Dear Friends,
What a nice Saturday I had. I went to Q’s birthday party, got some quality time with him and his beautiful family, and Liam and Teresa joined in as well. Afterwards, I took Liam to work and then went to see Granny. It was a short visit, but she’s feeling better and we can probably start getting back to normal with our visit schedule.
Last night, it was just dad taxi, some writing, and relaxing.
*****
Today is Freeze practice and laundry. I’m ready for both. Maybe not as ready for Freeze practice as I should be, but I worked on the songs a fair amount this week. Hopefully we can find a semi-permanent drummer soon.
Laundry is a passion of mine, so I’m always happy to make a nice stack of clean clothes. I’ve been doing my own wash for over 40 years, so I’ve got it down. If you ever need pointers, I’m starting a website about it.
Not really, but I should.
Maybe that should be a character in a book or story that Dan tells in The Trees.
*****
Getting high on my own supply part 6? 7? I can’t remember.
I’ve documented a lot of the history of Hillbilly Devilspeak in previous blogs. When we were working on Lies… As Told By the White Man, in 2003, a lot was going on in my life and in the band. It was a crazy time for me.
One of the things that I am most proud of, at least in my music career, is this record. Some of that pride is based on what it took to get the record made. Some of it is because of where I was in my life, too. And some of it was just the will of the universe, I think.
One regret that I have now is that it is only available on CD and YouTube. I wish there was vinyl, and I need to get off my ass and put it on the streaming services. I think people would like to hear this one. I still like listening to it 20 years later.
Sometime after we put out Kiss the Brown Star, PaPa Steve left the band. He was replaced by Ray Love, who had played with him in the band, PaPa. Shane and I really liked Ray (and still do) and he brought a lot of creativity and interesting energy to the fold.
When Steve decided to return to the fold, we decided to become a quartet and the two guitar attack that Steve and Ray created was killer. They both could solo, and they drove each other to be as good as they could be due to a healthy competition they had with each other. There was only one problem.
Steve had always been frustrated by Shane’s drumming. Shane was my friend and I felt a strong loyalty to him, but Ray and Steve both thought we could get to another level if we fired Shane and went with their friend, Claire, who is and was a total bad ass on drums. It sucked so much.
I don’t even like typing about it now. It almost ruined the friendship I had with Shane and for a while, I didn’t think he and I would ever be to the point where we are now. I’m so thankful that we are back making Hillbilly music together and that we got through all of that. Hindsight being 20/20, it lit a fire under us all and Shane has accomplished a lot with the fire it lit in him. He’s also become an excellent drummer in his own right.
Bringing Claire on changed the band drastically. For some reason, we didn’t really play any old Hillbilly songs during the couple of years she was in the band. Maybe it was three…I don’t remember very well, to be honest. I felt so shitty about the Shane side of things that I blocked a lot of that stuff out, I think.
We did really click, though, with our new lineup when it came to writing songs. On Lies… As Told By the White Man, it was almost all brand-new songs that came out of the four of us working together in the practice room. There were only two of them that came from previous lineups. One being “Kalifornia,” which was from the original lineup and one being “About God and Papercuts.”
We did pre-production on the ten songs at Ray’s house and had our shit pretty dialed in when we went out to Los Angeles in the summer of 2003 and recorded the CD with my buddy Alex twiddling the knobs at a studio near Dodger Stadium. I knew it would be the last Hillbilly record, so I wanted Alex to help me finish what he had helped me start and the rest of the band wanted to work with him, too. Alex found the place and we packed up our shit and went to the beach.
Luckily, Mark and Mo were going to the east coast for a wedding for a week and needed someone to house sit for them, so we had a free place to stay. It was a bit of a haul to get to the studio every day, but we made it work, and I think, if memory serves, we recorded the whole thing in five days.
Manny’s studio was big enough for us to partition things off and record most of the record live then do vocals and some overdubs after the basic tracks were down. We got some two inch tape in Hollywood after picking Alex up from the airport that first day and got to work.
