Finally… On account of MacBook, GarageBand and iCloud availability, COVID outbreak, general distance and relentless overwork, me and the usual suspects at long last managed to get in some reasonably solid remote, pieced-together, non-live recordings over the course of the past year or two. Stay tuned for more, but here are a couple civilized numbers from the Reagan era. Your man Roady on drums and Dillo on bass!

The Psych Furs, and especially “Love My Way”, were fixtures on our primitive alternative music radar in our corner of the NYC suburbs, coming in via WLIR, MTV, the “Valley Girl” soundtrack and most directly via my sister’s cassettes of “Mirror Moves” and “Forever Now”. The Furs always had that special rock star vibe going on and they remain pretty inimitable. Most alluring stuff, especially in that time when such signals were mysterious, sporadic and lacking much context other than DJ asides and the word of cooler kids at school or on the bus.

Lloyd Cole is a more peripheral figure for sure but had some outsized impact with the Commotions on their first two LPs. There was a clean and stately Scots-English-Irish countrypolitan magic that the Commotions specifically hung around those almost too moody/ too consciously literate songs. His sidestep to the rocking Robert Quine, Matthew Sweet, Fred Maher lineup around ‘90 was a great one but LC never recaptured the same easy vibe on post-Commotion recordings. Maybe he just wanted to move on but, happily, “Rattlesnakes” and “Easy Pieces” were formative for me and remain faves. Punchy drums and bass, washes of accordion and strings, and of course lotsa Rickenbackers.

That, my peoples, is catnip!

Yers,

JK

PS: If you wanna, please go ahead and save me some effort and “follow” wherever that button lurks in your format.

Really what can I say? Mount Rushmore material here. Peak Neil, from “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere” (1969), “Tonight’s the Night” (recorded 1973) and “Comes a Time” (1978). Tried to keep these versions right over the plate. I could just go on and on….

jk

“Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere”

“(When You’re On) The Losing End”

“Roll Another Number for the Road”

“Comes a Time”

See here for an earlier post of “Winterlong” and “The Emperor of Wyoming”:

Covered: Neil Young deep dives

Well, some scraps it’s hard to pile up into anything particularly orderly, huh? So here’s a handful of tunes that were under consideration for playing out or recording with some configuration or other and as part of the screening process underwent the home recording test. Of the stuff I have in the chamber, these hang together in a reasonable fashion so have at it!

“To Love Somebody” is the most high-profile of the lot, having been covered by everybody and his brother and sister over the years. One of the best early Bee Gees tunes, and featured on their first LP in 1967.

“Look at Miss Ohio” is from Gillian Welch and David Rawlings’ “Soul Journey” from 2003, wherein they went gently electric, Neil Young “Harvest” style. So I of course leaned into that….

“Jackie” is a sentimental fave of just about anyone who knows it, coming from the only LP by the Haynes Boys of Columbus, OH, in the alt-country days of 1996. Possibly self-titled and maybe called “Guardian Angel”? Dunno but it’s flush with great songs. Leader and songwriter Tim Easton has subsequently had a successful solo career in the folkie trenches and keeps churning ‘em out. As they say, “This is the way”…

JK

OK, cats, here’s another batch from Fall 2019. Raw tracks for this batch knocked out with my buddy John Stackpole. Another stab at some of the classics or classic-adjacent. Hope springs eternal to get some of Stack’s quality lead guitar overdubbed on these, but figured I’d put ’em up in their current form rather than risk losing them in limbo. As with the last batch, imperfectly rendered, recorded, mixed and mastered but ’twas ever thus.

JK

PS: If you wanna “Follow” at bottom right, well, go right ahead…

Brown Eyed Women (Grateful Dead, “Europe ’72”)

Viola Lee Blues (Grateful Dead, s/t, 1967)

Tulsa Time (a hit for Don Williams, and this version mostly via Eric Clapton, “Just One Night””, 1980)

Barstool Blues (Neil Young & Crazy Horse, “Zuma”, 1975)

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Fall 2019 I was finally getting things under control at work (yeah…. about that…) and hoping to host another little high school hootenanny up at the Harpswell Estate. Wanted to get in a playing/recording session of the usual cover material but ended up managing two separate weekends, one with one guy and one with another. Then of course things went, you know, sideways for ’20 and ’21. Finally getting back on top so here’s the results of me and my buddy Dillo knocking out some of the classics. Imperfectly rendered, recorded, mixed and mastered but ’twas ever thus.

