night, then that winter went to Australia and did this other festival there, and then I came back and did the Canadian fringe festivals again…

And so I guess I occasionally show up – like at the UW campus is the one I’ve occasionally done since – I don’t think I did it last year at all.

M: I guess the reason I’m curious about that busking stuff, is because of the way that like audience – inclusion and guidance, I guess – is such an important part of your performance style. I mean I always just assumed that you sort of learned those performance tactics as a means of – I don’t know – improving the ambience of the street performance.

Obviously that’s a really tough school. You have a real clear metering system in place for how well you’re doing. I mean either they’re putting money into the case and listening to what you’re doing or they’re not.

J: Mmmh… Well, the better measure is whether they’re actually engaging and having fun. The money, well, that’s kind of irrelevant. I mean it depends on what kind of street performing you’re doing, what your game is. I mean I judge everything by like, “will something extraordinary happen?”

I mean, not judge, but, I’m trying to create environments for something extraordinary to happen, regardless of where I am. And I still do street-performance-like situations, like at festivals and stuff.

But I’m not likely to just go blindly out on the Ave hoping for a miracle anymore.

I don’t know – they feel really different to me, the two different things and I guess that things carry over from one to the other. I don’t have a lot of flexibility on the street. I developed certain tricks that I developed over that first year and a half and they got to a certain point and they are just there. That’s how they are. New ideas come really slowly.

Whereas in a theater situation, I can have a whole show that feels to me like a lot of new ideas, you know, several hours of new ideas, a couple times a year.

The street performing doesn’t feel like it evolves much. That used to always annoy me about street performers – watching friends that were street performers, you know, they had their banter, they’d do their thing like twenty times a day, and be word for word verbatim exactly the same…

It used to really annoy me. I used to really dread that, and not want that to happen to me. And it’s happened as far as street performing. I’ve got my thing that works, even though for years I’d try to always shake it up, do different things.

Now when I do that, I’ve got this very concise thing – basically only three songs – I play ’em over and over and over again. Because it works. It’s sort of a framework that can, sometimes cause something extraordinary to happen.

M: Which three songs?

J: Old Man Time, Last Song, Drinking Song, and sometimes that damn Aardvark thing.

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.