Roadkill/ Buttsteak 6: "Vientiene" b/w "Time Slows Down"

Hey alls-- Sunday night's getting on, so in the interest of moving thins along, I'll just say that we have a couple more new versions of old goodies for you.

I wrote "Vientiene" back in the late '90s in Baltimore, at the time that Goff and Johnny Rock and I were living on Riverside Ave. on the South Baltimore side of Federal Hill. As a quick spin might make clear, there were two things that I was doing right around the time I wrote this song: listening to a lot of Buffalo Tom and reading Stanley Karnow's great history of the Vietnam war. As the internets will tell you, Vientiene (or Vientiane") is the capitol of Laos, and seemed a romantic, mysterious place that might make a good kernel for a pop song of desperation and dislocation. The Buffalo Tom stylistic appropriation just came naturally.

"Time Slows Down" came a bit later, when I was shuttling back and forth between Bath, ME and Grafton, MA at the waning of my Poor Residency Days. As with "Vientiene", the goal was to give an impression of a scene with a few strokes. Oh, and in this case to give a muted shout-out to the Velvet Underground, whose mojo I was attempting to lift.

Me and Mike E on both of these.

Keating out.

Link, stream or download:

Vientiene:
https://www.box.com/s/254f32b6563aa3c49e89



Time Slows Down:
https://www.box.com/s/ae245e50bcf1276624ea

Roadkill/ Buttsteak 6: "Wonderful Mistake" b/w "Rules of Conduct"

Well, we here at the Roadkill-Buttsteak Corporation never promised you a neverending show of polished jewels, did we?  As you know, we are notoriously fond of the half-baked, off-the-cuff stuff.  Particularly if we're not aiming to take a track to the stage, or trying to make it album-worthy, RK-BSCo. Mgmt. figures what's the point of being too fussy?  Plus this allows us to reclassify the all the blown changes and make-do lyrics as officially rock-y!  Come see how the sausage is made: Four on the floor and get 'em done in under 2:15!

"Wonderful Mistake" is a straight-up, love-gone-wrong-but-that's-OK song. Needs no explicating.

"Rules of Conduct" is roughly a true-life story, pulled in large part from the cautionary posting that used to grace dear, departed Tio Loco's "cantina" in Federal Hill, Bawlmer.  After Tio's gave up the ghost, the Rules left with Brian Whitcomb and ended up in a danker, darker pace behind the bar at good ol' Mum's tavern.

jk/ me

Link, stream or download:

Wonderful Mistake:
https://www.box.com/s/7609b289a4eb02e3fcb0



Rules of Conduct:
https://www.box.com/s/ddbd88e9f588160ffee7

meet me in maplewood

It all went down in New Orleans. The Roadkill/Buttsteaks and Levines had converged on the Cresent City for music, food and a sazerac or three. That's when Jason's phone rang. It was Opportunity. Flash forward a few scant weeks to a leafy yard in Maplewood with a large gang assembled to send Shell, Jason, Cal & Zoe off on another cross-country move. The highlight of the afternoon was clearly Cal sitting in on the drums. The rest of the afternoon it was me back there with the full roster of (state-side)Buttsteaks ripping through two sets of wildly unrehearsed music.

Fun was had and plans were hatched for the next official JHU reunion show that will feature a new roster of hits. Consider yourself warned. Thanks to everyone who hauled equipment, came to the party, put us up (and up with us). xoxo, RK

Roadkill/ Buttseak 6: "Style" b/w "Never 'til the Next Time"

Well, happy 4th to you all!  We've no Independence Day-related material to post, and none pertaining to Canada Day, or Bastille Day for that matter.  But hopefully these posts are summer-y enough to get you through.  Each clocks in at the industry standard 3 minutes flat, so they won't make a dent in your leisure time (or workday), plus each was intended to have enough laid-back '70s L.A. vibe to roll with your midsummer day.  (I should note that by "L.A.", I mean Los Angeles, CA rather than Lewiston-Auburn, ME, our neighbors up the Androscoggin River.  The Lewistonian vibe is altogether different...)   As with the rest of "RKBS-6" these feature me and Mike E.

The A-side, "Style", sneaked up on me during one of my periodic Black Crowes revivals, and I admit that with head held high.   After the usual crash-course in the song's structure (no rocket science involved),  Roady needed no real direction as to where to turn, on account of his extensive database of AM radio hits.  As usual, we were good to go with the 2nd or 3rd take.  Cue the Wurlitzer and the harmonies and the hot winds and the Canyon and all that. 

The B-side, "Never 'til the Next Time", was put together in the same spirit.  Yeah, admittedly it's kind of a throwaway song, but that's what the good lord created B-sides for, isn't it?   It's another in a long line of "let's keep making the same old mistakes over again" songs and, as with"Style, we were shooting for the So Cal feel.  Cue the soft focus golden light and the lyrical reference to the Wrecking Crew,  And if you're not familiar with the 1960's A-team of L.A. studio hands (most famously Hal Blaine on drums, Carol Kaye or Joe Osborn on bass, Larry Knechtel or Leon Russel on keys, and many, many more unsung heroes) who have, unbeknownst to you, probably brought joy into your heart and a skip into your step nearly every day of your dang life... well, that's definitely a story for another day....