JK

Dreaming (Blondie, “Eat to the Beat”, 1979)

All the Young Dudes (Mott the Hoople, “All the Young Dudes”, 1972)

Out of Time (Rolling Stones, “Aftermath”, 1966)

Walk On (Neil Young & Crazy Horse, “On the Beach”, 1974)

If Not for You (Bob Dylan song, this version mostly via George Harrison, “All Things Must Pass”, 1970)

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“What am I supposed to do with those tears I expect I’ll cry after reading only two sad lines: ‘My Dear Charlie- Goodbye’? I could fill a bathtub and have tears to spare, or swim home to happiness on an ocean of beer.” – Charlie Chesterman

Man, we all lost out. Somehow Charlie’s been gone but not forgotten since Nov 2013 already, aged 53 years. Same age I am for another couple days, good lord willin’ (and mystifyingly the same age as Jerry Garcia when he died, but that’s another conversation entirely…).

I could just write pages upon pages on the shows alone. The nights blur together. The great Scruffy the Cat perennially swinging through Baltimore (8 x 10 Club and Max’s On Broadway and JHU venues and finally the DU house), or DC (the old 9:30 Club), New York (the Ritz… First opening for the Pogues (!?) and then between Camper Van Beethoven and Poi Dog Pondering), Northampton (Pearl Street), and of course Boston/Cambridge (TT the Bear’s Place of course). Then after I’d moved up to Boston/MA in ’90 I’d take in the Sawbucks and lotsa Harmony Rockets shows (the Rat, Bunratty’s, Nightstage, the Green Street Grill). Then it was many years on the lookout for the Legendary Motorbikes or maybe Charlie doing his solo thing (Kendall Cafe in Cambridge, Midway Cafe in JP, the Linwood Grill in the Fenway, Vincent’s Bar in Worcester, more TT’s in Central Squayah of course, and the great Lizard Lounge between Harvard and Porter). See the world!

The music lifted us all up and stopped time in its tracks, whether the well oiled power of Stephen, Mac, Randall and Burns with Scruffy or the easy, hey-gang-let’s-put-on-a-show vibe with Andy and Jim and the Motorbikes. It was amazing to watch how these various incarnations ticked, rumbled, shimmied, stalled, revved and took off. Getting a close up look was an extra joy. Charlie and the gang(s) taught me how to be a better musician and writer(and I suspect a notably worse dresser). Somehow ending up behind the curtain, however fleetingly, was just life changing. Every time I got to talk with Charlie before or after a show, or (weirdly) running into him on the street, or (way more weirdly) on the phone, or (my good lord) holding his Rickenbacker, or (pinnacle weirdness) discussing my own half-ass songwriting and recording, he raised the bar of class and generosity and peculiarity and good humor and joie de vivre. We lost one of the greats. We still have one of the greats.

I wish I could tell him but I’m happy to tell you, best I can. Here’s a start.

JK

Scruffy the Cat, Tiny Days (1987): “Time Never Forgets”

Scruffy the Cat, Moons of Jupiter (1988): “2Day 2Morrow 4Ever”

CC, From the Book of Flames (1994)- “Lovers’ Day”, “Pink Lemonade” “The Shabby Dress”

CC, Dynamite Music Machine (1997)- “Big Hairy Eyeball”, “Fireball”, “Where’d Ya Go?”

CC, Ham Radio (2000): “When I’ve Got Me”, “Gilded Harp of Love”

[Note from the Publisher: Mothballed since latter half of 2020. Finally getting my act together? Honestly, 2020… and 2021…]

Centro-Matic, late of Denton, TX. What can I say, other than that they’ve consistently been one of my favorite bands of the last 20-ish years?  Beautiful, gentle, obscure and impressionistic tunes as well as unbelievable overdriven and compressed shouters.  A real artistic collaboration between the four members and often just alchemic magic.

