I almost didn’t get Hammer ‘n’ Nail done on time, but it’s 11:12pm and here it is. I just got back from a jugband show at Reggie’s down on the South Side. I skipped out on my check, I feel bad, I’m wearing tight jeans, my hair is greased up, my wife was up when I got home. I’m in no condition to write a song.
This song is a sketch of a song from a few months back and in no way finished and probably never will be finished, but I needed to do something today. I added a “gospel choir” effect and recorded through one condenser mic in the mono setting. I thought that was appropriate to capture the mood and feel of the moment. I’m pretty surprised this one clocked in at almost 3 minutes. I guess lots of obnoxious guitar notes will do that to a song.
The Barehand Jugband has a big show this weekend at the Empty Bottle opening for Split Lip Rayfield and we’re going to try out a bunch of new songs. Actually we tried em out back on Sunday at Quenchers Saloon. Anyway, here’s one of the new one’s we’re gonna play. It’s called Thirteen Women (And Only One Man In Town) and was written by Dickie Thompson and recorded by Bill Haley. Check out Bill’s version. It’s HOT. It’s the B-side to Rock Around the Clock, which everyone knows because of Happy Days. I wonder why they didn’t use 13 Women instead.
On Saturday with the whole band there’ll be a fuller arrangement with banjo, washboard, jug or tuba, and maybe trombone and trumpet. Hopefully I’ll see ya at the show.
This tune eventually ended up on the very last recording that the jug band made. You can listen to that one, but I’ll tell you that it’s compressed to shit and got too many effects going on to make it sound some kind of way that it doesn’t end up sounding. I always thought I sounded like a robot on it.
Anyway, it’s a good comparison. Sometimes less is more. You’d think a jug band would know that.
Here’s the tune for this week. It’s another song from probably about 6 or 8 months ago that I dug it up in an old notebook. Anyway, it’s called Where Have You Gone? It’s a short tune, which means it’s easy to listen to. Let me know what you think.
I use to uploaded my Monday songs to my facebook page, but for some reason the Facebook music player stopped working, so here it is…again. it’s called I Have No Idea and I wrote it about 6 months ago and then it sat in a notebook. I pulled it out again because I’m starting to put together a couple albums to be recorded, pressed, and sold at a reasonable rate.
And it did eventually end up on my full-length album. The album version is similar to this original one, but I changed the lyrics a little. So you can see the full arc of the song (not that it’s done with the new recording, though). It’s some kinda arc.
Music Vomit 