Meditations from the Crow's Nest
Meditations from the Crow's Nest
“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”― Geoffrey Chaucer
A crazy thing is happening today…something I would never have guessed would happen…I am in a music combo (seriously) that is releasing our debut record (truly) on a label other than my own. The record is called Crow’s Next Meditations and the band is called Gravel Springs, made up of Luther Dickinson and myself, and it is coming out on Single Lock Records, a label started by members of The Alabama Shakes and Civil Wars, who also releases the records of The Five Blind Boys of Alabama.
So how did this happen?
Luther and I have been dear friends for over a quarter of a century, ever since his father Jim introduced the two of us, and my label Birdman released a record Luther Produced, Everybody Hollerin’ Goat by Otha Turner and the Rising Star Fife and Drum Band (Otha lived on Gravel Springs Road). For various reasons, Luther found himself regularly in the Bay Area during the month of December. For a while it was when the Black Crowes had their annual residency at the Fillmore (Luther was slinging for them at the time), other times when he was playing with the Allman Betts Family Revival, other times with his main band The North Mississippi Allstars. When he was in town, we would plot about new projects we could work on together. One year, our plotting led to his first solo record, Hambone’s Meditations, the vinyl version I (again) released on my label. It was nominated for a Grammy. There are dozens of crazy projects we have dreamed up together…many of which are still very much alive in their prenatal stage; most of them are centered around Luther’s art, which makes sense: he is a master guitarist with a huge, open vision, and I am a record man.
About six years ago Phil Lesh1 started bringing Luther out to the Bay Area on more of a regular basis. Lesh had a brilliant plan going: he had opened his own club in Marin, Terrapin Crossroads, and would fly out musicians from a master list he had created to form a temporary band, practice a thematic set…let’s say Grateful Dead 1972 tour…and then perform that set over the course of a week at his club, selling out every night. Whenever Luther was tagged, he would come out a day early so we could hang. I was completely immersed in droney, ambient music at the time (still am). Thick, complex drones created by the likes of William Basinski, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Ekin Fil, and Phil Niblock (to name a few). The question came up: what would it be like for Luther to veer away from the regular program of blues inspired rock, and work in the world of the experimental…of long, drawn out sounds and layers of tones….maybe with a little Spacemen 3 ecstatic symphonies in the mix as well.
We live atop a mountain in San Anselmo, in a beautiful wooden house that features an octagonal meditation-style room a short bridge away from the main house, a room which stands upon three stories of stilts. It is almost like a UFO hovering above the trees. We call this place The Crow’s Nest and I had been wanting to do a music project in that room for quite some time. This new ambient Luther recording concept seemed to be the perfect project and we primitively set the space up with mics and amplifiers and instruments. Luther had brought along a digital recording device his band The North Mississippi All-Stars had used to record their live shows…and he brought a mini Korg synth and a pedal that allowed layers of different sounds to sit on top of each other. Within an hour, there was crazy feedback and space sounds coming from the Crow’s Nest echoing throughout our canyon. And at one point, because a few extra hands were needed to manipulate the sounds that were swirling, invited by my friend, I started participating in this musical act of creation.
For the next four years, whenever Luther had that extra day, we went right to the Crow’s Nest and started creating. My kids would hang around watching…sometimes picking up a guitar or sitting at a piano and playing, wanting to get into the mix. Each session birthed one or two experiments, with Luther getting more experienced in engineering the sessions, due to his own home recording techniques he had developed during Covid times. Many of the sound environments we created were perfect opportunities for Luther to showcase his guitar playing prowess, but slowed down…more meditative….holding notes longer, allowing the space in the room to act as the second half of a duet. As the sessions went on, Luther roped me in to adding colored layers, playing my dad’s cello…single long bows of one note, influenced by the likes of Tony Conrad (as on the first song on the record Regal Scotch Glass Blues). He would encourage me, as a conductor would, to play rhythm guitar (as more of a sonic padding) to his guitar work on the deconstructed version of traditional gospel tune Needed Time. We sampled songs from the early 1900s from cylinders played through my Graphaphone, we played 78s from the early 1920s at 16 rpms, which produced a mucky slowed-down dirge similar to the bottom end of a flowing river, and then added a misplayed Hurdy-gurdy for a sinister garnish. That song almost slipped into complete primordial darkness until we had the kids whisper the Edgar Allen Poe poem Assignation on top of it. There was a real record developing…a strange, dark, bluesy and othered kind of record. A unique work, an amulet of our friendship.
For me, the most wonderful moment came when we sampled some of Jim Dickinson’s spoken word record, Fishing With Charlie, and incorporated it in the track with Luther playing guitar around his father’s words, the two convening in an artistic pursuit over a decade after Jim’s passing. That became the final song of the record, Not Lucky To Dream. The way we see it, Jim produced the album in abstentia.
When we finished the record, I sent it to my friend Chris Swanson at Secretly Canadian to see if any label they distribute would be interested in picking it up. Luther’s name alone would inspire someone to give us a listen. Within a day, I got a call from Reed Watson at Single Lock. He….believe it or not…loved it, and signed us. My wife did an incredible job with the artwork (as she does) and even our dog Emma growls on the record: it was a complete family affair. The perfect cover art is by Bay Area painter Mike Davis.