As to our ramshackle project, link, stream or download:

Style:
https://www.box.com/s/a8a326416350cefc64d2



Never 'til the Next Time:
https://www.box.com/s/8b415d1fce93b500559f

Roadkill/ Buttsteak 6: "Hazy Angels" b/w "The Light Went Down"

Hey friends- I admit that I've been busy of late, but have indeed been keeping a wary eye on the days flying by between posts. And here we are on the downward slope of summer already! A shame, as there's no shortage of goods to share-- Aside from the stuff already queued up, I was aiming for a brief Levon Helm tribute, and then we went and had a great Buttsteak band get-together over the weekend down in Maplewood, NJ, and so probably should wrangle you some posts related to that... Such is life...

Well the good news at least is that we're back to good ol' Roadkill/ Buttsteak on the namesake site!

"Hazy Angels" started as a simple "krautrock" riff on the Wurlitzer, plunked away when I was still spending the week out in Grafton. The song came together much later, and RK and I recorded the backing track last November up in Harpswell, relishing the chance to stretch out a bit and to play a bit with dynamics and atmospherics-- something my default pop rock/ rootsy thing generally steers us away from. The lyrics basically applied themselves, with heavy inspiration from blurry urban weekends and especially from Wim Wender's masterpiece "Wings of Desire", which I'd seen just once, back in my mid-90's art-cinema heyday.

More fever-dreamy in comparison, "The Light Went Down" is actually a proper B-side of our angular pop song "Generator" (which deserves a proper re-post of its own, I suppose). Both of those songs commenced in spring '10 or so, on the heels of one of our biennial 2-3 day Harpswell blackouts. "Generator" is an upbeat ode to making it through, while this one is a bleak stare down the barrel. I'll gladly drop a nickel into Richard Buckner's tip jar for this one, I suppose.

JK

Link, stream or download:

Hazy Angels:
https://www.box.com/s/8aadda743938f7cb3731



The Light Went Down:
https://www.box.com/s/ff14b0d57d5e75f4ff13

Woodpile: "Manor Park" b/w "Annabelle"

Hey all--

We're back to business after a little radio silence to allow for work, travel, Hootenanny-ing, recording, typing up loose ends and generally taking stock of things.  Tons of stuff in the hopper from all corners--- Roadkill-Buttsteak, The Man Known Only as Beez, Stackpole, Hoot '12 (Bonanos, Cardillo, Evitts) and Your Man in the Basement.

Winding up the first "Woodpile" (there's already a second batch mostly finished) are a couple of old hits from the Charm City days, both dating to '97- '98 or so.  Both had received the full-on Pourbillies treatment, and were shelved by the time the Honcho band rolled around, as we were trying to eschew at least some of the roots-rock and clear the decks for some more pop/ punk stuff.  Dusted off here, "Manor Park" gets a tremolo guitar and "Annabelle" finally gets the accordion it was intended to have all along. 

While you listen, pour some out for my old Monterey (i.e. Sears) mandolin that I bought used back in '95 from the Folk Shop on N. Campbell Ave in Tucson, as these recordings are the last it made.  It was a tarnished, buzzy particle-board contraption but it treated me until its (timely, to be frank) end, in the Great Lexington Blaze of December '11.  These "Woodpile" recordings were basically excuses for me to learn how to play/ record the upright bass, but it's nice to have a chance to pull out all the "old-timey" gear and spend some time....

I'm using a new pair of speakers for mixing, so let me know if these sound weird and/ or crappy.  Otherwise, here's to a fine, long holiday weekend for you and yers.

jk

Manor Park:
Link: https://www.box.com/s/a550656f898330bc6066


Annabelle:
Link: https://www.box.com/s/3dd83ed9ac0153f0727f

Woodpile: "Big Dipper" (Cracker cover)

For as much love as I have for the psychedelic and faux-world music of Camper van Beethoven (and my devotion indeed is mountainous), I must say that I've got just as much for David Lowery's equally long-lived, more traditionally rock-y band Cracker.  Sometimes it's that the craft of his songs stands out a bit better among less clutter.  Sometimes it's the presence of good ol' rock or funk comfort food.  Sometimes it's just the fact that Johnny Hickman and his Les Paul make some of the best guitar lines going. 

This one's a solo workout on a Cracker tune off their hit-and-miss "The Golden Age" rekkid (1996).  First heard this on a visit to Dan and Jesse's old place in Brooklyn Heights.  It floored me then, sticks with me to this day and, as songs may do, it somehow carries for me a truckload of nostalgia for some very disparate times and locales-- in this case NY and the SF Bay area (no offense to anyone in Santa Cruz, as I dunno what they consider themselves).  Maybe part of my weakness is that the song refers to the Giant Dipper, a 1920's era wooden frame roller coaster, not unlike my old Dragon Coaster at Rye Playland where I happily toiled away one warm summer years ago.  More on my amusement park escapades at some later time.  Suffice it to say, there is most definitely a place in my heart for carny life.

Giant Dipper, Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, CA

Dragon Coaster, Rye Playland, NY

Anyway, been meaning to record the song for about 15 years now.  Here 'tis:

Big Dipper:
http://www.box.com/s/0e905b5a3c1b6e2a02a6

Big Dipper: