With Rastilho, Kiko Dinucci set out to make an album in the vein of Brazilian compatriot João Gilberto … as scanned through the lens of São Paulo’s avant-garde scene, African polyphonic rhythms and percussive post-punk. Sacrosanct this is not. Snatch a taste below, and check out this fly-on-the-wall documentary, by Luan Cardoso, filmed during the album’s recording.
Speaking of Gilberto: for their recent Lagniappe Session, Dirty Projectors just covered two tracks from the guitarist’s 1964 collaboration with saxophonist Stan Getz.
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Pretty Good Stuff: Dylan historian James Adams’ hour-long, monthly, program diving deep into the depths of all things Dwarf Music. Listen to the show below, and to explore further, support our Patreon for the individual tracks and more. The penultimate episode, below.
Intro: DJ talk over theme: What Can I Do For You? 19980-01-15 – Seattle, WA) 01:29: September of My Years (2017-11-03; Akron, OH) 04:37: In the Pines (1961-11-04; New York, NY) 11:59: Seven Days (1996-04-28; Toronto, Canada) 18:05: Tangled Up in Blue (1984-06-19; Rome, Italy) 24:40: One More Cup of Coffee (Valley Below) (1978-06-26; Dortmund, Germany) 28:08: DJ talk over Summer Days (2013-08-04; Mountain View, CA) 29:52: Lawyers, Guns and Money (2002-10-17; Los Angeles, CA) 32:36: Watered Down Love (1981-11-10; New Orleans, LA) 36:35: Radio Spot for The Basement Tapes LP (June 1975) 37:33: This Wheel’s On Fire (1999-11-15; Ithaca, NY) 43:27: Just Like A Woman (1974-01-15; Largo, MD) 47:26: Pressing On (1980-02-05; Knoxville, TN) 52:32: DJ talk over Tough Mama (2000-06-17; George, WA) 55:09: Disease Of Conceit (1993-04-18; Asheville, NC) 1:03:33: Out
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Lagniappe (la ·gniappe) noun ‘lan-ˌyap,’ — 1. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. 2. Something given or obtained as a gratuity or bonus.
For his first ever Lagniappe Session, Liberty Hair Farm-based Austin McCutchen decided he’d look towards the sky. Recorded in quarantine and produced by Dan Horne, McCutchen’s takes on Jim Sullivan’s “UFO” (ft. Horne) and J.J. Cale’s “Cajun Moon” (featuring the Western Stars) offer us all a little respite from a weary world.
I first heard Jim Sullivan’s music a few years ago. I was working on a record with Dan Horne and he told me the supposed story of this songwriter (Jim Sullivan) who left LA and was Nashville bound having just made this UFO record. I guess Jim was last seen at a liquor store in Arizona and all they found was his abandoned car and an empty tequila bottle. Was he abducted? I was immediately drawn to the production and the way his voice sounded on this record but obviously the story really grabbed my interest. “UFO” was in steady rotation with my live band and I thought it would be a fun thing to do in studio. We used a drum machine and some Synths. Dan played pedal steel and Tyler Cash did some Rhodes.
As
far as I know JJ Cale wrote this one. Cajun Moon is on the “Okie”
record and the production for this song in particular stands out as
being super clean which is kinda what I went for as well. I’ve never
really doubled my vocals on my own recordings so that was a fun thing to
do and I think it works pretty well with my baritone range (which is
kinda the Cale “thing”). We were probably a month into shelter in place
order here in LA so I decided to reach out to my band and had everyone
cut their parts and video themselves from their home studios which was
an experiment that worked out pretty well. There’s Ryan Richter on
guitar, Steven Mertens on bass, Sam Skloff on drums, Tyler Cash on
Rhodes, Rich Hinman on pedal steel, Dan Horne did the congas, and I even
got Arthur Vint to play some tambourine. Dan put it all together and we
mixed it here at Liberty St in his studio. Mat Dunlap put together the
videos of everyone’s take and I love the way it turned out. This truly
felt like a friendship project during a pretty dark time.
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Devendra Banhart is well aware of how good he’s got it right now. While he’s taken a financial hit by not being able to tour and has the occasional freakout about the state of the world, the singer-songwriter is in a comfortable enough position to be able stay home and stay busy. He’s continued to work, demoing a new record that he’s making with his regular collaborator Noah Georgeson and, with his longtime backing band, remotely recording a dreamy, elegiac cover of the Grateful Dead’s “Franklin’s Tower” that was recently released as an Amazon Original. Banhart has also been gearing up for a series of streaming concerts for Noon Chorus that will find him tackling his discography chronologically. The first, which covers material from his albums Oh Me Oh My, Rejoicing in the Hands, and Niño Rojo, aired on September 9th.
Banhart has also kept himself present in the minds of his fans with the July release of Vast Ovoid, a four-song EP featuring three songs that were tracked during the sessions for 2019’s Ma, but didn’t fit in with that album’s focus on maternity and motherhood. Sonically, they are of a piece with Ma, but with his poppier side peeking out from amid the reverb haze. And it’s capped off by a gleaming downtempo remix of “Love Song” constructed by Banhart’s friend, Helado Negro. With all this and more to talk about, we spent a little time on the phone with Banhart, sheltering in place at his home in L.A., where we went deep on his love for the Dead, his brief obsession with a line from a Beach Boys song, and his recurring pandemic-fueled existential freakouts. | r ham
Aquarium Drunkard: How have you been faring in the strange time we’re living in?
Devendra Banhart: The little me—the little ego bubble on the water me—freaks out a lot and gets stir crazy and has horrifying visions of giant spiders coming out of my eye sockets. And then the bigger me, when I step back from my own selfishness, is pretty grateful that I have a home and can record and make music and paint. It’s such a fortunate position to be in. Especially when I speak to my cousin who is a surgeon and has a family that he can’t see because he’s in the hospital 22 days out of the month. I have to remember that when I start to freak out. But I still freak out.