I’d never had taken any of their tunes out for a spin but was feeling quite a few Sundays ago like I’d knock out a couple quick songs.  As hoped, they were super fun to play and warble (admittedly, at times, in the general area of the key).  I tried to keep it simple, recording the vocal and guitar live (Epiphone Casino with a touch of delay, phase type of things) and overdubbing harmonies and a shaky egg. Bleep, blorp, done with little fuss.

JK

[Note from the Publisher: This dang thing has been sitting around gathering dust for about a year and a half. Cripes! Heck of a ride lately…]

Ah, the Byrds: Criminally underrated and one of my all-time faves.  Perhaps unusually, I dunno, my gateway was the country era rather than the chart-topping chiming-Rickenbacker jangle-pop era.  I still recall picking up that “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” CD from Record & Tape Traders in Towson, MD and taking it back to my summer squat up on the 3rd floor of the old DU house. Upon firing it up, I fairly quickly shut the door and thought, “Uh… This is WAY more country than I was picturing, but.. still… I think this may totally be my thing….”.  Sent me down a Gram Parsons rabbit hole and then a Clarence White one, and there I remain to this day.

Anyway, back here in modern times, I fairly recently was looking to upgrade the recording hardware and software at home, scored a MacBook refurb, began goofing around with GarageBand and thought I’d do another set of “Woodpile” songs to help me work things out.  Figured it’d also be a good opportunity to goof around on the acoustic instruments again and re-learn some things after years in the overwork wilderness….

“You Ain’t Going Nowhere” kicked off the Byrds’ Gram Parsons-driven country rock era, the lane they’d pretty much stay in up until their natural demise. This one charged out of the gates, leading off the legendary “Sweethearts of the Rodeo” from 1968.  Yet another Bob Dylan cover by the band, of course, but both parties were well into the roots by then.

“Tulsa County” is another cover, off 1969’s “Ballad of Easy Rider “.  They took songwriter Pamela Polland’s intricately picked, somewhat formal, Newport-y version and arranged it into a more stately, languid, resigned thing. Both work well, if you’re asking. Anyway, Gram Parson’s exceedingly short stay with the Byrds was done by then and the band was already deep into the Clarence White era.  Undersung hero of country guitar. Best thing yet to come out of Lewiston, ME.  King of the Telecaster and father of the pedal-steel-mimicking B-bender apparatus.  Killed by a drunk driver in LA, 1973 while loading out his gear from a bluegrass gig with his brother.  Just goddamn.

Maybe peak Clarence, and sung/ endearingly croaked by him on the record, “Truck Stop Girl” is a Little Feat cover from 1970’s “Untitled”. 

Truck Stop Girl (Untitled, 1970)

Tulsa County (Ballad of Easy Rider, 1969)

You Ain’t Going Nowhere (Sweetheart of the Rodeo, 1968)

Like their counterparts from the last posting, the start of these songs dates to the spring mud season of, what, 2016? It was a long process to completion, mostly comprised of inactivity and distraction, but I finally re-learned the songs, came up with some new idears and completed things at the tail end of good ol’ 2020.

I have to say that, all faux equanimity aside, I am partial to these here instrumentals compared to the wordy batch posted previously. You be the judge, but I think things are a little more open and textural and meandering, with the lesson being that I should just shut my pie hole?

JK

This batch of songs was started in, no joke, spring of 2016? Then the work train went into a LOOOOOONNG tunnel. I thought it was funny when these weren’t done by later in the year, then after the subsequent mud season, and on and on. Eventually, recent history: COVID, recording hardware/software changeover, website changeover, more work mayhem, yadayadayada…

Anyway, about half the batch were instrumentals, to be posted shortly, and this is the other half. About half of these are half-ass but I just figured I’d jettison the tanks… “Enjoy”!

JK