THROWBACK TUESDAY SHOW #2 - SONGS FOR A HURRICANE
Songs for a Hurricane was the classic second child: I have a stack of photos two inches high from the Five Stories recording session, and literally not one from Hurricane. Maybe somebody took some? But if they did I don’t have them. This shot of me on the floor of my Cambridge kitchen is from the approximate era, and that’s the closest I could get. In a way, I love its being undocumented. The sessions were a retreat from the outside world, and it's somehow apt to have them remain invisible.
Even before we’d finished making Five Stories, Billy Conway and I were already saying a lot of sentences that began “Next time we’ll…”, and it was never in doubt we’d take a swing at another record. We worked at Hi-n-Dry again, which had gotten very slightly more official in its studio setup since the last time around. Again Billy played drums, again Andrew Mazzone played bass. On guitar we had a rotating crew of gunslingers: Jabe Beyer, Kevin Barry, Mark Erelli, Steve Mayone. On keyboards, I imported my beloved friend Julie Wolf from the west coast to join the party. For Five Stories, we’d used every person and instrument we could think of, but for Hurricane we decided to narrow down the palette. The four of us (me, Billy, Andrew, Julie) tracked most everything live together, then matched guitar players to the tracks afterwards, tinkering around with a few other overdubs ourselves. Paul Q. Kolderie engineered this one at the loft, and then mixed it at his own Camp Street Studio. Dave Locke mastered it at JP Masters.
Each record has its own aura, and this one’s, appropriately enough, was a little stormy and a little fraught - more outside the studio than in, as everyone seemed to be dealing with various intense personal situations at the same time. No one talked about it too much, but I think time spent recording these songs about heartbreak (I remember tying myself in knots in interviews at the time insisting it wasn’t a breakup record, but I don’t think I fooled anyone) served as a vehicle for everyone involved to process what they were going through. There are a lot of feelings in these songs, and there were a lot of feelings in the room while they were being recorded. That said, we laughed ourselves sore every day, and there were plenty of moments of light; brighter, maybe, in contrast with the overcast skies.
I remember Andrew playing 8-string bass on “You’re No Train” and how it felt like receiving a stern talking-to directly from God. I remember Kevin ripping through take after take of the outro guitar solo on the song “Hurricane,” each one more preposterously great than the last, until all the rest of could do was laugh. I remember Billy instructing Mark to play guitar on “Juice + June” channeling the persona of an old fat dude sitting on his porch in an undershirt with a beer…Billy standing over him as he played, yelling “Older! Fatter!!” I remember the first take of ”You’re No Train” with Julie on piano, and how her playing immediately made every molecule in the room slow down and get quiet. We’ve played that song live together at countless shows since and it does the same thing every time. I remember a million glances over at Billy when something good happened during a take, and always catching his eye sparkling, knowingly, back.
Making a second record in a row with Billy in the same space, with a lot of the same people, freed us up to work on some new levels. It was definitely the first time I had my feet under me enough to consider an album as a curated entity, with an intentional arc and cohesive themes, rather than just the last dozen songs I happened to have written. We thought a lot about the story the record told, and designed the sequence to loosely describe the shape of a hurricane; the gathering winds, the sudden calm of the eye, the rain and fallout, the gradual receding.
Two images from these sessions that remain especially vivid are both from the recording of the last track, “Mingalay” - an old sailing song from Scotland that I’d learned from a friend in my early days of playing guitar, and always loved. I wrote an extra verse to tie it into the record, and used it as the last track. The first image is of Billy hanging as far as he could out the fifth-story window of the studio on a stormy night, reaching out a mic on a long cable, harvesting the sound of the howling wind (you can hear it over parts of the long outro). The sound of the gusts amplified through the studio speakers, and Billy seemed to pitch and toss like a half-crazed sea captain leaning over the plunging rail. It summed up something about Bill; a willingness to reach as far outside the box as necessary (even, in this case, outside the actual building) to serve the song. It was a wild night and a wild moment, dangerous, hilarious, and transcendent all at once. The picture is preserved in my mind forever in a way no camera could ever capture it.
The second image comes from the very last sounds we recorded for the album, also for “Mingalay.” We tracked several layers of backing vocals as the “Weary Sailor Chorus” - Billy, Julie, and saxophonist Dana Colley (who must have been around helping out that day), and me, standing around one mic. For each take we’d change places to make our different voices disperse better across the stereo field, and then crack each other up by adopting little personality quirks for each new sailor we were embodying. We were goofing around, but it was also a holy moment.
Singing with other people is one of the most direct means of connection we have, with each other and with the spiritual undercurrent of existence, whatever name you choose to give it. To sing together in real time is a deeply honest and humble thing, faces open, souls unveiled. Standing in a little circle in the darkened brick room of the studio, singing with and to each other, connected by the bonds of deep trust that develop over an arduous journey, I felt all the doors fly open, all the layers of existence flow into each other and blend. Sound waves and wind gusts. New England rockers and weary Scottish sailors. Heartbreak, loss, struggle, devotion, homecoming. That’s why we do this. It’s what we’re chasing every time we write a song or get on a stage or hit Record. Finding it together is one of the most precious things I know.
Thankyou beyond all description to Billy for all the work and wisdom and care that shepherded this music, and this musician, into becoming. Thankyou Andrew, beloved and dearly-missed friend, Thankyou Julie, bringer of laughter and light. Thankyou Jabe, Kevin, Mark, Steve for lending your unique versions of magic to these songs. Thankyou Paul and Dana and Dave, and the numerous friends who unwittingly stopped by to say hi and ended up roped into engineering for an hour, or a day.
I’ll be playing through all these songs in a livestream Tuesday night 6/9 at 8pm ET. You can check out the show here on my Facebook, or on my YouTube channel - if all goes well - here. It’s a lot right now, folks: everyone’s dealing with the upheaval of the pandemic, and trying to keep themselves and their jobs and their families on the rails. I know many of us are also caught up in the push for racial justice in a moment that seems to have the potential for real impact. It’s all so important, and emotional, and tiring too. If this offers some of you a moment of respite from any of that, a chance to let your spirit float for a moment before you re-enter the various frays, I’ll consider it worthwhile.
Thanks everybody and see you Tuesday *kd
UPCOMING SHOWS:
JUNE 9 - KD plays SONGS FOR A HURRICANE, 8:00pm ET
JUNE 16 - KD plays STRANGE CONVERSATION, 8:00pm ET
Streamed live on KD’s Facebook page and KD’s YouTube (shows will remain archived if you miss them live)
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