AD: That’s exciting to hear that you’ve been making some new music at home.
Devendra Banhart: Yeah! We just finished a Grateful Dead cover, which is the first time I’ve recorded with a lot of people remotely. That’s not really new where someone sends you the tracks and you do it. I’ve done that with people in Japan and in Brazil. But this is the first time I did a remote recording with the people in my band. Nicole [Lawrence, guitarist] is a 10 minute drive from me, but she couldn’t come here and I couldn’t go to her. It’s really fascinating to work remotely with people that are right next to you.
I’ve also started working on a record with Noah Georgeson that we’re going to put out for Dead Oceans, and it’s our first ambient album. I won’t be singing on it. We’re going to have different teachers from different wisdom traditions speaking very little on a few of the tracks, but mostly it will be ambient. I kind of thought that it would be a lot easier than it is. You think, “Ambient music… that’s so easy. I just hold down a C chord and put a lot of reverb on it and I’m good to go.” Turns out there’s a little more to it than that! And just because I listen to a lot of it doesn’t mean I know how to make it. It’s a whole new world of an approach to songwriting. It’s really wonderful though because ambient music requires so much attention and focus that you have to be disciplined in order to make it. I need discipline right now. I used to rely on my job and the world to make me disciplined. I need the structure of a tour. Suddenly it’s up to me. You’re not going to work and having your boss tell you exactly what to do. It’s up to you.
AD: I was curious about why you chose that particular Dead song to cover? What about that song spoke to you?
Devendra Banhart: The Dead have been something that I turned to for immediate comfort. Through the day, I’ll have a meltdown or a freak out or this wave of anguish, and I’ll just turn to my Grateful Dead book and just play whatever. “Unbroken Chain” or “Eyes of the World.” And I’ll just feel a little bit better. I think they have that quality. It’s almost like a benevolent narcotic. Why we chose “Franklin’s Tower” was because we wanted to do “Help>Slip>Frank”—”Help Is On The Way” into “Slipknot” into “Franklin’s Tower.” We spent the entire European tour soundchecking that. I was so fucking excited to give it a shot. But there’s no way you can do “Help>Slip>Frank” remotely. It’s so much about the communication and being in the same room and locking into each other. It’s kind of embarrassing and lame now that I say it out loud, but “Franklin” seemed to be the most, “Okay, we can do this remotely.” Plus that was the one that I wanted to do in the style that felt most appropriate for the time. And because the lyrics are so perfect. That line, “In another time’s forgotten space/Your eyes looked through your mother’s face,” is one of the most beautiful lyrics I’ve ever heard in my life. It’s a joyous song. It’s a fun, put it on before you go to the festival kind of song. But sometimes the energy can obscure the lyric so we did a very gentle version of it where we could really give a little more platform to those words.
AD: I had the experience of seeing Phil Lesh and his band playing at Pickathon last year on Jerry Garcia’s birthday, and they did a whole set of Dead songs and, when they laid into “Franklin’s Tower,” it was like the whole field just elevated off the ground.
Devendra Banhart: That’s a great way of putting it. That song can fully elevate your whole being. And that’s the brilliance of why “Help>Slip>Frank” is this mini masterpiece. It’s a journey you go on that ends with that elevation. “Help Is On The Way” is very terrestrial. You’re on Earth and it’s groovy and it’s a city kind of feeling. Then suddenly with “Slipknot” you go underground into some wild underworld and then you emerge with the elevation of “Franklin’s Tower” and it’s just beautiful.
AD: You’re clearly a longtime fan of the Dead. How did that start for you?
Devendra Banhart: It started when I was 18 and visiting my family in Caracas. There’s this open air market where people will sell CDs of whatever’s popular at the time. There was one person that always sold more esoteric, older stuff. And they had an album where the cover was all pixelated. I couldn’t see what it was—a little red, a little black—but it looked interesting enough that I said I’d take it. I put it on and was in love. It was one of my favorite songs of all time. Years later, I’m going to the Art Institute and hanging out with Andy Cabic of Vetiver and we’re starting to write songs together, and the Dead are just kind of part of that L.A./San Francisco life. I’m listening to a little Workingman’s Dead and “Casey Jones.” I like it, but I always thought it’s not really as good as whatever I heard on this weird CD. It turns out, of course, that the CD was “Dark Star” and Live Dead. It just had no writing on it. So I always like the Grateful Dead more than the Grateful Dead. That’s how it felt.
So I’ve always loved them, but was intimidated to talk about how much I loved them because Deadheads are intimidating. Not all of them, of course, but in my mid 20s, I came across a couple of people that were really hardcore. If you didn’t know the exact date of a recording, you were bullied a bit. And then you get to the point where it’s like, “Oh my gosh. This is absurd.” Really, who cares? If you mess up on some technical aspect, it doesn’t really matter. They’re the only band I’m interested in hearing and they’ve truly helped me every single day. Why wouldn’t I celebrate that and talk about that?
AD: What can you tell me about the new EP Vast Ovoid? Was this material that you recorded for Ma that didn’t fit?
Devendra Banhart: It was more that at the end of the recording process, we started working on these songs and realized they were fitting with the theme of the record. They were their own thing, their own world.
AD: On the first song, “Let’s See,” you quote the Beach Boys’ “Surfin’ USA.” Where did that idea come from?
Devendra Banhart: I think it was on the radio and it just hit me. “Inside, outside USA. Whoa… that’s weird.” I saw it written out and was reading it over and over in my head, imagining a huge Ed Ruscha piece that’s those words. I imagined literally everyone on the planet inside and outside, and in their houses and people outside of them and they’re all surfing. But I also thought it was an interesting question. Things already seemed so dire before the pandemic. I remember so many of my friends thinking, “I need to move to Stockholm or anywhere else.” Inside or outside USA—that’s the question, right? Where do I go?