Today is our record release party! Single Lock pressed up 400 copies on vinyl. If you are interested (and they are selling quickly) you can find them here. Regardless, the record is now on bandcamp and on all the streaming services and we even put together a video for our first single Regal Scotch Glass Blues! There might even be a live performance. IT IS A HALLOWEEN RECORD, especially side two as it slips into mysetery.
The moral of the story: if you want to start a band and have limited skills, work with someone who has incredible talents, and ride along! Now, we need to figure out what we are going to do for album #2 (we are already plotting).
The Rolling Stones’ ‘Goats Head Soup’: Richards, Wyman & Others Recall the ‘Magic’ of 1973
There was an article in…I believe was the New Yorker? Maybe not? A few years ago? that did some good shit-talking about Goats Head Soup, saying the band was too out of it to create something that stood along with the records that came before. I never agreed…it is a record that I have always loved (Silver Train! One Hundred Years ago!). This is a great oral history of the record from the peeps who made it.
Rabbit hole alert: this is a pet project website that curates add campaigns from the 1960s to the 1990s, provoking a definite sentimental hit if you had lived through the time of the add and a sense of wonder and cultural appreciation for the adds that came before the consumer you.
Zadie Smith is ruthless about getting rid of books
All of us pathetic collectors get to a place of needing to downsize and it is always inspiring to see how someone is doing it. This article dives into how she got the books, what she prizes, how the books help her dig out a new novel concept…and what to do with all of those beloved no-longer-read kids books.
Beautiful Losers: Jim Reid of The Jesus And Mary Chain’s Baker’s Dozen
Thirteen of The Jesus and Mary Chain brothers’ favorite records…and there were a few that I had never heard of that are really really good!!! But…how does that first Velvet Underground record barely make the list at number 13? The band’s sound was deeeeeeeeply inspired by it!
I was asked to contribute a small essay to this house of reasons discussing why Kamala Harris should be president. Given the insanely genius minds who are also writing essays, I went a little lighter…but still stand by every word (I recommend reading the other essays on the site…and share a deep hope for Nov. 5th).
How the Human Brain Contends With the Strangeness of Zero
“The fact that [zero] represents nothing is a contradiction in itself,” said Carlo Semenza, a professor emeritus of neuroscience at the University of Padua in Italy…. “It looks like it is concrete because people put it on the number line — but then it doesn’t exist. … That is fascinating, absolutely fascinating.” The new studies are the first to reveal what goes on in the brain when a person thinks about zero, and they bring up broader questions about how the mind handles absence — a pursuit that would have pleased Jean-Paul Sartre, the 20th-century existentialist who claimed that “nothingness carries being in its heart.”
Suzanne Kelly on Green Burial and the Embrace of Mortality
A deep and fascinating weekend read: “The fact is, “green” is the way we buried our dead over 150 years ago in the US. It’s the way many Indigenous peoples in North America have cared for their dead. This other, more recent, method is the anomaly.” A perfect companion to this article: palliative care Doctor Shoshana Ungerleider has recently released Before We Go, a podcast that also delves so thoughtfully into end-of-life issues in a beautiful, empathetic way.
Passing On
By: Andrew Motion
By noon your breathing had changed from normal
to shallow and panicky. That’s when the nurse said
Nearly there now, in the gentle voice of a parent
comforting a child used to failure, slipping her arms
beneath your shoulders to hoist you up the pillows,
then pressing a startling gauze pad under your jaw.
Nearly there now. The whole world seemed to agree—
as the late April sky deepened through the afternoon
into high August blue, the vapour trails of two planes
converged to sketch a cross on the brow of heaven.
My brother Kit and I kept our backs turned to that
except now and again. It was the room I wanted to see,
because it contained your last example of everything:
the broken metal window-catch that meant no fresh air;
your toothbrush standing to attention in its plastic mug;
the neutral pink walls flushed into definite pale red
by sunlight rejoicing in the flowering cherry outside;
your dressing-gown like a stranger within the wardrobe
eavesdropping. That should have been a sign to warn us,
but unhappiness made us brave, or do I mean cowardly,
and Kit and I talked as if we were already quite certain
you could no longer hear us, saying how easy you were
to love, but how difficult always to satisfy and relax—
how impossible to talk to, in fact, how expert with silence.
You breathed more easily by the time we were done,
although the thought you might have heard us after all,
and our words be settling into your soft brain like stones
onto the bed of a stream—that made our own breathing
tighter. Then the nurse looked in: Nothing will change
here for a while boys, and we ducked out like criminals.
I was ordering two large gins in the pub half a mile off
when my mobile rang. It was the hospital. You had died.
I put my drink down, then thought again and finished it.
Five minutes later we were back at the door of your room
wondering whether to knock. Would everything we said
be written on your face, like the white cross on the heavens?
Of course not. It was written in us, where no one could find it
except ourselves. Your own face was wiped entirely clean—
and so, with your particular worries solved, and your sadness,
I could see more clearly than ever how like mine it was,
and therefore how my head will eventually look on the pillow
when the wall opens behind me, and I depart with my failings.
RIP DONALD MILLER from BORBETOMAGUS. RIP (More on him soon…but you can see his Free Jazz post here)
….coming next week: the greatest horror films from 1974.
Upon the publication of today’s newsletter, I had not heard that Phil Lesh had passed away. A tremendous loss to our community, our world.