I remember feeling like a bit of a rock star that week. We were in LA recording our record and just focused on it. We had Mark and Mo’s cozy condo to call home at night and even thought I thought I had suffocated their dog, Finch, the first morning because he had burrowed underneath me during the night, it was relatively stress free.
Finch lived a long, happy life, by the way, for another 15 years, I think, after I dog-sat him.
Alex and I got to spend almost a week together talking and laughing and making music and as a band, we made a record I am totally proud of, too. I have fond memories of the experience. I just wish I had taken lots of pictures.
While I am equally proud of the first Hillbilly CD, Colorized, I think the songwriting Lies is even better. I don’t remember exactly how I came up with the title, but the idea of “lies” ran throughout Hillbilly lyrics all along, so it seemed fitting.
I was approaching my 34th birthday when these songs were finalized, and as a songwriter, I think was beginning to mature a bit. I wrote most of the main riffs (all but “Conscience” which was a Steve song musically and lyrically) and arranged it all. I also wrote the lyrics for the other nine songs, too. Hillbilly was always my baby in those days.
“That’s Rock-n-Roll” starts things off. It is a total stoner rock riff, and the lyrics are pretty self-explanatory. “All of my success rests on the merits of turning my life into some kind of credit/all of my dreams have been marginalized by someone else’s thought of what it is to be alive” is the first two lines. I go on talking about how life hasn’t always been what it seems it should be over a sludgy riff that kind of eats itself.
I suppose, looking back, that could have been the ending song, but at the time, I wanted it to be first. We were digging the stoner rock vibe a lot and I thought it was a fitting statement as to where we were coming from in 2003/2004.
“Above the Law: Say AHHH!!!” is up next and that one moves a little faster and is a bit more in your face. It’s a fun song to play, too. It was about some of the people I knew back then who seemed to choose drugs and the druggie lifestyle over doing anything else.
“CIA Cancer Theory” is just a fun, punk rock song. I’ve tried to revive it as of late, but I’m not sure the current band likes it as much as I do. At the time, I really liked this one. It has a lot of my main influences wrapped in it. It perky, too.
“Conscience” is next and that was a Steve song. I really like it, though, and when I listen to it now I really enjoy singing along with him. We took it and made it a Hillbilly song and it totally fits. Good lyrics, too. I think Steve had a handful of people in his life who forgot to have a conscience in those days.
“How Many? I Don’t Know” is a super heavy riff and it gets kind of crazy. It’s a full-on Hillbilly type song. I still like playing the bassline for it. We should revive that one. This one really didn’t have a ton of meaning, lyrically, and I just came up with the words while we were jamming it.
“Kalifornia” got played in California last year. It is about my short stint as a California resident when I lived in Berkeley in 1991. It’s a simple riff, but Ray and Steve made the guitars sound so big, and Claire really nailed the drums (as she did on all these tracks).
“One, Maybe, Two More” is a title that came from a discussion about how many times we were going to play the riff. It’s about assassinating the President, who at the time, was Little Bush. I’m glad the Secret Service never took my seriously.
“About God and Papercuts” is about sexual abuse. I worked at Casa during these years and the stuff I saw and heard on the job came out in my lyrics. This is, in my opinion, a really good song. I love how the riff plays out. That was Steve and I figuring it out, too. We made that one really good.
“Saddest Song of All” is a riff I really love, too. I was gearing up for my divorce from my first wife and I kind of poured a lot of those feelings into this one. I am proud of the little bridge/turnaround towards the end that helps this one swell into something a little bigger than it sounded like in the beginning. Very Eric Avery of me to do that.
“Yeah Yeah Yeah” is my other true favorite from this one. I love the lyrics I came up with here and the riff is just full-on Hillbilly Devilspeak. Claire also does some killer backing vocals, too. Quality. Just quality.
We got some good reviews for this one and I wish I would have had the energy to push it a little more. I think we could have made a little name for ourselves had we pushed it further and toured on it, but that was not something I could do then. We played a lot on the coast, so that was fun and cool, but we missed an opportunity here, for sure.
No regrets, though, and as I mentioned, I still love listening to this one. I hope you do, too.
*****
See you tomorrow.
Lies...As told by the AI man.
Comments