AD: On the title track, there’s an interesting field recording that kicks off the song. What is the source of that?
Devendra Banhart: That’s me on a rickshaw in Varanasi. We’re going through traffic and he’s screaming. At first, it was like, “Oh my God, he’s saying, ‘I’m going to kill you’ to someone!” But he kept screaming nonstop and I realized he’s probably just saying like, “See you later… say hi to the kids for me.” This could be the sweetest thing ever being yelled so violently. So I recorded a little bit of it and we put that in the song because the idea of that song is that you’re an alien that’s just arrived on Earth and you’re just checking it out for a minute before you leave. Doesn’t know the language. Isn’t sure what people are saying. And then they’re off. There’s a lyric about their impressions of the planet and then they leave. [laughs]
AD: The EP closes with a remix of “Love Song” from Ma by Helado Negro. Do you like giving your work over to other people to reinterpret and mess around with?
Devendra Banhart: It’s so much fun. It’s a bit bittersweet because they always do something better than whatever I did. That’s what happened with Roberto. He’s a true, true friend of mine and I love his work. So much that I wonder if I’m being nepotistic, but I know I love his work because I’m jealous of him. The remix was fun because I didn’t have to do anything and he made it better.
AD: Something else you’ve been doing during the shutdown of the live music industry has been gearing up for these streaming shows where you’ve been playing your music chronologically. How has it been to prepare for those performances?
Devendra Banhart: At first I was not really into it because it sounds like a drag. Then I thought this was an interesting opportunity to play songs that I don’t ever play or rework songs that I don’t really play solo. I was talking to a friend of mine who has been keeping a journal every day since 1962, writing down what happened to them every day. He has volumes and volumes and is taking this time to archive it and maybe turn into something like a memoir. I guess it’s time for that kind of reflection. This felt a little bit like that. It’s been a strange experience.
AD: Do you have any sense of what the rest of the year looks like for you?
Devendra Banhart: I don’t know is a good mantra. When I start to think about what the rest of the year looks like and what’s going to happen in the next five minutes from now, I get a little nervous and freaked out. More than a million people are jobless. China is destroying Tibet. Venezuela is near apocalyptic freak out with an oil spill that will take them years to recover from. There’s wildfires all over California and I have friends evacuating their houses up north. I have to return to the breath and be grateful for what I have. I think that’s where I need to be at the moment.
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Recent email conversations with Justin Gage, discussing the depth and breadth of my 25-year live archive, sowed the idea for what you will find below – a group of tunes conceptualized as if each were a block of radio station programming. Some thoughts / recollections of the specific shows these tracks were culled from are as follows. – Cory Rayborn, North Carolina.
Yeah, I know – two Shellac songs within the first five volumes? Seems fair to me when they always kill it live. This song also never ceases to entertain me, kind of like the Shellac summary in precision and, um, topicality.
2 – The Brothers Unconnected – My Painted Tomb (June 26, 2008 – Grey Eagle, Asheville)
What a show. Where to begin? Accompanied by frequent TLR show-going co-conspirator Scott Caligan we set out for Asheville early in the afternoon, excited to meet up with the Bishop brothers pre-set. Halfway to Asheville we passed a car with NC Triangle drumming luminary Dave Cantwell in it and we all had an excited wave, knowing we were all headed to the same destination. The set was sublime – all sorts of material from all eras of the SCG catalog. The vibe was great. Oh, yeah, and Charlie Gocher’s cremains were also present, just as he would have wanted.
3 – Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – Island Brothers (December 4, 2010 – Reynolds Industries Theatre, Duke University, Durham)
A little bit of a distant recording – the nature of this room – but my how I love this song. The harmonies really bring it together. This was the era when Angel Olsen was touring with BPB and really brought things to an even higher level. Fun night – mild ice outside and then rolling inside to figure out who the mystery opener, the Babblers, happened to be. Turned out to be BPB and the gang in matching hooded one piece pajamas performing most/all of Kevin Coyne and Dagmar Crouse’s “Babble”. Set break, pop on some suits and a more normal BPB set followed. Always a treat.
4 – Jack Rose & The Black Twig Pickers – Knoxville Blues (September 4, 2009 – Night Light, Chapel Hill)
This recording was made the last time I saw Jack Rose perform live. It wasn’t the last time we spoke but it was the last time we were in the same room. Hard to think about in retrospect – he was in great spirits all night from some pre-show food/drink to the show itself. Hard to believe he would be gone four months later. A reminder to always cherish your favorites every chance you get. A rollicking performance and a reminder to anyone who doesn’t know the Rose / Black Twigs LP to get with the program.
5 – D. Charles Speer & The Helix – Leaving The Commonwealth (July 20, 2011 – King’s, Raleigh)
Speer live was always a great experience and this run through of one of their great work out songs was no exception.
6 – David Daniell – untitled (September 9, 2011 – The Hive at the Busy Bee, Raleigh)
Hopscotch is always about choices. Most years on most nights there’s a situation where you have to pick between two things that you equally want to see. This particular evening the choice was a Rick Bishop set versus back to back intimate sets from Daniell and Barn Owl. I picked Daniell and Barn Owl since they rarely toured to this area and I had seen SRB many times prior to – and subsequent to – this evening. I made the right choice that night. Daniell’s material is always so inviting and warm and intricate. If you don’t know his work from San Agustin or solo, dive in as it is always great.
An opening set for Sonic Youth (see “Expressway to Yr Skull” from Rayborn Archives Vol 1) and the only time I ever saw the Double Leopards do their thing. Mesmerizing, as you’ll hear here.
8 – Mary Lattimore & Jeff Ziegler – untitled (October 10, 2015 – The Pinhook, Durham)
Speaking of mesmerizing, Lattimore and Ziegler have a real chemistry that comes from being intuitive performers with a long playing history together. This represents their entire set on a bill with Steve Gunn and band from 2015. The ebb and flow of Mary’s harp/effects and Jeff’s synths is pretty special.
