Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Woodpile 2: "Baby, You've Been On My Mind" b/w "Baby's Bringing Kisses"
Baby, baby, baby, BAAAYYYYBEEEH, bay-buh!! That's rock n' roll speak for you. Silly, isn't it? But if you had a nickel for every "baby" cut to vinyl since, oh, I dunno.... since Ike Turner, Jackie Brenston and Co. Cut "Rocket 88" with Sam Philips in '51? To paraphrase the Fab Four, baby, you'd be a rich man. But, baby, it's a great lyrical tool-- a little word that can be deployed in any number of ways, with any number of intentions. Shouted, whispered, lascivious, sincere, whatever you've got. Sincerely lascivious, maybe? Anyways, two variations on the theme follow, in the acoustical format:
The title "Baby you've Been On My Mind" is a blatant Dylan rip-off, and the song isn't far off, either. It supplies the cockeyed, puppydog, corn pone, yelpy/ pleady variant of the rock n' roll "baby". Good lord, but it's a stupid song. Fun as heck to play, though. It started out as a deliberate attempt to dumb down and do things like rhyme "moon" with "June", "true" with "blue" and so on, and to give shout-outs to those delicious Carling's Black Label and Pabst Blue Ribbon beers, which were on heavy rotation at the time. It was even too dumb for the Honcho band of Baltimore back in the waning '90s, which might be saying something. But, next thing you know, the lil' bastard's done grown on me....
"Baby's Bringing Kisses" is more stately number. (Hint: The slow pace and fancy shmancy chords are the tipoff!) It was written on a rickety upright piano in my old apartment in "The Eden of America": Jamaica Plain, Boston, MA, late '99 or so. Despite the trappings, though, the allegiances of the "baby" in question are equally up in the air as in its country cousin above. It's a hard-knock life fer sure...
JK
Baby, You've Been On My Mind: https://www.box.com/s/7a77b7e94f8d60a87d8a
Baby's Bringing Kisses: https://www.box.com/s/6bd14d3a1c254c02996e
Friday, August 17, 2012
Woodpile 2: "Arms of this Town" b/w "Ashley Magee"
Hey Ladies and Gents of Summer! The heat and heaviness of July is behind you (and half of August even), and here come those fine, fine, slanted and golden days of early autumn--- Hot Dang!! Up here, there are still mammoth hornworms to be plucked off the tomatoes, the potatoes are mostly still in the ground, the peaches are coming in and the okra's still going strong, but we're getting there.... At this point, I'll try not to bemoan the growing pile of musical material that I've labeled "Crap I've Got to Do", and just get on to it.
This week we're headed back to fetch some more quality goods from the Woodpile. This is actually a second and separate batch of acoustical numbers, cleverly entitled "Woodpile 2". Working again on re-learning and figuring out how to mic these wooden contraptions, there are some minor technical differences from the first set, but don't kill yourself listening for them. If you notice the presence of the "dobro" (actually a National Reso-phonic Model D square neck/ spider bridge/ single cone resonator guitar), well, good on ya! Gold star!
"Arms of this Town" is another in a long line of Baltimore songs I've written over the years, this one coming after I'd decamped for MA yet again and dating back to '02 or so. Yeah, sure, if you break it down there's probably some Bob Dylan in there, and some Eagles and Tom Petty even, but it's a song that I've come to love on its own melancholy terms. Just now taking a spin of the original, I'm reminded that at some point, I really should do a back-to-back post of the original and prior versions together with these re-dos... We shall see.
"Ashley Magee" is a tad older and bears the name of an actual person whom the song in reality has little or nothing to do with. Sometimes all you need is a fragment on which to hang a song, and in this case it was mysterious and southern enough to get the ball rolling. The original is a '98 vintage or thereabouts, and written whilst staying in the "Kacynski Cabin" behind Anne Arundel Veterinary Emergency Clinic (where the roses grew by the stairs), commuting weeks on/ off between Annapolis, MD and Somerville, MA. Crazy days, those.
Enjoy all the strumming and plinking and plonking!
JK
Links:
"Arms of this Town": https://www.box.com/s/c0578ee5a5b8b3a9a341
"Ashley Magee": https://www.box.com/s/76a43ef4c8360b65c0e0
This week we're headed back to fetch some more quality goods from the Woodpile. This is actually a second and separate batch of acoustical numbers, cleverly entitled "Woodpile 2". Working again on re-learning and figuring out how to mic these wooden contraptions, there are some minor technical differences from the first set, but don't kill yourself listening for them. If you notice the presence of the "dobro" (actually a National Reso-phonic Model D square neck/ spider bridge/ single cone resonator guitar), well, good on ya! Gold star!
"Arms of this Town" is another in a long line of Baltimore songs I've written over the years, this one coming after I'd decamped for MA yet again and dating back to '02 or so. Yeah, sure, if you break it down there's probably some Bob Dylan in there, and some Eagles and Tom Petty even, but it's a song that I've come to love on its own melancholy terms. Just now taking a spin of the original, I'm reminded that at some point, I really should do a back-to-back post of the original and prior versions together with these re-dos... We shall see.
"Ashley Magee" is a tad older and bears the name of an actual person whom the song in reality has little or nothing to do with. Sometimes all you need is a fragment on which to hang a song, and in this case it was mysterious and southern enough to get the ball rolling. The original is a '98 vintage or thereabouts, and written whilst staying in the "Kacynski Cabin" behind Anne Arundel Veterinary Emergency Clinic (where the roses grew by the stairs), commuting weeks on/ off between Annapolis, MD and Somerville, MA. Crazy days, those.
Enjoy all the strumming and plinking and plonking!
JK
Links:
"Arms of this Town": https://www.box.com/s/c0578ee5a5b8b3a9a341
"Ashley Magee": https://www.box.com/s/76a43ef4c8360b65c0e0
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
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
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
"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
Thursday, July 12, 2012
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
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
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
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
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
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
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