9 – Daniel Bachman’s Boogie Band – Catfish Bath (September 17, 2016 – The Pinhook, Durham)
Daniel told me that he had been working on a “boogie band” concept and was excited for me to check it out. Sure, he had stepped out of his “normal” performing guise to do a few Sabbath sets (Carrboro Music Festival’s “Iron Man” and the epic drone reimagining of “War Pigs” with James Toth at the TLR/WXDU Hopscotch Day party), but a practiced band? Count me in. If memory serves it was close to a seven or eight piece affair with all sorts of folks sitting in on this mutl-guitar jam, some local, some from Virginia. Boogie indeed. Folks are really going to dig this slab. Shame that this didn’t happen more often!
10 – Silkworm – Ooh La La [The Faces] (September 16, 2008 – Duke Coffeehouse, Duke University, Durham)
The first show that Jonas Blank booked at the Coffeehouse after my having done it for the couple of years prior was a great one – Silkworm and Dianogah. Having Silkworm close out with “Ooh La La”? Completely sublime.
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Doing so will get you access to our secret stash—including bonus
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The strange and alluring sonic world of Burlington, Vermont’s Benny Yurco comes to life on his sophomore long player, You Are My Dreams, released last month via People in a Position to Know. Having gigged regularly as rhythm guitarist for Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, this is Yurco’s first solo output in almost a decade. It finds the artist brimming with curiosities. If the deranged and dubbed out bedroom cantina vibes sound right at home here, then it should come as no surprise that he is joined on this outing by likeminded experimental blue-eyed soulsters Michael Nau and Floating Action’s Seth Kauffman.
A free-flowing and rhythmic intuition is the camp counselor on this here musical journey, leading the listener on a trail thick with dewy moss and faded exotica. In Yurco’s world, it’s sundown all day long. | c depasquale
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Make 1, 2. Via satellite, transmitting from northeast Los Angeles — the Aquarium Drunkard Show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35. 7pm California time, Wednesdays.
SIRIUS 628: Jean Michel Bernard — Générique Stephane ++ Benny Yurco – Flor Amarillo ++ Grateful Dead – France ++ Jingo – Keep Holding On (pt. 1) ++ Dwight Sykes – Bye ++ Alton Memela – The Things We Do In Soweto ++ Gene Boyd – Thought Of You Today ++ The Montgomery Express – The Montgomery Express ++ The 4th Coming – Cruising Down The Street ++ Trinidad & Tobago Steel Band – Do Your Thing ++ Lafayette Afro-Rock Band – Hihache ++ Juan Pablo Torres – Son A Propulsion ++ Arthur Russell – Make 1, 2 ++ Harare – Give ++ The Shades Of Black – Mystery Of Black, Pt. I ++ Fela Kuti – This Is Sad ++ Tony Sarfo & The Funky Afrosibi – I Beg ++ JD and The Evil’s Dynamite Band – Everglades Part 2 ++ Amral’s Trinidad Cavaliers – It Sure Is Funky ++ Unique Madoo – Call Me Nobody Else ++ Fatback Band – Goin’ To See My Baby ++ Gabor Szabo – Caravan ++ Mulatu Astatke – Mulatu ++ Dutch Rhythm And Steel Show Band – Down By The River ++ Serge Gainsbourg – Des Laids Des Dubs ++ Trinidad Steel Drummers – Cissy Strut ++ Mosco Tiles Fonclaire Steel Orchestra – Black Man’s Cry ++ Ike Turner – Garbage Man ++ Jake Wade & The Soul Searchers – Searchin’ For Soul ++ The Dirtbombs – Got To Give It Up ++ Sweet Breeze – Good Thing ++ Black Rock – Yeah Yeah (AD edit) ++ Robert Wyatt – Heaps of Sheeps
*Listen for free, online, with the SIRIUS three day trial — just submit an email address and they will send you a password.
Soul singer Eddie Chacon wasn’t trying to make to a “comeback record” with Pleasure, Joy and Happiness, his first album in decades. Though the Castro Valley-raised songwriter and singer has been party to hits before, Chacon and producer John Carroll Kirby (Solange, Frank Ocean, Harry Styles) weren’t chasing after pop success. Instead, they worked assiduously to make sure the new record didn’t sound like it involved trying for anything at all. No flashy guest spots, no bombast, no ego.
Speaking from his home in Los Angeles, the 56-year old Chacon explains that sometimes on his morning walks, he achieves a kind of cosmic understanding about his place in the universe. The idea was to get something like that into the record.
“No entitlement,” he says, his speaking voice as pleasant as the one you hear softly crooning on the record. “The universe owes me nothing. I love the idea of the ‘nothing’ broken up into two words: ‘no thing.'” “No thing” was a the guiding principle. The work had to feel natural and not easily classifiable.
Scrolling through the playlist Chacon built with Kirby while working the record (presented here for your streaming enjoyment) you can pick out some reference points for the oozing synths, plush bass, and percolating rhythm machines you hear on Pleasure, Joy and Happiness via selections by Earth Wind & Fire, Alton Ellis, Sly and the Family Stone, and Marvin Gaye. But it’s the inclusion of Larraji‘s “Laws of Manifestation” that offers the at the record’s metaphysical aim.
“Personally, I was feeling very pummeled and overwhelmed by the 24-hour news cycle and the intensity of social media, I think like a lot of people were, even before COVID-19 hit,” Chacon says. “I’ve often felt that throughout my career I’ve made the records I wanted to hear. I make records that kind of fulfill a need in myself. I thought it would be wonderful to make record that was meditative, that had a rejuvenating feeling about it. Something that provided a break from the chaos.”
Of course, the playlist offers only a snap shot of Chacon’s long life in music, photography, and creative direction. He joined Aquarium Drunkard to explore his deep musical past and discuss arriving where he is now, at a sonic space of refuge and otherworldly comfort. | j woodbury
Aquarium Drunkard: You had a huge hit with the late Charles Pettigrew back in 1992. But since then you’ve spent a fair time working on other creative endeavors. How did you find your way back into the studio for this album?
Eddie Chacon: After so many years off, I missed being in music. I didn’t really know for sure that I wanted to get back to music, in the capacity of being a singer or a producer, but Ethan Silverman from Terrible Records said “I have an idea for you. No guarantees, [but I know this] guy, John Carroll Kirby, who just came off the last two Solange records.” He thought we’d hit it off.
AD: What did you think of that suggestion?
Eddie Chacon: I thought that was a fantastic idea. I love the meditative vibes of John’s music. It was very much was in sync with what I was feeling. I had some fantasies and ideas about what I thought a great record would be, if I were ever to make one at my current age of 56. But you know, I also had reservations. I wasn’t sure this guy coming off a very hot, contemporary record would be interested in working with a guy from the ‘90s who hasn’t done anything significant in decades. [Laughs]
AD: You’ve got these R&B roots, but this record doesn’t sound like a “retro soul” record; it’s kind of its own thing entirely, not afraid of the experimental or the subdued. You’ve spent many years as a photographer and creative director. You’ve got a very keen sense of aesthetics. How were you thinking about the “feel” of this record as you made it?
Eddie Chacon: I wanted it to be a perfect representation of who I am today. So I was very adamant that it was not clever and that it had a nothingness to it. I didn’t want it to be gimmicky.
AD: There are all of these beautiful moments where you throw a little vocal interjection into the mix, a wordless “woo” or you hit on a syllable a certain way. Was a lot of that just you really focusing on being in the moment? Was there a lot of room for improvisation?
Eddie Chacon: I didn’t think about it. I would go to John’s studio and it was very relaxed. It was set up very loosely in the living room of one of his childhood best friends. I would just sit there slumped down low in this very comfortable chair while he toiled away making these beautiful landscapes. I would scribble some things down on a notepad while he was doing that, and then he just would spin his chair around and hand me the microphone and say, “Do you want to sing?” No headphones—the speakers would be on right in front of me. I would just do this stream of consciousness thing over what he had done. I was very interested in trusting in wherever I had arrived at over the last 10 or 15 years.
AD: You grew up in Castro Valley playing rock music. What were some of the records that made you want to play initially?
Eddie Chacon: Well it’s a real mix, because I had two brothers. I was the youngest. The oldest brother was obsessed with heavy metal music—Robin Trower, Pat Travers, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd. And then my middle brother was obsessed with Al Green, Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke, and Chaka Khan, when she was still in Rufus. There was a local band called Cold Blood that had a lead singer named Lydia Pense. We were all obsessed with Lydia Pense and Cold Blood.
My middle brother is gay, and he was was also really into Bette Midler, Liza Minnelli, and Diana Ross. He grew up very much in that Harvey Milk period in San Francisco in the ‘70s and even marched in those Harvey Milk marches. At one point, my brothers were ushers at the Paramount Theater so I would go to the sound checks. I watched the Tubes sound check. I remember watching Roberta Flack soundcheck. She called me over and we sat on the stairs and she had small talk with me. She was really sweet. We’d go see Boz Skaggs play at the pavilion every New Year for years. Music was like church in my household.
AD: Eventually ended up in a band with Mike Bordin and Cliff Burton who went on to be founding members of Faith No More and Metallica. What did your band with those guys sound like?
Eddie Chacon: We were just little kids. I was 12 years old and I think they were maybe 14. Mike lived about five houses up the street from me. We were really good friends as kids, we used to hang out after school together. Cliff was a friend’s friend. We just decided to start our first garage band together. We would rehearse at my dad’s trucking company office because we could play as loud as we wanted to. It was in an industrial park. They were obsessed with Black Sabbath and Ozzy, which is amazing, because Mike wound up playing with Ozzy. That must have been a dream come true for him.
AD: You were only 20 when were signed to CBS Records as a songwriter, which you worked at for a few years before meeting Charles Pettigrew in New York City. How did you hook up?
Eddie Chacon: I met him on the train. It was kind of like when you meet a girl and you fall for each other and then later on, you realize that you ran in the same circles and knew a lot of the same people. We met as musicians talking over music on the train and had a lot in common only to find out that we were both signed to Josh Deutsch, the A&R person at Capitol Records in development deals. When you’re working with an A&R person, you don’t know who else they’re working with. They’re working with a ton of people.
AD: Was it your idea to form a duo or your A&R’s?
Eddie Chacon: I was really torn about it. Charles and I had created something magical together, quite by accident but we immediately recognized it as being special, our voices singing together and intertwining. But I thought that I was going to make a solo record on Capitol Records, and I knew that once I introduced the idea of a duo, there would be no turning back. I knew that Josh would get so excited about it and that would be it for my solo record. But I did introduce the idea to him and just as I suspected, it was all about Charles & Eddie from that point forward. [Laughs] And that’s okay. We ended up making a beautiful record together.
AD: How did having a hit change your life?
Eddie Chacon: It was a euphoric feeling. For me it was the sweetest feeling after going through the uncertain journey of attempting to make music for a living.
AD: When you have a hit, the big question in the industry is “What’s next?” Did you feel OK about that pressure?
Eddie Chacon: Charles and I were very seasoned by the time that we found success with Charles & Eddie. We felt like we were getting our chance. I think we were more comfortable than we had ever been. We felt like, “Alright! Now we are just getting started. Doors are flying open and people are giving us an opportunity to do what we had always wanted to do.”
We were writing songs and getting a lot of songs in really big movies. Super Mario Brothers; Tarantino’s script that he had written, True Romance; Addams Family Values. We were just getting good news day after day and on top of that, flying all around the world nonstop for five years straight. It was such an exciting time. I don’t really remember feeling a sense of pressure. I think at that time I was still young. I had a lot to prove. I was driven very much by my ego and desire to prove something, that I can make something of myself, you know?
AD: When Charles and Eddie ended, were you two on good terms?
Eddie Chacon: Absolutely. It was a series of unfortunate events. Charles’ sister passed away, and then shortly after that, his father passed away. It was just tragic. Josh Deutsch, who had signed Charles & Eddie and produced both records and even co-wrote some of the songs with me—someone basically made him an offer he could not refuse, based partly on the success of Charles & Eddie, so he left Capitol Records and there we were without our champion. So suddenly, we were strangers in our own home. They wanted to take things in more of a rock direction. There was no anger [at the label]. There was no entitlement. We were just not a good fit for each other, and they let us out of our contract. It was pretty amicable.
AD: As far as things in the music industry go, that’s a very rare situation. You ended up in Scandinavia, working with the Danish producer Poul Bruun. What was going through your head during those years?
Eddie Chacon: I would have to be honest and say that I was lost. I was lost musically. I had all that success, and suddenly it was over. I had the good fortune of this beautiful distraction and that this guy wanted to work with me nonstop, so over the next seven-ten years, I was just flying around the world making these records that were being very successful in the Scandinavian region. I had started out as a songwriter, so you might say I’d come full circle after Charles & Eddie. When [Bruun] retired, I basically should have retired too. Everything dried up. Totally. I kind of went into despair at that point, not really knowing what I was gonna do. A very dear friend of mine sent me a very nice camera and said, “I think you’d be good at this and that was how I wound up in photography.” I just went headfirst into it.
AD: Do you find some of the skills required to be a great photographer carry over into music?
Eddie Chacon: Your skills are applicable across the board, the things that you learn in life in general. I definitely have that confidence. I think that once you’ve been validated in one area, you do go into other things with a sense of confidence. Even if you are starting from the beginning, you still feel certain that you have something to bring to the table.
AD: The sounds on this new record are so dialed in. Do you think the next one will come quicker?
Eddie Chacon: We’ve started, yeah, John and I. When everybody was in shock about the initial quarantine, I didn’t know what to do with myself so I just went down in my studio daily and the way I dealt with it was I wrote a batch of about 14 songs. We’re starting to sort through that stuff and have listening sessions. We’ve started with the basics of batch one. The first chapter of starting to write a new book, you might say.
Do our mixtapes, features, interviews, essays, and original sessions make your listening life better? Help us continue doing it by pledging your support via our Patreon page. Doing so will get you access to our secret stash—including bonus audio, exclusive podcasts, printed ephemera, and vinyl records—and help us keep an independent publication going.
Our guest this week is Chris Forsyth, guitarist, bandleader, composer, and DIY lifer. His studio albums evoke the punk psychedelia of Television, balancing ‘70s rock grooves the loose, exploratory feel of the Dead. But as good as his studio LPs are, it might be live recordings that best showcase his sound. His latest is calledFirst Flight. On it, he’s joined by guitarist Dave Harrington, drummer Ryan Jewell, and bassist Spencer Zahn on stage at Nublu in New York City on September 20th, 2019.
Who knows how long it will be before we can safely cram into a room to take in some live jams, but in the meantime, the 40-some minutes of First Flight should help those missing the thrills of unexpected and immersive live music. Forsyth joined Transmissions to discuss his roots, time spent studying with Richard Lloyd of Television, and his motivations in opening a DIY space in Philadelphia, Jerry’s on Front.
This week’s episode was written and produced by Jason P. Woodbury and edited and engineered by Andrew Horton. Executive producer Justin Gage. There’s plenty more to hear in the Transmissions archive. Subscribe now via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, MixCloud, TuneIn, or RSS feed. Imagery by D Norsen.
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Jack Nitzsche — a man of many talents! An arranging wizard: you know his timeless work on “Be My Baby,” “Expecting To Fly,” and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” among countless other classics. A soundtrack master: The Exorcist, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, and Blue Collar were all recipients of his golden touch. (It should be noted that by most accounts Jack was a genius of the tortured variety; to say the least, he was a tough guy to be in a relationship with, creative and/or personal).
Nitzsche’s singer-songwriter side is a bit less well-known, but it gets its due on Mapache Records’ reissue of his self-titled LP. Recorded in 1974 and belatedly released as part of a limited-edition Rhino Handmade set in 2001, it’s making its vinyl debut here—and it sounds absolutely great, an oddball orchestral pop extravaganza that calls to mind Van Dyke Parks, Randy Newman, Harry Nilsson, and other similarly styled West Coast weirdos.
Jack Nitzsche is only 32 minutes long, but it’s crammed with ideas and ambition, leaping from old-school greaser rock to eccentric Burl Ives symphonic moves to tender piano balladry (there’s even some border town mariachi thrown in for good measure). With lyrics by underground filmmaker Robert Downey, this is a record that rewards repeat listens, a song suite that follows its own strange logic. Finally presented as it was originally intended, it’s a sweet ride from start to finish. | t wilcox
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Lagniappe (la ·gniappe) noun ‘lan-ˌyap,’ — 1. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. 2. Something given or obtained as a gratuity or bonus.
Dirty Projectors’ central force Dave Longstreth isn’t one to approach ideas with hesitation, though the group’s newest EP, the bossa nova-tinged Super João, found the songwriter in waters previously untraversed. “I don’t know Brazilian music as well as I want to,” he admits in our recent conversation, “…but it’s so deep,” he follows with a deep breath. In his touching, eloquent tribute to the great Brazilian singer/songwriter João Gilberto, Longstreth refined his singular compositional lexicon into a fine and unadorned bouquet, imbued with the sounds and flavors of Brazilian music traditions.
Longstreth’s Lagniappe Session emboldens and broadens his homage to Gilberto. Performing two tender ballads from Stan Getz and João Gilberto’s seminal self-titled album, “Corcovado” and “Para Machuchar Meu Coracao,” Longstreth sings entirely in Portuguese, accompanied by only a nylon string guitar and the warm noise of a tape machine, in tribute to a bright and brilliant man and his all-embracing musical influence. The artist on his selections, below …
I love the way João played and sang. His voice is inimitable, and, on the guitar, his voicings are clever and personal. In learning these songs I watched every youtube of him I could find from the ’70s & ’80s, trying to get my right hand as close to his left as I possibly could.
To learn the changes of “Corcovado” in João’s fingers is to find something weird and oddly specific in a classic chestnut. “Prá Machucar Meu Coração” is the dark horse of the Getz/Gilberto catalog — so fun to play. … thanks for listening
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On her second solo album Eno Axis, North Carolina’s H.C. McEntire sounds at peace. With her band luxuriating in gospel, soul, and country grooves behind her, her voice hovers above the down-home mix, buoyed by contentment. Inspired by time spent sinking into domestic routines and the blooming of a new relationship, the record feels like a cool breeze in this fiery summer.
As she did with her rock band Mount Moriah, McEntire fills her songs with vivid Southern scenes—snuck cigarettes in the alley, time spent by a slow moving river, villains hanging around the church house—but there’s a sense of palpable lightness on the lp, 10 songs (including a tremendous Led Zeppelin cover) which suggest hope is what you find when you dig deeply in the nearest soil, willing to get your hands dirty. | j woodbury
Aquarium Drunkard: You’ve been making records for a long time, but2018’s Lionheart was your solo debut. How did making your second solo album feel different from the first?
H.C McEntire: Putting out Lionheart under my own name was pretty terrifying at first but I think after touring and supporting that record, I built up confidence. I started to feel like a solo artist. I felt empowered. Going into Eno Axis, there wasn’t any kind of psychic weight. It was like, “Okay, this is the name I’m going to put on this, and these are the guys I’m going to play with.” It wasn’t heavy in the same way.
I felt really centered in my body. I wasn’t moving or touring. I was anchored down, I was in a great spiritual place. My life felt really harmonious. I was falling in love. Everything about this record felt—I don’t want to say easy—but it had an ease to it.
AD: You spent a lot of time on the road for that album and then touring with Angel Olson. After so much time on the road, you were able to settle into a domestic routine in this 100-year-old farmhouse where you live. How much do you think that got into the record?
H.C. McEntire: I didn’t set out to record or write about chores necessarily. [Laughs] I struggle with depression, so a lot of times it’s hard to get through a day. Sometimes, when it’s really bad, putting one foot in front of the other is the only thing you can really control. These seemingly trivial little tasks—gardening, walking the dog, metal detecting on the land with my dad, digging up weird rusted stuff, seeing the dusk or the dawn—being comforted by those small things was really important to me and helped me get through many times in the last few years.
AD: You employ the language of the Bible a lot in your songs. Can you tell me a little about what kind of church you grew up in?
H.C. McEntire: It was a southern Baptist church a couple miles down the road. A distant relative of mine founded the church in the 1700s and it’s been a center within my family for sure. My parents still go there. A lot of my family is buried there. It’s a small, friendly church. Everyone knows everyone. I know I could walk in there right now, and I would be greeted by people I knew and know that have seen me grow up. That’s special. Even if I have some conflicting beliefs around certain modern Christian principles, it’s still a place that can harbor that warmth for me.
AD: On “One Eye Open” you talk about some of the uncomfortable relationships that white supremacy has with Christianity, not just in our country or the South specifically, but all over. In your songs, I hear an appreciation for many of the ideas that you can glean from Christianity: redemption, forgiveness, inherent value in life, maybe even a grasp of the idea that our lives have some meaning, but there’s no escaping the harm and violence that many practicing that faith have perpetrated. Do you feel like you’ve begun to disentangle those things? Have you been able to untangle some of the trauma from the beauty?
H.C. McEntire: I think it’s taken me a while. Maybe five or six years ago—right around the time that I moved in here, actually—I started turning myself inside out. I confronted a lot of my own fear around organized religion. I started checking out some small nondenominational churches and some metaphysical [communities] here.
That’s what I’m into at the moment. I remember walking into this metaphysical chapel, which has become a really big part of my life. The community there is very, very small. I remember going there for the first time and walking through the doors. It’s an unassuming church—it’s a little white chapel. That in itself was triggering for me, but I confronted that fear and found an incredible community who not only accepted me but had similar stories or stories that were inspiring. I felt love, this unconditional love that I heard so much about growing up. I think I had to let go of some bitterness surrounding religion and worship. It took effort from me, and it took the universe putting me in the path of this chapel. And I’ve had some great therapists. I think that’s why I have a kind of open mind about spirituality and religion. I still struggle with butting heads with my own immediate family, but I feel very at peace with the self-discovery I’ve made in terms of my own spirituality.
AD: Do your parents dig your records?
H.C. McEntire: I think they like some more than others. They have been supportive in their way throughout my whole career. They’ve questioned it a lot, and I have too. I remember when I played punk music, they came to those shows. They enjoy hearing me sing and tap back into the country influences. They’re supportive. Sometimes I wonder if they read the lyrics. I would say that they accept what I do.
AD: You must have grown up hearing country music all the time. Were you big into ‘90s country or more “traditional” country?
H.C. McEntire: The cool, classic country stuff, I came to much later on.
AD: Everyone likes to pretend they grew up on like old Hank Williams records, but no, most folks crew up listening to the radio.
H.C. McEntire: I’m talking ‘80s and ‘90s country with terrible production. [Laughs] Randy Travis, Alan Jackson. Anything that was on commercial radio in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, that’s what I listened to. Everything else was pretty inaccessible until later in my life. I guess I’m nostalgic about that time period. I think there’s also a lot of great songs and artists working during that time.
AD: Where there any artists that served as a sort of bridge from that to the punk music you loved later?
H.C. McEntire: I’d would probably say the most honest bridge would be Lilith Fair. I remember at the time the Indigo Girls had a song on top 40 radio. I’d be listening to the radio and I’d hear it and that kind of got my attention and inspired me to look into a little more obscure music, like, what else is out there?
AD: And from there you just started digging around?
H.C. McEntire: When I first went to college in Willmington, North Carolina, on the coast, I signed up to be a college DJ at the radio station. That ended up being a big part of my identity for four years. I was the programming director, I was the librarian. I was so hungry for anything sonically new or narratively challenging. Sleater-Kinney and Team Dresch were the things I cut my teeth on and would just go and listen to the whole discography.
Punk music had a fearlessness. There was the same fierce energy that arguably exists within a congregation in church. I think it was empowering watching women harness and also completely let go and watching women have a voice. It blew my mind. Everything about punk music was like there are no rules. I think there was a restlessness I felt growing up and I always had to have a grip on expression. Punk music was like, “Okay, you can sing about whatever you want.” It was really powerful for me.
AD: Your solo records have embraced your country roots, and especially on this one, I hear a lot of southern R&B. in terms of narrative, it’s such a fun and interesting thing that Kathleen Hanna helped lead you back to it. You were drawn to this fierce and brave new world of punk rock and feminist rock, and here you are coming back to the forms you grew up hearing. Has that contributed to the ease that you’ve talked about this record having? Do you feel there’s some connection there between the ease you feel and employing song forms that are kind of baked into your DNA?
H.C. McEntire: Totally. One thing I wanted to do with this record was I didn’t want us to overthink. I wanted it to be very instinctual. There was never really a discussion about genre. It was all feeling. A lot of it too was that I wanted to honor the guys I’d been playing with. Luke Norton, the guitarist, you hear a lot of that soul and R&B because of him. He grew up in the church too in Birmingham and played in the church band. I think it’s innate in both of us. We didn’t really wrestle a whole lot with making these songs anything than what was purely coming out.
AD: This record concludes with a really cool cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Houses of the Holy.” I love that you’re singing about going to the movies—that’s one of the things I really miss during quarantine.
H.C. McEntire: The biggest reason I gravitated towards that song was the lyrics. As a young, not-out queer woman, I often thought about how amazing it would be to ask a girl out on a date. That’s kind of where that came from. For so long it was just a fantasy. There are a lot of different things I’m poking around with on that.
AD: Zeppelin is one of those bands that gets defined as a “dude” band.
H.C. McEntire: Chauvinistic, really.
AD: And yet you take that song and you flip it on its head—you give it this whole other read. It’s got an undeniable power, and then you bring this other thing to it.
H.C. McEntire: I know what you mean. I feel its power whenever I play it live. There’s a sweetness that I wanted to bring to the song. The chord progressions are completely different. There’s a kind of playful quality to it, but it also just sounds different when I’m singing it. You inflect certain tone and slow it down. It’s kind of like asking for permission when I’m sure Led Zeppelin never got there. I liked playing with that.
AD: Asking permission is so much cooler than it’s often given credit for being.
H.C. McEntire: Yeah, I think it’s hot! [Laughs]
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This week on Transmissions, we’re joined by songwriter and Dr. Dog drummer Eric Slick. His new album of classic pop songcraft is called Wiseacre. Best known for his work with Dr. Dog and Natalie Prass, Wiseacre was inspired by the golden-hued melodies of Harry Nilsson, Haruomi Hosono, and a general ’70s gloss. It’s a deeply personal record, one that explores contentment and domesticity, as well as unpacking no small amount of personal weirdness and trauma.
Eric joined Aquarium Drunkard contributor Ben Kramer—you might know him from Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard’s The Tonight Zone, as featured on the Adult Swim live stream—to get into it all: how his marriage to Prass influenced the record, how his meditation practice informs his songwriting, and what it’s like to get into a real songwriting groove.
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Last year, multi-instrumentalist Joel Mellin of Gamelan Dharma Swara was asked to contribute a recording to The Moon and Back – One Small Step For Global Pop, an ambitious compilation album honoring the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. He reached out to his friend Bob Holmes, of the ambient country group SUSS. Mellin played Holmes a 45 of electronic audio transmissions from the pioneering space flight. “I started playing a simple cowboy guitar riff over it,” says Holmes in the project’s biographical notes. “The rest, shall we say is history—the history of 1969, to be exact.” Soon after, Mellin hipped his Gamelan Dharma Swara bandmate Christopher Romero to the project. “I’m just old enough to remember the [moon landing] event,” says Romero, also of Gamelan Dharma Swara, who completed the new trio, which christened itself numün.
The resulting recording, “Tranquility Base,” made its way onto the Apollo album. It’s also featured on numün’s debut full length, voyage au soleil, out September 4th on Musique Impossible. The cümbüş—a Turkish, fretless banjo—is the binding sound here, an instrument new to Romero prior to recording with numün. Its body possesses twice the depth of a standard banjo, resulting in a deeper tone. “First Steps” features the very first melody Romero ever composed on the instrument, an inspiring, triumphant lick that bursts through a percolating mix of sonic layers.
Numün’s sound has a clean warmth and their debut lp is full of dramatic, cinematic atmospheres which leave room for the listener to conjure their own narratives. Holmes likens these sounds to “…a children’s pop-up book” featuring 3D images that spring up form the pages. Though inspired by mankind’s journey to Earth’s nearest celestial neighbor, voyage au soleil suggests flights even farther out into the cosmos. | k fortinsky
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Transmitting from the hills of Glassell Park, Calif., welcome to episode three of the Aquarium Drunkard picture show. A heatwave induced half-hour programme.
Feat: Talking Heads | PAINT | Brian Eno | OMNI | The B-52’s | John McKiel |Neil Young & more …
produced by justin gage | animated by mark neeley | edited by chelsea wullenweber
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